WE make our bow to the mashie. Let it be a friendly yet respectful salutation, born of a determination to render the introduction mutually pleasant. For the production of its best points, the mashie needs a special disposition of the player's mental and physical forces. It requires management of a kind which is different in several important details from that bestowed upon the driver, brassie, cleek, iron, and kindred instruments. It is a club that demands the utmost precision in our handling of it; for it is exceedingly susceptible to the slightest departure from the correct methods. That is why it seems to be about the most fickle of golfing tools; one day the best helpmate in the world, and on another occasion, the very deuce. The reason is that it is docile and obliging in the highest degree when it receives proper treatment, but that any small error of omission or commission transforms it into a veritable demon of refractoriness. True it is that the rubber-cored ball has helped to mitigate the horrors which this severely dignified implement would gladly heap upon the head of the person who used it in a way of which it disapproved. We have all seen players make bad mashie shots and still reach the green. That hardly ever happened when the guttapercha ball was in vogue, and even now the percentage of poor shots that enjoy happy endings is not nearly so large in the case of the mashie as it is where other clubs are concerned. On hard ground, a miss with the driver, brassie, cleek, or iron frequently entails no serious consequences; but a foozle with the mashie does not often go unpenalized. A top, for instance, will usually send the ball into a bunker, or scuttling over the green. There is cause for complaint in the fact that a good mashie shot is occasionally punished, but this is generally due to abnormal condition of the turf or faults in the slopes of the ground. Taken all round, there is no more influential club than the mashie, and to the golfer who experiences difficulty with it, I would recommend a period of practice with it almost every day. Such assiduity will be repaid.

The feature of the mashie shot, the trait that distinguishes it from every other stroke which we have so far studied, is explainable in these words: It depends primarily upon the movements of the knees. Hitherto we have been winding up and unwinding our bodies from the neck to the very toes. Now that we have the mashie in hand, the process of winding and unwinding will be renewed; but it must not be allowed to have serious influence below the knees. The less it causes the feet to shift the better. We want to be very steady on our feet - almost as steady as if they were stuck to the ground. As they do not happen to be so fastened (except, perhaps, during the winter months on those courses of tenacious clay) we shall move them a trifle; but, if possible, we shall not lift either heel off the ground. The outstanding fault of most bad players in this branch of the game is that they do not use their knees sufficiently. Their methods are of many varieties, and sometimes almost indescribable; but in the abstract, their fatal error is that they regard a mashie as being of the same breed as an iron. It is of a different nature, and except in the case of a first-class golfer, who has acquired by lifelong study a mastery over the club which enables him to take liberties with it, the mashie simply will not tolerate such discourtesy.

For the ordinary golfer, I would seldom recommend more than a three-quarter swing with this particular (very particular) club, and there should be no pirouetting. I do not mean to suggest that wild exuberance on the feet is tolerable with the clubs of longer range, but we know that when we take those implements, we want to turn freely and pivot on the inside of the left foot, from the big joint to the end of the big toe. In the ordinary way, we do not foot-pivot with the mashie. The club objects to it. Our first necessity is to obtain stability of stance, because we need to be exact in the way in which we strike the ball, and even a small measure of the foot freedom in which we have previously revelled may cause us to apply the wrong strength or direction to the shot. Sometimes it is necessary to make a neck-or-nothing swipe with a mashie, but those occasions are rare. Indeed, they are presented only when it is a matter of carrying some high trees, or other lofty obstacles. Placed in such a situation, the golfer may reasonably feel constrained to take a full swing, and then he will have to stand in much the same way as for the iron, and pivot on the left foot in the manner previously described. In most cases, however, he will not need more than a half or three-quarter swing with a mashie because, in normal circumstances, he will be well advised to use the club only when he finds himself within, say, one hundred yards of the hole.

Let us first consider the stance. The player should be nearer to the ball than for the iron, with his body turned well towards the hole. The left foot should be pointing outwards; the ball should be almost opposite the left heel. The position of the right foot is of even greater importance. Nearly all the data that can be brought to bear on the subject supports the contention that it is best to play mashie shots off the right leg. The right foot should be well in front of the left, and nearer to the ball than it has been for any other shot which we have thus far discussed. It should occupy a line which, if extended, would be parallel with the sole of the club. In this, as in other strokes, it is necessary to ground the implement so that the striking surface is at right angles to the direction in which we are hoping to make our way. It is clear that if the golfer place his right foot in a line parallel with the sole of his mashie, and have his left foot pointing outwards, with the ball opposite the heel of that foot, he must turn his body towards the green. He cannot well do anything else. He will turn it to just the proper extent if he remembers to have the sole of the club and the right foot absolutely square to the line of play. Standing thus, with the feet sufficiently close together to permit of a comfortable bending of the knees, he will be in the correct position for the most common form of mashie shot, which is the pitch-and-run. The stance is a matter of great consequence, and it should be closely studied.