PUTTING is a delicate matter, and I, of all people, ought to write about it in a delicate way. The reader of this book who has honoured me by noticing my doings on the links during recent years, and has observed my infinite capacity for missing little putts, may arrive at the conclusion that I lack nothing in presumptuousness when I offer instruction as to the best way of getting the ball into the hole from a short distance. Except, however, for emphasizing a few fundamental truths which are immutably correct, I do not intend to tell anybody how to putt. There are many ways of performing the operation successfully. I can claim, however, to be in a position to explain how not to putt. I think I know as well as anybody how not to do it.

Putting is, in a sense, a pastime distinct from golf. Half the secret of accomplishing it triumphantly lies, I suppose, in realizing that it is not very difficult. When driving or approaching, it is necessary for the player to remember certain established principles, and follow them to the letter if he would produce the desired result. There is one valuable precept which applies to putting as strongly as to any other shot in the game. That maxim is: "Keep the head still." As regards stance and manner of hitting the ball, it is for the individual to discover on the green the means that suit him best with the club that gives him most confidence. The finest way to putt is the way that gets the ball into the hole. And confidence is half the battle. Without it, putting is not merely difficult; it is impossible.

The reader may not need to be reminded that, of late years, I have often been lacking in that valuable quality called confidence. Especially has this been the case in connexion with downright easy putts - shots varying in length from six inches to four or five feet. Let me unburden my soul; let me relate just what I have done wrongly on hundreds of occasions, just why I have done it, and just how I have sought to cure myself - sought with some success, if I may judge by my putting during the period in which this book was written.

Perhaps it will be best if I reverse the order of the ordeal, and start with the cure. On occasions I have gone on to the course in the rapidly gathering gloom, when, in playing even a short putt, the character of the ground between the ball and the hole has been hard to distinguish. I have seen the ball and the hole; and found that I could nearly always put the former into the latter - simply because, it seemed to me, I had not worried to search for intervening difficulties. If the golfer will adjourn to a green to practise putting in the dusk of an evening, I feel sure that he will find the whole business much easier than it seems in the daytime. With light just sufficient to enable him to detect the dim outlines of the slopes, but not enough to give him the opportunity of exaggerating their horrors, he will discover himself putting with splendid self-reliance and success. Care is essential; but I firmly believe that, if you feel anxious and are determined to look diligently for complications along the line, you will find them all right, even though they have no existence outside your own mind.

That remark, however, merely serves to accentuate the inner peculiarity of putting, and its difference from any other department of the game. In drives and iron shots, there are degrees of prosperity. You may not hit your drive quite properly, but you may still be on the course without serious loss of distance. The fate of a short putt is an extreme; it is either perfect or ghastly. There is no mediocrity, no chance of recovery. That is why, I presume, the stroke is so trying; it is so fateful. To be able to appreciate its intricacies at precisely their correct value, and treat them accordingly, is one of the secrets of successful putting. They must not be underrated, because sometimes they really are serious; but when they insist upon presenting themselves in a portentous way, the poor victim is a person to be pitied. They get on his nerves to such an extent that he simply cannot keep his head still during the stroke. And so he fails. In the dusk, when the survey of the line in minute detail is impossible, putting really is easy. At least, so I have found it. It is a strange remedy to get out in the gloom in order to obtain confidence, but it is no stranger than the disease.

I suppose that, at some time or other, nearly everybody has suffered from incapacity within four feet of the hole. In my own case, the attack was painfully protracted; I can only hope that I am justified in speaking of it now in the past tense. I have never felt nervous when taking part in a golf tournament; this lack of confidence which overtook me when I played a short putt was something altogether worse than nervousness. As I stood addressing the ball, I would watch for my right hand to jump. At the end of about two seconds, I would not be looking at the ball at all. My gaze would have become riveted on my right hand. I simply could not resist the desire to discover what it was going to do. Directly I felt that it was about to jump, I would snatch at the ball in a desperate effort to play the shot before the involuntary movement could take effect. Up would go my head and body with a start, and off would go the ball - anywhere but on the proper line. Such was the outcome of a loss of confidence.

golfer who possesses a characteristic on the green such as that described, and who thrives on it, is justified in his unortho-doxy. There is no truer saying than that which expresses the belief that putting is an inspiration, and it is certain that we do not all adopt the same pose in moments of inspiration. Consequently let the player putt in the way that suits him; the point that I am trying to emphasize is that it is not much use for the average golfer to try this body movement. In ninety-nine persons out of a hundred, it would be fatal. Accurate judgment of strength comes with practice; the chief difficulty is to make the ball travel in the proper direction. In nearly all cases, the missing of short putts is caused by the moving of the head. If you can summon the determination to continue looking at the spot where the ball has been for a second or two after you have struck it, you will not often miss a short putt. But the accomplishment of that feat of restraint simply means that you are possessed of confidence; it means that you know that the ball has gone into the hole, so that you are not in a hurry to gaze at the result. The best way to encourage this comforting faith is to keep the head down till the finish of the follow-through. Twelve or fifteen years ago, when putting never gave me the slightest trouble, I always played on the green a stroke which was simply a condensed form of the push-shot. I addressed the ball with the hands very slightly in front of it, imparted back-spin to it by the use of the wrists, and grazed the grass several inches in front of the spot from which the ball had been struck. That was when I employed a putting-cleek for the business. With the skittish rubber-cored ball, I do not fancy the push-shot on the green. I endeavour to play a pendulum stroke, which induces a steady follow-through with the arms - not the body. Taking it all round, that is perhaps the simplest and best means II of attaining the end. With the help of Mr Arthur Brown I have devised for the purpose a club which, while it embraces the main points of nearly every well-known brand of putter, is distinct from anything else. I am frankly enthusiastic about it; its lie and balance seem to be such that one simply cannot help getting the ball into the hole with it. What this change means to a man who has undergone the torture which I have suffered on the green during recent years, I cannot adequately explain. It is heavenly. Only the player who has missed hundreds of holeable putts in a season is in a position to appreciate it.