IT is a great advantage to have learnt your golf (or to go and learn it) by the sea. Students of the game's history will not need to be informed that nearly all the leading players secured their early training in the pastime on seaside links, or, at any rate, at high and exposed places which the four winds of heaven had claimed among their own playgrounds. The best school of experience is a school in which that gentleman who is known as old Boreas tries to assert authority. Naturally, we do not want half a gale to prevail every time we go out for a round (indeed, humanity is so frail that, if it had any say in the matter, it might vote for the complete suppression of atmosperic disturbance in the region of golf courses), but the fact remains that repeated subjection to a stiff wind helps more than any other influence to make a person a finished golfer. Cricketers and footballers may rise quickly to fame from beginnings made in almost any circumstances - in suburban parks, on patches of waste ground in busy industrial districts, anywhere. An aptitude for golf can hardly fail to make itself manifest at some time or other, and blessed is he who possesses it; but twice blessed is he who has the opportunity to develop it early in life on seaside links. For then necessity will make him the father of invention. There is generally some degree of commotion in the air by the sea, and it has to be circumvented. Not always is it that a plain, straightforward shot achieves the purpose. Ingenuity is stimulated; spin has sometimes to be imparted to the ball so that the wind may be mastered. Then it is that the player learns the higher science of golf; learns how to compel the ball to do anything.

When he takes up his abode inland, he may have to practise several new shots (the turf for one thing is generally quite different from that to which he has been accustomed), but with his seaside training he can overcome any difficulty. When a strong wind arises, as it does at times in even the most sheltered of places, he is unruffled by it, while the life-long habitue of the course is perhaps buffeted about in every direction. When even in the absence of wind, the need presents itself of doing something unusual so as to make the ball curl round an obstacle and reach the chosen spot, the player from the nursery by the sea is usually equal to the occasion. The main principles of executing the pull or slice are the same, no matter for what purpose the shot is attempted. If you have hooked your drive, and can only reach the green with your second stroke by means of a sliced shot round an obstruction, the method of securing that slice is the same as when you are trying to juggle with the wind so that its strength, combined with spin which you have imparted to the ball, may result in the latter starting off the line and coming back to it. Where the obstacle is concerned, you probably do not want to come back to the line; you simply require a slice so as to atone for the pull - or vice versa. In the other case, the wind alone will influence the course of your ball, and the latter will have been sent off the line, so that, with the help of the elements and the spin, it shall return to the proper track without having been robbed of distance. It follows, then, that there are many degrees of slice and pull, according to circumstances. Only experience can teach the golfer just what degree is required for each situation that presents itself.

It is wind that provokes the most frequent demand for the exercise of these shots. If you find yourself confronted by a source of embarrassment which cannot be carried (a spinney, a house, or something like that), 14 you may have to impart a quick slice or pull, or delay the effect of the spin so that the ball travels for a considerable distance in an almost straight line before the influence of the communicated whirl comes into operation. The player is naturally governed in these matters by the distance which he finds himself from the obstacle, but the fundamental features of the methods of accomplishing sliced or pulled shots are the same in all circumstances. If the golfer knows how to stand and how to use his right hand, a most important hand in this connection for a particular degree of pull or slice, diligent practice ought to make him capable of attaining any other degree which he may require. The ability will come instinctively once he is master of the main idea. It is best to learn the shots in a wind, because then you have the whole world into which to aim, and, what is more, the wind assists in producing the desired effects. You seem to feel that it has come out to be friendly; that it is going to act in a positively benign way towards your scientific efforts. That is much more inspiring than sallying forth on a calm day with a determination to execute slices or pulls round such an inert institution as a collection of trees or a building.

These are all strokes for players of ability; the beginner may well regard them as distant objects of his ambition. Anybody, however, who feels tolerably certain of hitting a ball cleanly is justified in attempting the intentional slice or pull. Indeed, it is his duty to do so; otherwise, he is paying a very poor compliment to the scope of golf. Practical acquaintance with the subject will teach the player how many yards he should hit the ball off the straight line in order to gain his end. In fact, he needs to store up a knowledge of winds which would be a credit to the skipper of a sailing vessel. The danger of going too far off the line is always worthy of recollection; it is a downright tragedy when the intentional slice or pull meets with the fate of the unintentional one. I have come to the conclusion that, when a strong wind blows from right to left, that is to say, from the slice side of the course to the pull side, it is a very risky procedure to hit a rubber-cored ball into the wind with pull on it so that it may come back to the middle of the course. It is nice if you can do it, and I know that, in the conditions described the great majority of good golfers attempt it. All the same it is hazardous. A ball with "draw" on it naturally runs farther than any other; its trajectory is low, and at the finish, it is spinning in such a way as to scamper gaily over the ground, aided and abetted by the wind. That is the danger of it. Unless the golfer is very skilful, unless he possesses a particularly fine power of discrimination in judging the force of the elements and selecting the place of descent, the resilient rubber-cored ball will very likely swing round at such a pace, and with such spin on it when the wind takes command of it, as to run right across the fairway and into a bunker or the rough on the other side. Then, indeed, will he have sown the wind and reaped the whirlwind. It needs the very greatest delicacy of judgment and accuracy of action to play to perfection this pulled shot into half a gale of wind. When it is performed successfully, it gains a lot of ground, for it is the longest of all strokes; but, personally, I do not think that under modern conditions it is worth risking. A few golfers possess the instinct which enables them to execute it triumphantly nearly every time they try it, but I am sure that the majority would be wise if they resolved to abandon it. It may seem a proper and profitable undertaking to aim with pull into a right-to-left wind in order to make the latter help in the cause, but too often it means a scuttle of the ball across the course (especially when the fairway is narrow) and a fate that seems outrageous. This, at least, is the conclusion which I have reached after seeing the shot played many hundreds of times, and after playing it myself.