We have now fixed upon fourteen holes, and the remaining four might measure anything from 420 to 580 yards. I do not think that any hole need run to 600 yards; as a rule, the very long hole affords no better entertainment (perhaps not such good fun) as hitting a ball across Hyde Park - if anybody has tried the latter diversion. At the 500-yard test, I would not have a hazard rearing its menacing face at the player as he stood upon the teeing-ground. Here - and here alone - he might be allowed to use every device in his power to obtain distance, untrammelled by the thought of bunkers ahead. I would put the first cross-bunker about 360 yards from the tee. If he could drive into that, he would be a martyr to his greatness and the dry ground. Nor would I worry particularly about piling up trouble in front of the green; the prodigious driver could let himself go at this kind of hole. But he would have to keep straight, and the open gateway to the green would not be expansive.

We have now a course comprising four more or less clearly defined types of holes (nicely assorted, let us hope) and giving a total distance of about 6,200 yards, which, I venture to say, is long enough for anybody. It is impossible, I know, for this system of architecture to be put into force as one might measure off perches of ground, but its general principles are capable of adoption, and they are offered as the best that I can conceive in the modern conditions of golf. They tend to promote the true sport. I have no sympathy with the encouragement of the flat, running shot for the long game. It is neither more nor less than a subterfuge.

And now for a few general details. Except at short holes, or where short approaches constituted the natural sequence to good drives, I would have the back of the green guarded only at a respectful distance - say, from ten to fifteen yards beyond the hole. It is a good thing to tempt a player to go boldly for the pin, and he is apt to become frightened (and reasonably so) when he knows that the slightest excess of courage may bring irretrievable disaster upon his head. It is a great compliment to pay to a course to say that it encourages bold approaching. The green which is closely hemmed on all sides by bunkers and which, in the distance, looks hardly big enough to accommodate a foursome, may inspire skilful iron play in some instances, but it is much more likely to generate a spirit of timidity among golfers. So, without being indulgent, let us take care to be fair in regard to the amount of room that we leave at the back of the hole. Better is it to leave too much than too little.

The flanks of every green, as of the fairway, should be literally bestrewn with difficulties. There is some excuse for a rubber-cored ball going farther than we had intended it to go; but there is no excuse for its travelling crookedly. Rough - so long as it really is rough - is a greater embarrassment than almost any bunker. It is usually possible to see at a glance exactly how one will attempt to play a shot out of a bunker, but a ball in the rough often gives cause for deep cogitation. So let there be plenty of trouble on the wings - bunkers as well as other agents of distress. And, at this point, I should like to express the opinion that the punishment ought to be as severe for the puller as for the slicer. For some reason, the sentiment has grown up in golf that pulling is not nearly so heinous an offence as slicing. I cannot see any justification for such a judgment. It is wrong to be off the course on either side, and it is no less wrong to be off it on the left than on the right. Yet I have played on many links where, apparently, care had been taken not to severely punish the puller, while the slicer had been afforded enormous scope for working out his salvation in a region of sand and unpolished country.

It is desirable from every point of view that the course should be made to look as natural as possible. The position of your hazard is a matter of calculation inspired by a good knowledge of the game; the contour of it must be governed by a sense of artistry. The shape of the hazard may not be of great intrinsic importance, for it is just as bad to lose a stroke in a little pot bunker, precise in its roundness, as it is to suffer a similar set-back in the rugged magnificence of a mighty sand-hill. But while I have put in a plea for the restoration of the cross-bunker because it would revive the true golfing shot, I certainly would not suggest a revival of the ribbon bunkers which, ten years ago, stretched across courses in deadly dull straight lines, very prim and prosaic in their pattern. A chain of three or four fairly large pot bunkers, with ragged and irregular outlines, is often more pleasing to the eye than a continuous hazard from side to side. And it is just as effective. So, too, in regard to the guarding of the green.

Pot bunkers scattered here and there just off the line are good, because they exercise an extraordinary magnetism on the golfer, and it should be his duty to overcome that influence. An instance which I have in mind is the pot on the way to the ninth at St Andrews. It is no bigger than a dining-room table, but the number of shots that go into it is amazing. For inland clubs, the great drawback to the system of bunkering which I have put forward is the cost of sand. It is an expensive luxury, and at many places the exchequer will not permit of repeated renewals of the supplies which errant golfers have scattered to the winds. But there is much to be said for grassy hazards - punishing places of much the same size and shape as bunkers, but with rough ground instead of sand as the fundamental feature. Rough, as I have already said, is harder to get out of than sand. The one objection to grassy hazards is that they are apt to become wet in the winter, but, if the ground be properly drained, they need be little, if any, worse than the other parts of the course.

Still, sand is the proper foundation of a bunker, and where the latter is dug and shaped by the hand of man, I would advance a principle which is all too often ignored. Frequently one finds the expanse of hazard practically level with the fairway, while a bulwark of earth rises on the far side of the bunker like a rampart that has been built in defence of a fort. This may be satisfactory enough as a test for the tee shot, but it is not the proper kind of bunker for the approach. It is usually almost as simple to dig down on the near side and allow the bottom of the bunker to slope up gradually to the level of the green. The player then has a sight of the hole, no matter from what distance he is approaching. This uninterrupted vision is important, because it is almost impossible to tell, by merely catching a glimpse of the flag, the length of shot required. There is a lot of flukiness about aiming at the flag. The golfer presented with a semi-blind approach will do well to go forward until he can see the pin at the point where it enters the ground.

The mounds which have become so popular during the past year or two are good so long as they possess the correct features. A club which had decided to adopt this means of relieving the monotony of a flat course could not do better than work on the plan of the originators, the Mid-Surrey Club. Many clubs have introduced mounds of the wrong kind, with steep faces, which make the ball dart off at any angle, sometimes for good and on other occasions for ill, and which present a general appearance of unnatural-ness, as though a number of earthern cones had been purchased and dotted about the course. Another point worthy of attention is the desirability of having undulating putting-greens instead of flat ones. Nowadays, there is a disposition in many places to make a green as much as possible like a billiard table, but it is not conducive to good putting. I fear that I possess - and deserve - a most unenviable reputation as a holer-out, but I know that I can generally putt better when I have to "borrow" some ground to allow for a slope than when the stroke is perfectly straightforward. The reason is, I think, that the sloping green makes the player ponder, whereas on a flat green he is prone to come to the conclusion that there is not much to consider. And concentration of the mind is the surest means to successful putting. There is no other royal road to triumph.

This, then, is my idea of a good course for modern golf. It should make the player revert to the old desire to obtain the longest possible carry from the tee, and then he will soon discover how to play the lofted approach with an iron club - the shot which has almost disappeared from the game, and the disappearance of which has done so much to lower the standard of play. We can make golf nearly as good a game as it used to be if we secure the right kind of hazards, and check the craze for the running shot, which the rubber-cored ball incited and which, in many places, has been deliberately encouraged by the abandonment of cross-bunkers.