Certainly the most important duty a professional has to perform for the club that employs him is that of 'giving instruction ' to the members, and as this is so important I ask no pardon for giving an opinion based on my awn experiences. There are a number of ways of coaching, and all sorts and conditions of men essay the task. It is not an uncommon sight to see the twenty handicap man seriously explaining to the beginner how to use the driver or the mashie.

It is still more common to come across the nine handicap man, generally in the course of a round, diligently striving to show his twenty handicap partner how the game should be played. The scratch and the below scratch player invariably has a mania for coaching. On the links, in the club-house, even in the professional's shop, he is always at it.

Now of this class of instruction I wish to speak with every respect; it is generously given and graoiously accepted, but the best that can be said for it is that it is generally harmless but sometimes helpful. It reminds me very much of the class of remedies called ' patent medicines,' and with due reservations it is best left alone.

I feel it my duty to write a word of warning to the last type I mentioned, 'the scratch player,' especially he who comes to his power early in life. It is but true to say that he frequently spoils a good golfer in the making.

Every professional can give you examples of it. I have personally known many instances. I will illustrate by an example. I was coaching for a short time a young player who was making rapid progress towards the scratch mark, when he had to go away to keep his 'Varsity term. There he came under the influence of a better player, an enthusiast, but with a very distinctive style. Well, when I next saw my pupil his game was in a hopeless state: he was simply torturing himself in attempting to acquire a method that could never in his case give satisfactory results.

And in that case is to be found my reason for objecting to this kind of coaching. I say it quite frankly, because I have come to my opinion through much observation. Amateurs are, with very few exceptions, unduly obsessed with their own methods of playing the shot, and this I hold to be absolutely fatal to the art of coaching.

Another form of coaching adopted is through the printer. An ever-increasing array of books on 'How to do this' and 'How not to do it' seems to be multiplying furiously - a sign, I suppose, that there is a public to buy. Of the literature on the game I have nothing to say. If an acknowledged genius writes a book on 'How he plays,' it is naturally of interest to all sportsmen, and part and parcel of the game's history. I have, however, little to say in favour of text-books on the game; at any rate those which I have seen strike me as being useful in collecting methods and ideas, and harmless if not taken too seriously; but inasmuch as they must obviously give details of several ways of playing, so surely will they confuse the learner as to which system to adopt, creating a bewilderment and indecision that is very difficult to lose.

Read everything certainly, but view what you read from a sensible point of view. Do not regard it as a hypochondriac does the advertisements of quack medicines. Remember the man who wrote the book knows nothing whatever about you. You may be as nimble as a ballet-dancer or as clumsy as a hippopotamus, you may have the 'spring' of a 'Varsity sprinter or about as much as the cinder path itself, it may be mind sans muscle or muscle sans mind. I am led, therefore, to accept the old tradition that you cannot learn games from a book.

This drives me to my last ditch, that the only sensible thing to do if you want advice about this game is to go to your local practitioner. If you have no faith in him, go to a specialist; for I am convinced that he is much more likely to diagnose your case and be of help than any of the forms of coaching I have enumerated.

Some of the more captious of my readers may see in this only an advertisement of the professional services. Apart from the real answer this view cannot hold, for I would respectfully inform them of the fact that more of the professional's hours of coaching result from indulging in amateur instruction than from any other cause.

It must not be taken as my view that I consider all professionals good or even moderately good teachers. I do think, however, that the vast majority of us are well qualified to give first aid, and to cure ordinary ailments like the local practitioner. We have seen so much of it. The worth of a man can be roughly gauged by the fact of his liking or disliking this part of his work. If he can be drawn on to confess that he heartily dislikes coaching, then it is clearly time to ask yourself whether he is the man you need. I am confident that a man who likes his work is the man who gives the best results.

Another opinion I hold, contrary to that of so many golfers, is that the best players are not necessarily the best teachers. This is an accepted truism in many forms of art, but in golf you often hear the really good coach snubbed and his efforts spoken lightly of, because he cannot play like . . .

In this connection it is important to notice that nearly all the professionals have developed their game from boyhood, and discovered how they played it afterwards. Many of our prominent amateurs have adopted the converse method, and it is in a true appreciation of the significance of this fact that the answer to so many golf queries is to be found. I am quite aware that a number of my brother professionals are just as guilty as the amateurs in modelling their pupil's game on their own, but I am convinced that this is not the case with the majority. Let me illustrate what I write by a picture my fancy calls into being. Supposing a visitor from Mars should call one evening on, say, Harry Vardon or J. H. Taylor, and successfully persuading the maid that his business was important, was then shown into the study where the great man was enjoying a quiet smoke after a hard day on the links. The visitor further persuades the Champion to give him a lesson then and there: a club is brought and the visitor told to swing at an imaginary ball on the carpet; he does so and reproduces an exact copy of the Champion when he hits one of his best. I fancy I hear Vardon murmur, ' Ah ! not so bad; I think that will do for now; you seem a trifle quick in shifting your balance forward, and that kink in your back swing is a danger point; however, come down to the links in the morning '; or J. H. T., 'Well, well, there's something to be said for your swing; a trifle snatchy perhaps, and there's a decided tendency to let your body fall back on your heels; but come round to the course in the morning, let's see what happens to the ball.' And the visitor turns up in the morning and hits half a dozen. I feel sure both these champions would undoubtedly say, 'I cannot teach you any way that will give a better result than that. Keep as you are.' Now take another point of view: supposing the visitor produces Taylor's swing to Vardon, and Vardon's swing to Taylor. What will happen at the evening interview? I think a non-committal attitude would be adopted by both, with the same request to come round to the course in the morning; and when they each saw the half-dozen balls whizzing down the straight, I hold both will give exactly the same advice as before.