As regards the fault of hurrying, it is perhaps more fatally easy to fall into it while playing a half-shot than in any other stroke. When the player is taking a full swing, the fact of his taking the club over his shoulder seems to make a natural pause - infinitesi-mally small of course - and to give the club breathing space before it comes down again. But when the club does not, if I may so express it, have the trouble of turning the corner of the shoulder, there seems no reason why it should not come down again as quickly as ever it can, and it generally does come down like a misdirected flash of lightning. Yet the iron shot ought to be a particularly leisurely performance; the club head should be given plenty of time, and the cultivation of a tiny pause at the top of the swing has already been recommended. The combination of these two faults, hurrying and not standing still, produces the obvious result, mistiming; the bad iron player's hands and body are perennially coming down in front of the club head.

Having so far talked in rather general terms, I must deal specifically with the most horribly specific of all golfing diseases, the socketing of iron shots. It spares neither high nor low, for even champions are occasionally attacked, and while it lasts it reduces the victim to a condition of hopeless paralysis. There is practically no limit to the eccentricities of which a ball is capable when struck from the extreme heel of the club. The utter feeling of helplessness too, the knowledge that nothing can prevent the catastrophe, must be suffered to be understood. If any one has never been thus afflicted he had better skip this part of the chapter. I should be sorry to think that I had put the bare idea of such a disaster into his head.

The first thing to do when attacked is to try ordinary remedies. The socketer is nearly always taking his club back much too fast and also taking his eye off the ball. If these general hints fail to help him, he must try something more specific. The socketer may be taking the club too much in to himself, and then pushing too much outwards with an excessive use of the right hand. This is an explanation of the disease that has often been given. Occasionally it fits the case, but I believe it in most cases to be misleading. I think that it is much commoner to take the club too far out to the right and then to bring it down too much to the left with the hands in front, the heel being thus the first part of the club to reach the ball. More often than not, therefore, the socketer ought really to take the club well in to himself, the arms thus getting plenty of support from the body, and further to verify once again the turning movement of the wrists. I believe I have cured one of the most persistent of socketers that ever lived by making him, after years of nagging, turn his wrists over sufficiently in taking back the club.

Socketing may occasionally proceed from too free a use of the wrist, from making the stroke, in fact, that which it ought not to be, a pure wrist stroke. I remember once to have been severely stricken down when trying some fantastically abrupt lofting shots in a garden. I got gradually into the habit of picking up the club very abruptly with nothing but a flick of the wrist. For a while I accomplished some wonderful feats, but after that a veil may be drawn over my sufferings. However, in this instance, once the cause is discovered, the remedy is not very difficult to apply.

When all is said, probably the best cure is one that may be called a catchword cure, of which I believe Mr. Charles Hutchings to be the inventor. I have often quoted it before, elsewhere, but make no apology for doing so again here. It is, 'Take the club right through with the right hand.' It is contrary to many respectable doctrines; the exact reason of its effectiveness is difficult to explain. I will not argue: I only say confidently, ' Try it.'

The subject of putting has already been so voluminously treated in an earlier chapter that I hesitate to say much more about it. What is the most common form of collapse upon the putting green? It is not, as a rule, that the victim is for ever hitting his ball too much to the right or left of the hole - a disease that would be reasonably amenable to analysis. No, he usually suffers from a general incapacity to strike the ball. It is impossible to prescribe at large in such cases. Patience, courage, a capacity for blotting out previous tragedies from the mind - these are the chief requisites for recovery.

There is one particular symptom that is often noticeable in those suffering from this temporary paralysis upon the green. They have a great difficulty in using their wrists with sufficient freedom, or indeed in aggravated cases in using them at all; the ball is struck with a stiff, hesitating push of the whole arm. This is not uncommon with the very best of golfers. Harry Vardon, when he has one of his off-days on the green, seems to get his right wrist absolutely locked, so that it will only move with a stiff uneven little jerk. That which makes it the more difficult to deal with is that this is a purely mental, and not a physical disability. When there is no ball there, or it is of no moment what happens to the ball, the victim can move his wrists backwards and forwards as if they formed part of a well-oiled machine. I know of no definite remedy. There is nothing for it but to try with might and main to stand steady and force the wrists, and the wrists alone, to move, but it is uphill work. It has already been suggested that the position of the feet is of some importance, and that it is easy for a player to deviate unconsciously from his normal and comfortable stance. Therefore it is sometimes profitable to abandon the wrists temporarily as hopeless, and devote all the attention to reacquiring a comfortable stance, in the hope that the wrists will then behave themselves of their own free will.

Apart from this general futility of hitting, there are at least two big definite faults in putting. The player may move his body forward with or, worse still, in front of the club head, or he may take the club back crooked. As to the former, there have been very good putters who had a suspicion of this body movement. The late Mr. F. G. Tait, who was as good a putter as he was a bold one, had a trace of it in his style; as Mr. Low describes it, he brought the club through "on a piece," head, shaft, and hands all going forward together, a manner due partly perhaps to the fact that he putted with a noticeably lofted cleek. Mr. Maxwell, too, as a rule a very excellent putter, seems to let his body go forward a little, but he has rather a curious style, with a fierce grip of the club and a wrist so stiff that one may be allowed, for the benefit of the less talented, to term it unorthodox. Generally speaking, however, body movement is strongly to be deprecated, and the man who is conscious of the tendency should try to restrain it, though this is easier said than done.

The fault of taking the club back crooked admits of a subdivision, for it may be taken back either inwards or outwards, to the left of the proper line or to the right of it. The 'pinching' of the club inwards is often credited with being the commonest fault in putting, and it is at any rate alarmingly common. A ball struck in this way constantly flatters only to deceive; it appears to be making straight for the hole, arrives almost at the lip, and then swerves away to the left-hand side. Mr. Everard tells us that Jamie Anderson, one of the best and most famous of putters, never lost sight of this besetting error, and eliminated it by making allowance for it; but to make the right amount of allowance for such an error and no more is the very deuce and all. I have only heard of one specific remedy, which was imparted to me by one of the most deadly wielders of the putting cleek, Mr. D. F. Ranson. He declared that he had never suffered since he had taken to turning his right foot rather inwards. Such a stance does, I think, have the effect of making the club go out well away from the body; the fear is lest it should be too effective, and drive the player into the opposite extreme.

In the opposite form of error the club is not only taken out too much to the right; as a rule it also describes in its course through the air a peculiar pattern resembling a pig's tail. The result is that the club cuts across the ball, which is pushed feebly out to the right of the hole. The fault is particularly characteristic of those who hold the club as in a vice and putt with too stiff a wrist. A greater freedom of wrist affords the best hope of reformation.

And now, having gone through the various faults and remedies, I end with one last solemn exhortation. As soon as the cure has effected its purpose, put it temporarily out of mind. A cure unduly persisted in invariably becomes a fault in itself.