I have dealt with faults in general, and I now come to particular faults, and first of all to those which beset the driver. Of these the first and most elementary is doubtless that of topping; to the beginner it is the most dreadful of all, but to the seasoned golfer not nearly so terrible as several others. Topping implies that the ball is struck upon the top, but the term is also loosely used to describe any method of striking that causes the ball to run along the ground when the striker desires it to soar into the air. Of topping proper there is not a great deal to say. We top the ball when for some reason - perhaps we are stiff or cold or nervous - we do not get properly down to it; or again because we take the eye off too soon. An attack does not often last very long, and as a rule all that is needed to arrest its ravages are patience, care, and concentration. Mr. Everard has instanced a golfer who 'teed his ball in a hole ' so as to compel himself to get down to it. Without resorting to such heroic measures as this, a low tee will sometimes induce greater carefulness, and, further, it will be well to make sure of looking at the side of the ball rather than at the top of it.

The ball may run along the ground with equal obstinacy when hit in one or two other and quite different ways. It may be struck far back off the heel of the club. In that case the player may be standing too close to his ball, or he may be standing at the proper distance, but with his weight too far forward on his toes, so that he falls in on the ball as he hits. Conceivably he is falling in because he is standing too far away, but this is by far the most unlikely hypothesis of the three. Also, he may be cutting with his club across the ball, a vice to be dealt with later when we come to slicing.

Again, the player may hit the ball in the middle of the club, and that without hitting only its extreme scalp, and yet it may cling obstinately to the turf. In this case he is in grip of the ghastly disease known as foundering, far commoner, save with the quite rudimentary, than topping, and far more difficult to cure. It is a disease worthy of the deepest study, since it is an absolute bar to all timing, and, as regards results at any rate, is very closely allied to slicing.

Foundering hardly needs description, for nearly every one has suffered. It consists, roughly speaking, in letting the body come forward too far and too soon as the club comes down. The result is that the hands come down before the club head, and when the club head does ultimately arrive it is with its face turned downwards on the ball. The inevitable result is that the ball is driven right into the ground with a heavy 'dunt.' In aggravated cases it never leaves the ground again; in the milder ones it ricochets and executes a low and scuttling flight with a tendency to swerve to the right. Though occasionally effective when there are no bunkers in the way and a strong head wind, this method is but a miserable travesty of driving and bound to be disastrous in the end.

The mischief, as a rule, is too deeply seated for the simple remedy of holding the body resolutely back. Your true founderer begins his error at a much earlier stage of the swing: I speak as one partially reformed, yet always liable to fall back into bad old ways. There is generally a perceptible jump about his back swing: he does not keep his head by any means rigidly still, and there is a decided and ominous lift of the club as it nears the top of the swing. The swing starts well enough: the wrists and body begin by turning properly. Then, when the club has gone about halfway up, comes the straying from virtue. It is so much easier to pick up the club straight than to go on turning, and so up goes the club with a jerk, up go head and body with it, and at the top of the swing everything is out of gear: the player's head is too high in the air, so is the head of his club, so are his right shoulder and his right elbow; the left wrist is not sufficiently under the shaft and the twist of the body is very imperfect. Then there is an inevitable plunge forward of the body, and the club comes down far too vertically, first on to the ball and thence into the ground.

The prime fault is then to be found, as it nearly always is, in the method of taking up the club. Hence the remedy lies in taking the club back properly, especially in preventing the head - the player's, not the club's - from moving upwards, and in taking greater trouble to see that the turning movement of the body is rigidly executed. To this end 'slow back ' should not be forgotten, because the quicker the back swing, the easier it is to get into a habit of shirking the body-turn; the vice of hurrying is a most valuable ally to that of foundering. It may also be useful to curb the right hand rather severely for a while, and see that it is not allowed to take charge of the back swing. The body, however, is the real enemy. If it can only be compelled to turn truly and freely, the fear of foundering should never be a very grave one.

From this point I can pass naturally to slicing, a term loosely used to signify the striking of the ball in such a way that it flies in a more or less pronounced curve to the right. Now this hideous result can be produced, like that of topping, in several different ways. To founder is not to slice, in the most accurate sense of the word, but the consequences are often much the same. Since in a foundered shot the hands come down in front of the club head, there is a natural tendency to push the ball out to the right. Moreover, since the turn of the body was not properly completed and the right shoulder has never got far enough round, there is also a decided tendency to cut across the ball from right to left. The habitual founderer's club, after plunging down into the earth, leaves a tell-tale mark upon the turf. Let him examine this mark carefully, and he will see that it does not point straight on the line whereon he meant to hit the ball, but palpably from right to left. So the man who is persistently hitting his ball to the right should always consider whether his disease is not in fact foundering in its milder form. If it is, he has the remedy I have endeavoured to describe.