When dealing with the elementary principles of the driving swing, the position of the feet was dismissed in rather cavalier fashion. It must, however, be faced, and with it the golfer is confronted with a question which, if not acutely controversial, is at any rate one of opinion. To the earnest student of golf it may not be uninteresting to trace, very shortly, the changes both in teaching and in actual practice which have taken place on this one point. In 1890 the author of the Badminton volume laid down the law dogmatically thus: that supposing an imaginary line to be drawn from the player's left toe parallel with the line on which he intended to drive, his right toe should be some three inches in rear of that line. In common golfing language he was to stand with his right foot behind his left. This theory the author justified in three ways: by deductions from first principles, by referring to the older golfing manuals of Mr. Chambers and Mr. Forgan, and by pointing to the example of the great majority of good players of that date.1 After that there arose a race of fine players nearly all of whom acted in direct opposition to these tenets, by standing more or less ' open,'

1 It may be noted, as giving a hint of some previous changes of opinion in more ancient times, that at this same date Sir Walter Simpson speaks of the style recommended both by himself and Mr. Hutchinson as the new as opposed to the old style.

that is to say, having the right foot in advance of the imaginary line. One may quote as conspicuous instances, Mr. Ball, who had previously been regarded as the exception that proved the rule, Mr. Hilton, Mr. F. G. Tait, J. H. Taylor and Harry Vardon, and of a rather younger generation Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Graham, three of whom have in print upheld the open stance as the best. With these forcible examples before them, the golfing world, always an imitative and easily influenced one, largely threw off its allegiance to its pristine teachers and adopted an open stance, sometimes with benefit to itself, sometimes probably with disastrous results. To-day the pendulum has swung slightly back again. From an experience in watching golf during the last few years which, though certainly not peculiar, is at any rate extensive, I should say that the greater number of good players still stand slightly but perceptibly open, and that very few indeed have the right foot actually behind the left. On the other hand, Taylor, who perhaps afforded the most conspicuous example of the open stance, has, I think, his right foot further back than in his early days, and Braid, the most notable player of the last few years, stands, and has recommended others to stand, ' square,' that is to say with neither foot perceptibly in front of the other.

When all is said and done, it must be to a considerable extent a matter of individual preference. If any man feels a strong natural predilection for any particular stance, not grotesquely exaggerated, can only feel comfortable in that stance, and is reasonably successful with it, he will probably be ill-advised to change it. Most of us, however, are not reasonably successful, and therefore one may sum up the arguments for the different methods and indicate as judicially as possible one's own conclusion.

The teachers of the older school said shortly this: that to have the right foot in rear of the left helps the player to take the club well out away from his body, and so obtain a bigger flatter sweep of the club. They carried the war into the enemy's country by adding that the open stance had a tendency, by reason of the more vertical taking up of the club, to check the swing, and produce that most hideous of all diseases, slicing. The argument of the other side was briefly this: that the player with his right foot in advance was better able to see where he was going, and so could aim better; that he could follow through more easily and with less effort; and that he had, generally, more control over himself and his club.

To the arguers on both sides one may say, in the words of the conciliatory innkeeper in Silas Marner, ' The truth lies atween you; you 're both right and both wrong, as I allays say.'

There is, for instance, no doubt that the old stance, as I will call it, does let the arms, and so the club, go further out from the body, and when a golfer gets into a cramped and confined method of hitting, as will sometimes happen, the remedy of putting the right foot an inch or two further back is at least worth a respectful trial. But - and here is the rub - it may be gravely questioned whether the doctrine that the arms should go as far as possible out from the body is a sound one at all. We have seen that with nearly all good drivers the club head is not taken away for any distance in a straight line behind the ball. If it were, the arras would of course go with it, right out and away from the body. But since we have agreed that the club is to be taken very decidedly inwards, it follows that the arms go inwards too, and, save in the sense that the swing must be free and not cramped, they do not go out from the body at all. Nothing is more noticeable about the driving of the modern professionals than the fact that they keep their arms quite close to the body. It is a free style, of course, splendidly free, but it is a wonderfully compact style too. And this look of compactness is due, I fancy, to the arms never straying far away from the body. Taylor is the most noticeable of all in this direction, with that right elbow of his never leaving his side - a principle on which he lays great stress; but Taylor is not really the best example, because he is an abnormal player with an abnormal wrist and forearm. What other player could finish with his hands tucked away in the pit of his stomach, and yet hit the ball perfectly straight and hideously far? Look rather among the young players, at Duncan, as free and slashing a hitter as can be, and see how well into himself he keeps his arms. Look among the older men, at Harry Vardon, upon whom, with certain obvious differences, Duncan has clearly modelled his style; there is the same beautiful compactness. Sherlock, again, a player in some ways sui generis, lets the right elbow slide noticeably round his back; his arms certainly do not go out from the body in the sense in which the words are used in the Badminton. One would hardly tell a beginner deliberately to keep his arms close to his body, or at any rate to do so would be to incur a grave responsibility, with the possibility of cramping him for life. One might rather compromise by telling him to avoid swinging wildly with the arms. At any rate, having regard to the weight of modern teaching and example, one would not tell him deliberately to take the club out from his body, and, that being so, the chief argument for the right foot back goes by the board. One or two further arguments against this attitude may be adduced. For one, it is for most people a difficult position in which to aim straight; and for another, the fact of having to reach out over the left foot produces a tendency to stooping, as any one can discover by personal experiment. Again, it is an attitude which lends itself perhaps more fatally than almost any other to exaggeration: the right foot is apt to creep back and back till the golfer, who started by aiming towards long-on, will end by trying to hit to square leg. When the position is in the very least degree exaggerated, the player can only follow through in the desired direction by wrenching round his shoulders with a palpable effort. Even among very good players who stand with the right foot noticeably far back, I have noticed the tendency to a forced and ungainly twist of the shoulders.