Every golfer is at times out of form, either generally or particularly, as regards some one club or stroke. Even the rawest beginner will fall at times perceptibly below his necessarily humble standard, and as surely as he does, so surely will he begin to inquire, ' What is he doing wrong? ' This moment, at which the inquiring instinct first dawns in his infant mind, is a very important one, because on his ability to inquire in a reasonable manner, and to prevent himself from inquiring too much, his future happiness will very largely depend. He may grow either into a rational and intelligent person, or into a miserable, restless style-hunter, flying madly from theory to theory, never settling down to anything worthy of the name of golf.

On this subject the late Sir Walter Simpson was at once the most brilliantly amusing and the most hopelessly depressing of all writers. He analysed with a pitiless and wonderful penetration all the insane fancies that golfers imagine themselves to carry hidden in the innermost recesses of their poor vain little minds. As I read the Art of Golf I give to every other word a personal application; I feel as if I were in church - one miserable little being against whom the preacher is directly thundering, regardless of all the rest of the congregation. As an exponent of those follies to be avoided Sir Walter is unsurpassable, but he gives little positive help. His gospel is one of gloom, almost of despair. ' Aim more carefully'; that is the one piece of advice that he gives, as if he had a genuine belief in it. Nothing else matters: we may imagine vain things, but we all come to miss the ball at last.

Now this will not entirely satisfy the enthusiastic golfer: he wants a policy more constructive and more cheerful. At the same time, one of the most valuable pieces of knowledge in the curing of golfing ailments is the knowledge of what to avoid, and one of the things most carefully to be avoided is any undue precipitation in diagnosis. The golfer who is at the very threshold of his career as such should be particularly careful. He is not to go a-hunting after the will o' the wisp of some new trick or ' tip '; he is not to think too much about what he is doing wrong. He will for some time have his hands full in trying to do rightly what he has been taught. With him the action of hitting a golf-ball is still such a new and unaccustomed one that he is bound, in the nature of things, to have many failures. It does not follow, because he hit the ball last time and did not hit it this time, that he has therefore fallen into some definable error.

The more advanced golfer, to whom this chapter is more particularly addressed, ought likewise to be in no hurry to discover and remedy faults. I have heard a good player say of himself that he was playing well because 'he did not mind making a bad shot.' He accepted the bad shot, if it came, as something that must occasionally and inevitably happen, and did not bother himself as to why it had happened, or whether it was going to happen again. That is primarily the frame of mind to be cultivated. An occasional mistake is to be disregarded altogether, and even a considerable series is best dealt with at first by the policy of 'Aim more carefully.' It is wonderful how often it is successful. Under this policy of careful aiming I include two or three other things: the time-honoured maxims, for example, of 'slow back,' 'Don't press,' and 'Keep your eye on the ball.' They are so valuable, for the reason that, unlike some other remedies, they cannot do much harm even if they do but little good.

This is a treatment that is peculiarly applicable to a breakdown that is general rather than particular. Either because he has lost confidence or is out of practice, or for one of fifty other possible reasons, the golfer may be playing more or less badly with all his clubs. In such a case it is fairly clear that he has neither the requisite time nor intelligence to think out reasons and remedies to fit all his mishaps. If he tries to do so, he must almost inevitably go from bad to worse. It is essentially a case for what has been called 'general treatment.' Similarly, although he may only be 'off it' as regards one particular club, his disease may be of a purely general kind. If he hook his first drive, slice his second, top his third and follow this with a series of sclaffs, the inference is that there is no one remedy of so all-embracing a character as to cure him straightway of all his diseases at once. It is a case for patient, painstaking plodding, and for discarding from the mind everything except the most elementary theories. All the misfortunes above mentioned, and many more also, may come from his hitting far too hard or from his never looking at his ball. It is almost inconceivable that they can come from any minor and more recondite cause, and the victim ought to treat himself after the manner of a general practitioner rather than a specialist.

On the other hand, it may often be that he is continuously making the same kind of mistake and no other; all his drives may be hooked or every ball hit from the extreme socket of the iron. After this has gone on for some time he may be allowed the luxury of a more particular diagnosis. It is probable that some one thing is amiss, and there is at least a hope that some one remedy will put the matter right.

Now, in this search for faults and remedies there appears to me to be one particularly important rule: Go for the big things and let the little ones look after themselves. There is an enormous variety of minor faults, but they may all be divided into a comparatively small number of big classes. The thing to do, if possible, is to locate the fault only so far as to place it in one of the big classes. Sometimes, of course, some very slight alteration of stance or swing - a toe turned out here or there, a new twiddle added to or subtracted from the waggle - may inspire confidence and so work wonders. But this, after all, is a great piece of luck. It will not happen often, and the man who spends his time hunting for just the right, inspiring twiddle may have a weary quest of it.