I have used the word chop, but I recognise that herein lurks some danger of a misunderstanding, because the art of chopping rather implies that the chopper should stand well over the choppee, as the executioner might stand over his victim. Now, with the niblick experience shows that this will not do. The player must stand well away behind his ball, preferably with rather an open stance and having the ball opposite his left foot; he may also keep the right shoulder down and the left shoulder up, an attitude which seems natural to one about to perform the action of heaving or hoisting.

PLAYING AN 'EXPLOSIVE' SHOT OUT OF HEAVY SAND

PLAYING AN 'EXPLOSIVE' SHOT OUT OF HEAVY SAND.

[To face p. 108.

AN EXPLOSIVE' SHOT WELL OUT ON TO THE GREEN

AN EXPLOSIVE' SHOT WELL OUT ON TO THE GREEN.

[To face p. 109.

Little more can usefully be added to this description of the volcanic shot, as it has been called; practice must do the rest. It must not be imagined, however, that this shot is only to be employed when the ball lies more or less heavy. It is generally to be used, however well and cleanly the ball may lie, whenever the cliff of the bunker is so near that any stroke wherein the club hits the ball and not the sand would fail to make it rise sufficiently abruptly. Indeed, whenever the cliff is anything but exceedingly low and there are desperate circumstances to call for desperate measures, it is by far the safest shot for any one, save the expert, to employ. Even if the ball lie clean and the cliff of the bunker is a negligible quantity, this stroke may be infinitely useful. It sometimes happens that a ball lies in a bunker, and yet is but a few yards from the hole, so that the player's object is to make the ball just pitch out of the bunker, and fall as dead as possible on alighting. To hit the ball itself, however cleanly and accurately, will impart a certain amount of run, but the explosive stroke, skilfully played with a nice judgment of the amount of sand to be taken, can be made to drop the ball as dead as a stone. It may be worth while to add, as a special word of caution, that for some mysterious reason the cleaner the ball lies the more difficult it is to keep the eye upon a spot behind it instead of on the ball itself. Indeed, it is not unusual to hear a man who has made the saddest mess of a niblick shot attribute his failure to the fact that his ball lay too well in the bunker - a confession of weakness, it is true, but of a very common and human weakness.

However, all bunkers are not close to the green; more often than not the player would like to hit the ball out as far as he possibly can, and then a clean-lying ball represents a direct intervention of Providence, to be taken the fullest advantage of. Much must, of course, depend on the proximity and steepness of the face; that has already been emphasised; and so for our present purpose it may be assumed that the face will not interfere with a fairly low-flying ball, and the player may take almost any club he has a mind to. Account should be taken of the exact circumstances: it may be wise to take no risks at all, or things may have come to such a desperate pass, that the only hope lies in taking a big risk and the only club that will reach the green. There is just this to be added on this point of tactics: before making his decision the player might well put the question to himself, 'Which is the more likely, that I should successfully reach the green with the longer club or that, having played short, I should either lay the ball dead with my pitch or hole a long putt? '

I propose to leave out of the question the taking of brasseys and cleeks; these heroic expedients are not for the elementary student, who may lay it down as a sound rule of conduct that the straight-faced or driving-iron is the most ambitious club that he should ever employ in a bunker, however tempting the lie. To hit a long shot out of sand is not an easy thing to do; only a slight inaccuracy will mar the stroke, and much confidence is required; wherefore, if the player is in any real doubt between two clubs, he will do well to take the more lofted of the two, since a lofted face is a great begetter of courage. There is really more to be said about these tactical considerations than about the stroke itself. As to the latter, what is there to say in effect save that the player should apply his mind to swinging easily, and to keeping his eye upon the ball with a greater ferocity than usual, should that be possible.

Yet maybe something special ought to be said about a stroke which is more often and more hopelessly foozled by the amateur than any other, the little chipping shot whereby the clean-lying ball is flicked out of a bunker for quite a short distance. This is a stroke over which nearly every professional has a wonderful mastery, playing it indeed so easily and so surely as to make one think that it cannot really be very difficult, if the player can but take his courage in both hands. That is what is wanted above all other qualities - courage, for the shot, though a delicate one, must be played firmly and crisply. Mr. Maxwell, indeed, has a wonderful way of stroking the ball gently out of a bunker, which his admirers call, I believe, his 'pussy-cat' stroke, but it is a stroke of genius not to be attempted by ordinary people; with them the least tendency towards too great gentleness of hitting ends invariably in the most ignominious fluff. This last is an onomatopoeic word requiring surely no explanation ! The professional plays the shot, as he plays all his pitches, with cut, and he plays it beautifully; but laying this for a moment on one side, there is much to be done by taking a sufficiently lofted club and keeping the eye on the ball. There is a dreadful temptation, more acute than in any other stroke, to lift the body in the act of striking the ball, and it must be resisted to the death. I have once been given, as a 'tip' for the curing of this habit, the advice to keep the weight well forward on the left foot. Very likely there is something in it, as there is in many other tips, if it is not overdone; but if the weight is to be kept forward, then the ball must be very well forward too; otherwise the player will be apt to bring his club down upon the top of the ball, with results too painful to describe.

Finally, since all balls that he in bunkers cannot be put into one of two hard and fast categories, there is the ball that lies betwixt and between - not perfectly clean and yet not really heavy. From such lies as these the most surprising things are apt to occur. 'Great heavens, I never thought it would come out as clean as that,' cries the astonished victim as the ball flies like an arrow from the [bow into impenetrable whins some fifty yards beyond the hole. The distance is in fact very difficult to regulate, and it is equally easy either to go too far or, by means of a feeble fluffy blow, to go not nearly far enough. So many and different may be the circumstances that only one definite piece of advice can be given, that is, the shot should be played with a heavy club. A light niblick may be of some service, though not so good as a heavy one, for the volcanic shot, and also for flicking away the ball that lies quite clean, but when anything in the nature of a half-shot is required it is practically useless. The least little bit of intervening sand will take all the firmness out of the shot, and a deliberate firmness is here essential.

In addition to bunkers there are hazards of such infinite variety, that it is only possible to indicate the more common, such as whins, bent grass, and rushes. With these may be classed heather, although it has been expressly decided that heather is not a hazard, and unpleasantly long grass. As to these last two, however, save that the victim will have the advantage of grounding his club, his predicament will be every whit as painful and his method of extracting himself to all intents and purposes the same.

There are degrees in the badness of a He even in the spiky heart of a whin bush, but as regards all the substances before enumerated, when the ball has embedded itself therein with a genuine malignity, there is little for it but the ' common thud '; that is on the assumption that the advice to keep some control over the temper is superfluous. As in the case of a bunker, the first great object is to get out, and to take any club but a niblick is the height of folly, unless success is reasonably certain. The club, too, must be held very firmly, for it is terribly apt to twist in the hand, and it is worth while remarking that, more especially out of the long thick grass, there is a natural tendency to hook, for which some slight allowance may wisely be made. In all these cases a great deal must depend on whether or no the player can take a free and untrammelled back swing; very often he must adapt his swing to the circumstances, and sometimes it will pay him to take the line of least resistance, playing out in a direction which is not the most eminently desirable, but is the only one allowing of a free back swing.

As regards heather, when the ball lies reasonably well a wooden club, preferably a spoon, is sometimes more effective than an iron one. The roots of the heather seem to wind themselves round the iron head and impede it, whereas the wooden club slides more easily and smoothly over them, and so reaches the ball with its velocity unimpaired. There is no heather more trying or tenacious than that at Ashdown Forest, yet Rowe, the professional there, will nearly always take his spoon in preference to an iron, and very wonderful strokes he makes with it. It cannot be denied, however, that some assurance is needed for the stroke - more perhaps than the rudimentary player is likely to have for some time.

Water is a hazard from which the ball can be played, though the modern fashion of heavy non-floating balls seems likely to make the art of so doing extinct. It is an art in which I am afraid I must confess myself to be one of the blind leading the blind, and that not merely as a figure of speech, but because I always play the stroke with my eyes shut and the most lamentable consequences. It is a sad thing to be afraid of a splash, but it is that fear which makes the stroke so difficult for most of us. We flinch so palpably that we really stop hitting before we get to the water at all: the club goes limply into the water and stays there; there is no vestige of follow-though, such as shall pick the ball up and out; we merely emulate the oarsman who catches a crab. There is really no reason why the ball should not come out, if we can keep our eyes open without flinching. To this I may add on good authority that nearly everybody is inclined to take far too much water behind the ball. So let the club nip in behind, but only just behind, the ball, keep the eyes wide open, and don't shy at the water like a horse at a traction-engine. How I wish I could do these things myself!