By J. Sherlock

There must be no confusion on one point. This article is written from the point of view of a professional golfer, who quite expects that a considerable number of his brethren will emphatically disagree with many of the opinions expressed; some will hardly consider the opinions worth expressing; and others still will never know that any such opinions have ever been expressed. The various moods that led me to accept the editor's kind invitation I cannot explain. That I was duly warned of my peril I must admit, for, as a facetious friend of mine reminded me - 'to be intelligible is to be found out.' Besides, I knew quite well that acceptance would land me in the worst bunker I was ever in in my life.

Well, what follows is the point of view of a golfer who has learnt his golf on a mud heap. And such mud! To describe it adequately is out of the question, and besides would serve no purpose, but I warrant that most of my brethren have little or no idea what it means to play under like conditions. In winter you slipped and slithered about as in a swamp, and it was quite the normal condition to return to the club-house, after a round, partially hidden by dabs of mud. In summer what little grass there was disappeared, and the black soil baked so hard that if you dipped for a shot the least bit too much, the shock made the club shake and vibrate so that you looked anxiously at the shaft to see if it were broken; whilst in the grass season you had a jungle, and at most times the worms so numerous and busy, that to get a lie through the green where you had not got to account for one of their monuments of industry was almost impossible.

Such was my practice-ground and home course. I seldom got a chance to play on any other, except when I attended one of the few professional tournaments or took a golfing holiday. Yet I claim for the mud heap that it meant a training that should not be despised, and had advantages peculiarly its own.

I am fully aware that this opinion clashes with that of a distinguished writer whose inimitable articles on the game I look forward to week after week. He holds that to be a master, your inception of the game must have been where the sand is under the turf, and the wind blows the salt of the sea in your face; but surely for proof of this he must wait. The inlander has had so short a time in which to 'arrive.' Why, even as recently as when the writer himself was collecting Blues at his University - and he is still in the young forties - inland courses could be counted in tens.

My claim is based on a very simple fact. If you have to master such conditions you can only do so by acquiring the habit of accurate hitting, and 'you 'ave to 'ave the 'abit or you 'd lose.'

The 'not quite timing 'em ' sort of shot is no good whatever, for the margin of error is almost at vanishing point: slovenly methods do not pay, forcing methods mean disaster, clean true hitting is the only way.

The Open Champion came once and we played an exhibition match. I did not appreciate what he meant at the time, but I do now. 'Jimmy,' he said, 'I know what you feel, but you take it from me, if you can play golf here you can play anywhere.'

It must not be imagined that I love this dirty kind of golf, and fail to appreciate the flavour of the sea and the sand dunes. Far from it; and perhaps it was not the critic's dictum but the artist underneath creeping through. Anyhow, as an inlander I must protest against even the artistic point of view when it asks too much and tends to discouragement.