To any golfer who has been properly brought up it will appear that I have placed the two different forms of golf at the head of this chapter in the wrong order. 'surely,' he will say, 'the man has an ill-regulated mind, or perhaps I am uncharitable and it is a printer's mistake. But the foursome must come first.' Yes, I agree with him, the foursome should come first : it is the older and the better game, but it does not come first-more is the pity-in popularity to-day. And therefore, as this chapter may have a little of the sermon about it, I have put the four-ball match first on purpose, in order the more to emphasise my point.

It is sometimes said by golfers of knowledge and experience that if British amateur golf is for the moment in rather a bad way, it is due to the four-ball match. I am disposed to agree with them. We may be only passing through the transition stage. The older golfers have since the war perhaps grown just too old: the younger ones not steadied down nor come to the plenitude of their powers. Certainly we have in this country a large number of young players who can at times play very fine shots and hit the ball magnificently. They hit it so far and so clean that their elders groan enviously, 'If I could only hit the ball like that, what a game I could play.' They imply that, granted such power, the result produced by the younger men is disappointing. So for the time being it is. On one day or for one round they are unbeatable: the next they are 'all over the place.'They are not to be relied on for a special occasion, as were the great amateurs of some years ago. And, whether or not they are attributable to it, these alternate spasms of brilliancy and futility, this slap-dash golf, are typical of the golf too often to be seen in a four-ball match.

It may be very cogently answered that the four-ball match is the game in America. It is said and, as far as my experience goes, quite truly, that if there are only two men in an American club-house, they will not start out to play a single, but wait for two more to make up a four. Yet the American amateurs are to-day admittedly very good, as they have shown not only in their own tournaments and championships, but when they have been matched against professionals. The four-ball match, it will be said, has not done their golf much harm. To this argument there are, I think, two answers. First, the four-ball is the American amateur's game, but he has also a great deal of hard match practice. He plays in a whole series of tournaments, consisting first of all of a qualifying round by score and then of several rounds of match play. Secondly, he plays his four-ball game in rather a different manner and spirit from the British amateur. He does not have a dash at some breakneck carry and then, if unsuccessful, pick up his ball. His passion for counting his score keeps him pegging steadily away and prevents him from being too dashing. Apart, too, from holing out and keeping his score purely for his own satisfaction, he must often do so by the rules of his game. There are other issues at stake besides the main one: subsidiary matches, wheels within wheels. Very often the match is played on the principle of 'aggregates,' when the hole is decided by the united scores of the two partners on either side. This seems to some of us a rather slow and cumbrous business. It is impossible unless the other people on the course are playing a similar game. For myself I pray devoutly that a wave of aggregation will not come flooding over our courses. But if a four-ball match is to be played, so as not to be detrimental to the player's golf, then I suspect that this plan of aggregates, with its demand for continual care and concentration, represents the least harmful form of it.

It is undeniable that most of us in this country, when we play a four-ball match, enter upon it with pleasantly light hearts, and slash out at our shots accordingly. There is really no reason why we should not play carefully, but as a rule we don't. Probably we often play too quickly because the people behind us are not playing four balls and we have an uncomfortable feeling that we are holding up the course. Moreover, there is a natural instinct to hurry, especially when one is the last of the four to drive off. In the mind's eye one sees the other three as sprinters toeing the mark and chafing for the crack of the pistol.

The effect of the four-ball goes deeper than this. Sometimes we exist in a continual state of pressing : we try to do too much either because our partner is no help to us or, more often, because in our vanity we like to think we are 'carrying' him. At other times we shift all the responsibility on to his shoulders. Neither of these two frames of mind are desirable if we want to prepare for real hard-fought single combats. The second is certainly the worst of the two, since we shall feel suddenly and horribly frightened without our prop to lean on. Even with the best intentions there are moments in a four-ball when it is difficult really to 'sit down to 'a stroke and take pains. For instance, our partner plays a fine long second and lays the ball quite close to the hole-a certain four, and a good chance of a three. It is only human in us to say, with an odd mixture of relief and irritation, 'What's the good of my playing after that one? 'Of course we ought to say, 'Two chances of a three are better than one,'and take as much pains as if our partner were in a bunker-but we don't. We may actually get a three because untautened muscles and a mind void of care will often produce a better shot than the severest concentration. But it does us little good to hit a good shot when we are not trying, and it is of very little use as practice for the occasion on which we shall be trying desperately.

The tactics on the putting green as practised by the average four-ball match player do not help him to cultivate either the art of putting or the art of match playing. There is a conventional procedure which is blindly followed. A. and B. have played the same number of strokes and are about equidistant from the hole. A. who is a little the further off plays first, lays his ball somewhere near the hole, and says, 'I 'll get my four, partner, and then you can go for the three.' B. does go for the three, and how very seldom he gets it! How seldom he even looks like getting it! He has but one idea in his mind, to get past the hole at any cost in order to show that he means well. He gives the ball a bang, sends it six feet past, says perfunctorily, 'sorry, partner,' and picks it up. He has had the satisfaction of feeling rather important because he had, as we may call it, the last word, but he was under no real strain, conscious of no real responsibility. He would have been much more likely to hole if he had only been trying to lie dead and felt it a duty so to do. The best four-ball match players I have seen do not adopt these tactics. Each man plays to a great extent his own game and tries to lie up close to the hole. I believe that these are not only better tactics but have a better general effect on the players'golf.