Some years ago now, before the war, I saw a friend of mine starting out to play a rather curious match. He was to play one-handed against the better ball of two opponents and to concede the odds of a stroke a hole. Not unnaturally the game took some time. I had left the club-house before it was over. Soon afterwards the hero of it left for India, and I have not seen him since. I am told that he is coming home this year, and the first question I am going to ask him when we meet is whether he won that match. At any rate his two adversaries could not complain of his lack of generosity, for I have never before or since heard of handicapping on quite so prodigal a scale.

As a general rule it is otherwise. In the immense majority of games, judging by results, the giver of odds is not liberal enough. We have only to look at the records of match-play tournaments under handicap, especially at those of the Calcutta Cup and the Jubilee Vase at St. Andrews, to see how often the players who are handicapped at scratch or better, come through triumphant. In these days of strikes and revolutions it is remarkable that the downtrodden thousands with handicaps in double figures, have not asked for more and got it. They are either very easily dragooned or else a false pride prevents them from acknowledging that they are generally beaten. Perhaps they think that they ought to win if only they played what they are pleased to call their game. But in fact they don't play it, and they don't win.

It is probable that until the receiver of points receives palpably and absurdly too much, he will always have something the worst of it, because he will be to some extent crushed and overawed when he comes up against a golfer of a much higher class than himself. To be left far behind in point of length has a disturbing effect on all but the very level-headed. The stroke to be received seems to dwindle away to nothing. Yet of what enormous value is one stroke. I have played delightful matches against a distinguished naval officer who is neither very young nor very long but of an admirable steadiness. On the course where we play there is a large number of what are called two-shot holes-that is to say, holes such as I pretend to myself that I can do in four. My opponent with his first drive just clears the bunker from the tee: with his second he is comfortably short of the bunker guarding the green : with his third he is on the green and he is a good putter. If I have to give him a stroke-and I give him too many-the outlook at these holes is a cheerless one for, whatever I pretend, I am by no means good enough to do them all in fours. It is only at the really long holes, or at the short ones when there are some nice deep bunkers, that I begin to pluck up hope against that terrible sailor. If all who receive strokes cut their coat according to their cloth, so judiciously and methodically, what a lot more matches they would win.

If the receiver of odds often grows frightened and regards his allowance as a mere drop in the ocean, there is also another form of fright that afflicts him at times. His strokes appear so numerous that he begins to reflect how foolish he will look if he cannot win with them. With a player in this mood, it is very nearly true that the more strokes you give him the more easily you will beat him. A little while ago there was a discussion on the handicapping question between two players, neither of them very good, of whom A. should officially have given B. about a third or a half. A. was contending that people did not give enough strokes : B. hotly denied it. 'Very well,'said A., 'if you will play on the course I choose I will give you two strokes a hole.' The match was made for a considerable stake. A., knowing that his one hope lay in the complete paralysis of B., took him to a course of steep hills and thick heather. Paralysis duly set in: B. topped his drives into the heather and could not get out again. He lost his match and his money, and has resolutely declined ever to play golf again.

I am sometimes inclined to wonder whether the receiver of points did not fare better when there was no pretence that handicapping was an exact science. Golfers either played level or, if odds must clearly be given, then they were given on broad general lines -four strokes as a minimum, and more usually a third or a half. The receiver would not accept charity in small doles or odd amounts, the giver thought shame to be too niggardly and huckstering. To-day everything is systematic, and the better player gives three-quarters of the difference between the two handicaps and no more. If every one were rightly handicapped and the system were perfect, it would be all very well. As it is the giver of odds gets the best of it, unless he be one of those whose small vanities are treated sympathetically by committees and of whom it has been said that it costs them a hundred a year to remain scratch players.

It is often said that three-quarters of the difference is not a sufficient allowance. Sometimes it is and sometimes it is not, and there will always be an insuperable difficulty in having a hard and fast rule for all sorts of courses. At Westward Ho !, for example, to take one of the hardest of all courses, it is generally not enough, and some years ago when a tournament was played there with the full difference in strokes given, the givers had none the worst of it. At Ranelagh, to take the opposite extreme, it would probably be too much. On a great many inland courses which are not very long or very difficult, it ought to be quite sufficient. Even so much depends on the season and the state of the course. Heavy ground will favour the stronger player. When winter comes, for instance, and the ball sits very close to the ground and declines to run, I am not nearly so frightened of that naval friend of mine. He may then be sometimes seen sadly practising, under the erroneous impression that he is out of form, When the ground is hard and dry in summer and two-shot holes degenerate into what the late Mr. 'Teddy 'Buckland called ' a kick and a spit,' the giving of strokes is hard work. The better player's hopes rest no longer on his length but rather on his power, if he has it, of making the ball stop on the keen, hard green. I do not know that there is any reliable remedy for this state of things as regards players who casually make up a match and do not know each other's games, but those who play habitually together need not be hidebound by rules and the rough and ready labels that are called handicaps. They can make their own matches best by the light of their own experience. If I know, by the half-crown test, that X. can give me a third, I am not going to be so foolish as to play him at four strokes because some old gentlemen sitting in a committee room have labelled him 'scratch 'and me 'five.'