Mr. Darwin asks me to say a little about my own game, and I will go back as far as the time when I first started to swing an ancient wooden club on the old links in Aberdeen. In those days any one could play free of charge ; now I believe there is a fee of threepence per round. We were better off than, say, the North Berwick or St. Andrews boys for the reason that we had plenty of space. We could learn to drive without interfering with any one playing a round, and we were always driving. As a matter of fact a wooden club was the only club I had for three or four years. Then I was fortunate enough to be given an old-fashioned mid-iron which I used when hanging around the club-house waiting for a caddying job. Here the ground was dead flat, and I got into the way of knocking the ball down. We had about six holes, the longest about thirty yards, and we would play for hours at them for pennies.

I must have played quite a time with my left hand below the right, and I was a very ordinary player then, but one day I received a lecture from a very good player which I took to heart. I changed my grip to the orthodox one, and very soon showed great promise. Like a lot more of my countrymen I crossed the Border. I 've been back often since, though not for very long at a time. My game when I came south nineteen years ago had three main characteristics : hitting the ball down as often as I could, hitting it hard, and taking about forty-two putts per round. I may add that I would 'go up in the air 'at any moment. I was not so likely to have a fight with myself when I had a flesh-and-blood opponent. My trouble was medal play, in which I often got annoyed when everything was not going just right, and so beat myself. In those days I had a half-finger, half-palm grip, an open stance and a flat swing. I could hit the ball further than I do now. My grip was stronger on account of my holding the club more in the palm, and my swing was more powerful : it was a flat one, and so there was more pivoting. And another thing perhaps made me longer then. I had not the experience to realise that half a dozen times off the line meant the loss of a few shots in the course of a round. I was always prepared to go on to the tee and try to knock the ball as far as I possibly could, but this will not do. If you will carefully watch golfers of experience, you will see that every now and again they pull out an extra twenty-five yards when it is required ; at the other holes they are hitting well within themselves. All this kind of knowledge only comes with experience.

My first sight of the cracks was when I took a day off and went to Hoylake to see the Championship of 1902, which Sandy Herd won, using a Haskell ball. I had heard so much of Vardon, Braid, Taylor, and Herd that I went straight away and found Vardon.

I must say he made a great impression on me, as he played in so totally different a manner from any one I had ever seen: I mean in regard to his style. Up to then I had never seen any one able to balance himself with a swing as upright as Vardon's, and he did it so easily. There was no slogging about it: just perfect timing.

I was anxious to see how my brother Scots were doing ; so I went after Braid, whom I found crashing into a 'gutty.' His caddie besides carrying a bag of clubs carried a box of balls. It appeared that Jimmy hit them so hard that he had them out of shape in a few holes. It was Braid's hard hitting that appealed to me more than anything in his game. Next I found J. H. Taylor playing with Tommy Renouf, and I certainly liked his style. Like Vardon he got to the green by the 'All air route,'and this was the great difference between the Scottish and English methods of playing. I saw Sandy Herd win with a ball of which the inside rubber could be seen ; but though it was nearly split in half it was an easier ball with which to get the figures for the holes than a brand-new 'gutty.'

I came away from that Championship with lots of hopes, and at the same time convinced that my methods were not so good as I had thought they were. First of all I had to learn to make my ball do more of its work in the air. Then all these champions, with the exception of that year's winner, adopted the overlapping grip. I had to learn that, and it so happened that this was made easier for me by the accident of my sticking a gouge half-way into the centre of my left hand. With this grip it took me at least six months to hit a ball without cut on it. With the adoption of the new grip my swing had become more upright; my left wrist was consequently more under the shaft at the top, and I was keeping the ball in the air all right, but it did not stay there long enough. I gradually-it really took years-got rid of all the cut, but it was not until I adopted a square stance that I got back to my place on the course from the tee.

My next two lessons were from Mr. Hilton, who advised me to take a practice swing before playing a shot. I certainly was not in the habit of wasting much time. Indeed one gentleman said of me, 'Duncan won't miss his train through his putting.'Mr. Hilton also advised me to keep my body still when I was putting, and to emphasise his good advice he instanced Jimmy Braid, pointing out that he used to sway his body in the days when he couldn't putt, but had become a good putter since keeping his body still. His putting 'tip' I learned inside three years, but it took me until last year-that is to say about fifteen years-to carry out his first bit of advice.

During the Championship which Taylor won at Deal in 1909 I was staying with Vardon, and I happened to ask him what chances he had. He reckoned that if he struck a patch of decent putting he would have a chance, and he also said that I played too quickly to win. And he was quite right; but what he really meant, though he wouldn't say it, was that I would never win a championship until I became a lot more stable. All the same, two 8o's on one day and 'one under fours 'on the next do not say much for my stability yet. He was a wise man who said, 'It was not my good play that won, it was my opponent's bad play.'