The moral is that we must look out for bad habits even in the youngest golfers. When we find them we must be very sparing in our good advice, for a boy has a facility for exaggeration. One whom I know well was waving his mashie round his head like a driver. I insinuated that this was too long a swing, and the next moment he was taking the club no further back than a putter and giving the ball nothing but a little poke or prod. If you tell him to be less like an eel, he stiffens up into a statue : if you as much as whisper 'follow-through,' he spins twice round after his stroke like a hammer-thrower. Therefore though we may have to say the same thing many times, we must not say it at too frequent intervals, and must rather understate our case.

What we have to say will generally be in the nature of a restriction. A grown-up beginner may be urged to greater freedom. Not so, as a rule, a boy. He is lissom and fearless enough; his errors will nearly always tend towards a swing too long and florid: a body movement that is too free. And however loose and slashing his style we dare only check it ever so slightly, because really to cramp him would be fatal. The best of young golfers have some wild oats that they must sow. I remember once, on a tour of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society in Lancashire, that an undergraduate member of our side played against Mr. John Ball. He played a very good, sound, steady game, going very straight and taking plenty of pains, making no outrageous errors and no great shots. Mr. Ball's verdict (he does not often give one, but it is worth hearing when he does) was that he 'did not like to see a youngster too careful.' And so, let us beware lest the boy's game becomes lifeless: let him take his wooden club and go gallantly for the impossible carry: he has plenty of time in which to learn to play short.

Besides this pusillanimous wisdom, which children to begin with will do better without, grown-up golfers have also many tiresome habits which children will do better without both now and for all eternity. Of such are the habits of waggling or of growing fussy over the slightest sound or movement in the neighbourhood. The natural child has only the most rudimentary waggle, if any, and he swings the club with only too little thought of any one being near him, so as to be in fact rather dangerous. Soon, however, he adopts the grown-up weaknesses, has many and ornate waggles, looks angrily out of the tail of his eye at some object moving in the distance, and peremptorily orders his own mother not to talk on the stroke. In this case, if we cannot set a good example we can at least try to counteract the effect of a bad one, and there is a good deal to be done by not too unkind laughter. The professional's play makes an excellent object lesson. It is hard work taking a child to see a professional match : it is necessary to run like a lamplighter in order that the small, eager person may be squeezed into the front rank, but it is worth doing. The rapidity of the play makes a deep impression, and the child is an imitative animal. The game of pretending is one to be played conscientiously, and no one can enact the part of a champion with any degree of artistic satisfaction if he fidget and waggle overmuch.

I always think that the watching and copying of a good model is more vital to education in iron play than in any other part of the game. A good driving style seems to come more easily and naturally to a boy 'agile as a young opossum.' Driving with its dash and go is, besides, the most superficially fascinating part of the game, and he will be more inclined to take pains to acquire it. Iron play is not so attractive to the young. It does not give so much scope for the boast that clamours for recognition-'Look how far I hit that one ! Look, oh do look !'

There is or should be a certain restraint about it. Restraint is unnatural in the young player, and the stroke which is perhaps the crown of the golfer's skill, the half-iron shot, is not quite a natural one and demands more control of the club than any other. It is in the iron shots that the professional and the 'professionally moulded 'amateur, as he has been called, is most unmistakably recognisable. Let others strive as they will, they cannot acquire that formidable, downward thrust of the club that sends the ball and the divot flying. So let our hypothetical boy be encouraged, above everything else, to watch good iron play and to observe wherein its merits lie. He must not, it is true, try to run before he can walk. The first thing to do is to learn to hit a straight forward shot simply and truly. But, I think, granted the good model, the sequence of his shots may largely be left to nature. The more masterful, punching iron shots will come naturally with the growing strength of hand and wrist.

As to the form which a boy's games should take, if a boy is keen enough to enjoy it-and he generally is-I doubt if there is anything better for him than playing by himself. He must play some matches, of course, and that if possible with a rival of his own age. This will not only break him into match-playing : it will, as the saying is, 'keep him in his proper place.' There is nobody whose company is in the long run so salutary for us as a contemporary, for he stands no nonsense from us. Elders grant us little indulgences if only in the matter of losing our tempers and throwing our clubs about, which we come to expect as a right. An occasional match then, but otherwise the solitary round is excellent, for the boy will not grow slack over it as the grownup would do. If he misses a particular shot he will try it over and over again till he gets it right. When he comes home, the account that he gives of his score will probably be inaccurate. The most honest little boys are often bad counters, but at worst this is a very lovable weakness and will disappear too soon.

If there be a grown-up good-natured enough to sacrifice himself, it is a good plan for him and the boy to play a solitary ball between them as if in a foursome. In the summer evenings at Felixstowe my father and I used to play one ball thus for a whole round of nine holes. I don't think we had any imaginary foe-it was before the days of Bogey-but we counted our score. I can still recall the thrill when we did the nine holes in 56, though it does not sound a very good score to-day. Those rounds made the culminating joy of the day, and I hope it is not even now too late to express my gratitude for them.

This form of game will of course be excellent practice for a real foursome. A family foursome is very good fun, granted an empty course, so that there is not that paralysing sensation of people waiting behind us. So is an inter-family foursome, though in this case the feeling may run almost too high. One word of advice may be given to the elders in a family foursome, and that is that they observe, to a reasonable degree at any rate, the rigour of the game. I would not have them too relentless. For instance, I have known a foursome, in which some of the players are very young, played under the rule that 'air shots do not count.'Perhaps this is immoral, but it is disheartening to the son to walk after a long tee shot of the father's, miss the globe himself, and then stand aside for another vast paternal drive. It must seem to him that he is not getting his money's worth. In the case of a complete miss, then, some relaxation may be allowable so long as there is a definitely understood rule on the point, and not merely an occasional concession from motives of pity. On the other hand, into whatever bunker or other horribly bad place the ball finds its way, there it should be played. It seems cruel to insist on a small creature of ten struggling with a patch of rushes that would test Braid and his heaviest niblick. There is a natural temptation to bid the young player lift into some lie rather less hopeless, both because we are sorry for him and because we want to get on a little faster. But not only is this unwise, but to the credit of the young be it said, it is unpopular. They like to play the strict game, and twelve strokes or so per hole do not strike them in the light of a tragedy nor even as a weariness of the flesh. Twelve is only two over an average of tens, and on a long course tens take some getting.

I have written hitherto about real children, the eight and nine and ten year olds, because so many children have to-day the chance of beginning very young, and the younger the better. But I think most of what I have said is applicable also to older children, to the fourteens and fifteens. Certainly a boy of fourteen, generally a most hero-worshipping age at a public school, should be encouraged to observe good players as much as he can, and if he is a strong, well-grown boy he should soon be a good player himself. We have lately seen young Bocatzou, the French boy of fourteen, playing with Abe Mitchell on his own course, and that in a competition, and finishing in one round within three strokes of the great man. Young Tommy Morris was Open Champion at seventeen; America is full of infant prodigies of fifteen and sixteen. There are heaps of Bobby Joneses in embryo. There is no reason why a boy of sixteen with good opportunities should not be a very good golfer. When I hear a boy of that age remarked on by his adoring relations as wonderful because he has a handicap of eight or nine, I feel inclined to be thoroughly crabbed and unpleasant and say he ought to have a much lower one. Of course he will still have a great deal to learn, but he ought to be able to hit the ball in a way that may be ignorant but is the despair of many of his elders. He will not know enough to know what is the matter with him when he is 'off,' and generally he will have a good deal of hard thinking about the game before him if he is to make the best of himself as a golfer. Some young players play very well by instinct till they come to the almost inevitable thinking stage: then they lose confidence and never quite get over it. Others will not be bothered to think and remain instinctive players all their lives, good, but not so good as they might have been, with some weak joints in their harness. Perhaps they are the happier ones and the wiser. There is certainly such a thing as thinking too much about golf for our general well-being. But it is certain that nobody, young or old, will make the best of himself as a golfer if he does not think hard about the game and think intelligently. Whether it is worth the golfer's while to do so is a matter of taste and temperament which only he can decide.