Of perfectly orthodox seaside courses I gave two examples in Sandwich and St. Andrews. They represent two very different types, the course of big hills and valleys and the superficially open course of less pronounced but as a rule more subtle difficulties. Occasionally one course may be said to belong to both types. At Prestwick the older holes nearer the club-house offer us tall hills and little secret dells, and perhaps the biggest and most alarming cross-bunker in the world, the Cardinal. As soon as we have crossed the highest of the hills, the Himalaya range at the fifth hole, and until we cross it again at the eleventh, we are in a different kind of country altogether, flatter and having no imposing features, though a sufficiency of difficulties. As a rule, however, and speaking very generally, a course tends definitely towards one type or the other.

These two types often make different impressions according to the golfer's standard of play. To the rather rudimentary player who is never free from fear of the common top, the courses of big hills are at once most exciting and most terrible. The penalties that await him in the face of the hill are so dreadful that every time he gets safely over he thrills anew. 'Fear is the strong passion,'he says with Mr. Malthus in 'The Suicide Club.' 'It is with fear that you must trifle if you would taste the intensest joys of living.' To the good player, who may top now and again but does not seriously consider the risk, the hills are sometimes neither alarming nor interesting. They hide the object at which he aims and so deprive him of an exquisite and artistic pleasure, that of seeing exactly where he has to pitch the ball and of seeing his ball pitch there. So at least he says, and no doubt it is largely true. But I think that the superior person makes too little both of the fear and the pleasure produced in his breast by the big hill. In a scoring round, at any rate, the hill gets something of its own back, for the best of players may top, and the thought of this possibility comes into their heads by some odd chance just when they are waiting on a tee in front of a frowning mountain. There are some such shots as to which no one ever has the hardihood to deny that he is glad when they are safely over. Such, before the hole was altered, was the tee shot to the Maiden at Sandwich, against a wind and from the St. George's tee. There was just cause for a sigh of relief when the ball flew over that black-boarded precipice. It was a heart-warming sight, and indeed a ball high in the air over a mountain top against a blue sky is a beautiful thing to see, and I do not think that we grow quite so blase and tired of it as we often pretend.

For these courses of hills and valleys, 'jolly ' seems to me the right word. Sandwich, Formby, Burnham in Somerset, Newcastle in County Down -here are names that at once occur, and these courses produce a jovial spirit, the spirit of playing golf for fun, which makes us go for tremendous carries, go out for a third round in the evening when we are too old and shall be tired next day : makes us even consent to play a four-ball match, though in saner moments we know we don't like it and can't do it.

Now the flatter and more open courses where the difficulties are less obvious I always imagine as being rather more severe and business-like. Hoy-lake, for instance, has something of St. Andrews about it. There is apparently not much in the way: it looks almost uninteresting, but we have to keep so straight and play so many of our shots just right if we are to get the right figure at the hole. The ground is hard too, though it has grown softer of late, and seems to kick our ball unkindly away from the green unless it is very truly struck. The undulations are not kindly, charitable ones, as they are in the courses of dells and hollows. Everybody would not agree, I know. Some very good players find Hoylake dull: many very bad ones say that it is both dull and easy. And to the bad ones it may be comparatively easy. There is not much trouble straight in front of their noses: they can trundle the ball along and get a good many fives. Indeed we can all do that to some extent: it is the fours that want getting. And then again Hoylake seems particularly business-like to me because I have always gone there not for a free and easy game, but for a match, very often a match against a terrible opponent. Certainly there has been no lack of jollity about the dinners after the matches, and I love to get back to Hoylake even though I am a little frightened of it.

Rye has a good deal of the atmosphere of Sandwich and yet it is not the same. There is the same charming, peaceful old town with grass growing amongst the cobbles in the streets : the same sleepy friendliness, and the same lack of bustle and time-sheets and starters: there are also tall sandhills. But while at Sandwich the hills seem to be everywhere and we wind in and out amongst them, at Rye there is a single chain of them and we do not play over it but skirt it, seeing it for the most part as a menace on our flank. Our actual strokes are played in barer, more open and, as it seems to me, more cruel country.

I have given some instances of seaside courses. Now let us take the inland courses and their different species. There is what we may call the field course with hedges and ditches and a tree or two and usually a clay soil: it is not so frequently found as it used to be since golfers have grown more particular. There is the park course and the down course : the course of sand and heather to be found in wonderful profusion and excellence round London: the course of sand without heather which is rather different: the course on a common, inclined to be moribund though often very pleasant, with its clumps of gorse, and absence of artificial bunkers. Finally, we might almost say that there were Colt courses and Fowler courses, for the hands of these two illustrious architects are stretched out over the whole countryside, and their handiwork is easily recognisable.