In regard to iron play there has been a change in nomenclature. 'Three-quarter shots,"half shots,'even our old and trusted friend 'wrist shot,'seem to be disappearing from the language and everything is some sort of 'push shot.' There never was a less expressive phrase invented. The shot is admirable but its name is futile. There has, however, been more than a change of name. We were taught that the iron club should come not only downward on the ball but across it. The ball was to be pitched in this manner to the left of the hole and would break a little to the right. The talk was then of 'cut'; now we speak of 'back spin.' The modern professional comes down on the ball with his iron club but he does not cut across the line of flight. His club goes straight on. The ball when it pitches bites the ground, more especially at the second bound; but it too goes straight on and does not break to the right.

Another change which is due largely to the nature of the modern ball is the multiplicity of iron clubs used for approaching. Our teachers used to make us, as far as they could, use few clubs and learn to use them in a variety of ways. To get a dead fall by the use of a much lofted club was held up to us as rather a confession of weakness. The lofted club was a difficult and dangerous weapon, since the least fraction of mis-hitting, higher or lower on the face, might make so much difference. To-day everybody does a great deal of his pitching with a niblick or a mashie-niblick with a much lofted face. It is so difficult to make the heavy little ball stop on the green, that there is no other way out of it. The best pitcher in the world, J. H. Taylor, now carries a mashie-niblick and uses it for the shorter pitching shots. I do not think he likes doing it, but he does it. When such a master finds it necessary, there cannot be much doubt what other people have got to do. Once approaching was done with the 'ordinary iron.' That was supplemented by the mashie, and now we have one and sometimes a whole hybrid collection of mashie-niblicks. It seems rather a pity from an artistic point of view, but it cannot be helped. We must blame the ingenious Air. Haskell and his successors.

There has been a very great deal of good advice given about putting in the last thirty years or so, some of it new, some of it true, some of it possibly both; but it would be difficult to say that the general doctrines preached as to the art are conspicuously different from what they were. The only statement that could be called even mildly revolutionary was that in Willie Park's excellent little book, recently published, to the effect that he found it easiest to hook a putt into the hole. But he does not insist upon his readers making life more complicated for themselves by trying to do likewise.

There is perhaps a more general opinion, or at any rate a more openly avowed one, that the main part of the work of hitting should be done with the right hand. Willie Park is very strong on this point: so is Jack White, and so was Mr. Walter Travis. In earlier works we were rather told to putt with our wrists and find out for ourselves the proportions in which the work should be divided between the two hands. Mr. Everard indeed held that at short range flexion of the wrist should cease, and I think that Mr. Hilton, who putted very well by the light of nature most of his life and came to the study of it in-let us say-middle age, is now a believer in the stiff left wrist. Of putting, however, more obviously than of any other part of the game, it is true that it can be done effectively in a good many different ways, and we are always likely to have divergent gospels on the subject.

Whatever other changes there have been we have still a few commandments of our golfing youth still unassailed. No one has yet ventured to say anything against 'slow back 'and 'Keep your eye on the ball.' Obedience to the first is a matter of degree. Duncan is now an enthusiastic believer in it, but his method of obeying it is not, if he will allow me to say so, one for general imitation. 'Keep your eye on the ball' is on the other hand, as Sir Walter Simpson would say, a 'categorical imperative.'It is difficult to obey, but that is our fault and not the fault of the commandment. If there is a golfer who looks too hard at the ball, he has so far successfully concealed his crime.