Mr. Ouimet was then only about twenty years old. Before the Amateur Championship at Garden City some fortnight earlier he had hardly been known out of Boston. It was a tremendous test for him to have to stand up to these two professional giants in single combat and play shot for shot against them. I suppose that nobody would have been much surprised if he had failed to play his game, and the thought uppermost in the minds of most competent critics when the game started was not so much 'Will he win?' as 'Will he make a real fight of it?'

I am not going to describe the game hole by hole, but this particular question was soon answered, so calmly did Mr. Ouimet play, so clearly had he got command of his muscles in the putting, so well did he keep up with his adversaries in the long game. At the third hole he outdrove both Ray and Vardon, had to watch them play fine, straight, long second shots on to the green, and then played a still better one himself. At that point he and Vardon were level and Ray, who took three putts, a stroke behind. The next two holes gave Mr. Ouimet a chance of breaking down, and he showed that he had no intention of doing so. At the fourth he pushed out his tee shot into the edge of the rough, played a good shot out of it, and resolutely holed a missable putt for his four. At the fifth he put his second shot with a brassy out of bounds, and there was something of a gasp and a groan from the crowd. He dropped another ball, played a magnificent shot, and got a five. Neither of the other two could quite get a four and a dangerous moment was safely past. At the sixth Vardon holed a putt for three, at the seventh Ray did so : Mr. Ouimet stuck to his fours, and at the eighth he too got a three by laying a pitch stone-dead amid delirious cheering. Ray holed a long putt for three here too, and all three were now equal. All got their fives at the long and perilous ninth and were all square at the turn.

Next came the tenth, the little 'island 'hole I described. All three were on the green, which was very soft and muddy. Vardon and Ray both had to putt over the holes in the green which their balls had made before jumping backwards. Both were some way short, and both needed three putts. Mr. Ouimet's ball was very muddy, but he got down in his two putts and took the lead. It was a critical moment, and after it he never let his lead go. At the twelfth he was two up. At the thirteenth Vardon got one back with a good pitch and putt. It seemed that some one must make a bad mistake soon, so hot was the pace, and it turned out to be Ray. He was bunkered at the fifteenth, took two to get out and was four strokes behind Mr. Ouimet. There was an end of him, but Vardon was still only one behind and he had the honour to the sixteenth, a not very easy short hole. He played a beauty to within six yards -a nasty one to go after, but Mr. Ouimet followed it well. He got his three and Vardon could do no better. Mr. Ouimet one stroke up on Vardon with two holes to play.

The seventeenth settled it. Vardon, realising that desperate measures were necessary, tried a short cut straight for the hole and was trapped. He could do no better than five. Mr. Ouimet steered his tee shot perfectly to the right of the hazard, and with his second lay six yards from the hole.

It was a downhill putt on a fast green. He might not, one thought, put it dead. He did better, for he hit the ball perfectly truly and perfectly gently; it went trickling on and in and, just as on the day before at this same spot, there burst forth a shout of pure joy. It was all over now unless Mr. Ouimet fell down dead, for he had a lead of three strokes. He had the best of the drives to the last hole, and so had what must have been a trying wait. Ray put his second on the green: Vardon from a heavy lie went into the bunker. There was a pause, a clearing away of the crowd, and a practice swing with his iron by Mr. Ouimet. Bang went the ball-a perfect shot over the bunker from the moment it left the club. That ended it. He got his four easily, beat Vardon by five shots and Ray by six, and was swallowed up in the great cheering crowd.

There never was a better illustration of the fact that golfers can, as a rule, only play as well as their adversaries will let them. People at home thought that Ray and Vardon must have played badly to be beaten by so many strokes. They did play below their form on the second day of the Championship when they should not, I suppose, have allowed any one to catch them; but in the tie match they did nothing of the sort. Vardon certainly played very well indeed till the last two holes, when he lost some strokes in the natural and proper endeavour to make a spurt. Ray played well for the first fourteen holes, and if he failed then the pace was really tremendous. Mr. Ouimet's 72 in that weather and on that muddy course was just about as good a single round as ever was played. I thought then and I think now that it would have beaten anybody.

When I came back from America after seeing that memorable battle there were two questions which I was asked by all my golfing acquaintances. The first was, 'What is Ouimet like? 'the second, 'What is the National Golf Links like? 'The first I have endeavoured to answer, and Mr. Ouimet has answered it himself by coming here, as we all hope he will again. As the National Golf Links cannot be brought here, and as it is one of the two or three finest courses I have ever seen, I will try to answer the second question now.

When Mr. C. B. Macdonald first laid out the course, there were the wildest rumours here as to its nature. It was said that precise measurements had been taken of the eighteen best holes on British courses and that their eighteen exact counterparts had been built up on a flat plain somewhere in Long Island. This is very far from being the truth. The ground is not a flat and featureless expanse, but rich in bold undulations and natural features, and there are in fact only four holes there-or perhaps we may allow five-which are in any sense copied from British originals. Of these five only two are really close copies, and though they are both fine holes and the architecture has been extremely skilful, I think most people are agreed that the best holes on the course are not these copies but those which owe their merits only to the nature of the ground and the unfettered genius of Mr. Macdonald.