I have been looking through cuttings from American papers to refresh my memory of some of the holes, and in one from the Chicago Tribune I discovered this pleasing headline: 'Darwin finds Course of Shinne-cock source of wonder.' And so I did. There may now be as good courses in America: I do not know, but I think there are none better in this country : certainly none conceived on a grander and bigger scale unless it be possibly Gleneagles. The National is a hard course to describe in British terms because we have nothing quite like it. In one sense it is a seaside course, for it stands on a sandy spit between the waters of Bull's Head Bay on one side and Peconic Bay on the other, with a distant sight of the Atlantic. The bunkers are as sandy as one would infer from these surroundings, but the turf is not our seaside turf. It is inland turf of a good but not too flattering variety, since the ball lies close to the ground; and there is definite rough as a rule on either side of the fairway. This is not heather nor gorse nor trees, but consists of low and stunted bushes which are, I believe, huckleberry and bayberry bushes. I saw it first of all at the moment of a most lovely sunset with the short American twilight fast coming on, and it is this impression that remains with me most clearly. But it is a wrong impression in this, that it conveys an impression of calm and quietude. The National is not a calm course, because there is generally a fresh wind blowing there, and in this respect it is a better test and a sterner school than are most American courses, however rigorously they are bunkered.

It is a very long and difficult course, calling for power and skill with all clubs, and it is also a beautifully varied course. The work of golfing architects, however skilful, comes as a rule to bear the hall-mark of their individual creators, which is easily recognisable. They lay out so many courses that this is almost inevitable. Mr. Macdonald in laying out the National managed to keep clear of this danger. He appears to have set to work with a wonderfully open mind. It is impossible to say that any particular set of holes is typical of him. There are holes of all schools-plateau greens, punch-bowl greens, greens calling for big carrying shots over big bunkers, greens that are fiercely guarded on each side with a narrow entrance void of trouble-and it is hard to say that one is better than the other.

The holes which are imitated from our own are naturally those that most interest the visitor to begin with. The second, which calls for a high straight wooden-club shot on to the green, has a suggestion and no more of the Sahara at Sandwich.

The third is avowedly founded on the Alps at Prest-vvick, an imitation to which the land naturally lends itself. There is much the same shot down something of a gorge with rough ground upon its sloping sides, and the same blind second to be played over a towering hill. The green, however, has quite a different appearance to the Ayrshire green, since it is only just over the top of the hill, with no long drop down to it. And the feeling of the hole is different, because the American hole is the third and the Scottish hole is the seventeenth, and we go out for a big carry early in a round in a much more jovial spirit than we do so near the end, when a slip may be fatal.

The fourth hole is founded on the North Berwick Redan, and is, I should say, more difficult than its original. At any rate it is a very fine short hole. The other two imitated holes are the seventh, which is the seventeenth at St. Andrews, and the thirteenth, which is the eleventh also at St. Andrews, the famous High Hole coming in. Of these the first is an extraordinarily good copy without being superficially in the least like its prototype. Where at St. Andrews are the black sheds of the stationmaster's garden, there is at the National only a wilderness of rough ground. Where at St. Andrews there is the road with its coming and going and passers-by who stop to see the play, the National has only more rough sandy waste and complete solitude. We cannot think of the St. Andrews hole without the people and the houses, just beginning to close in near the green, and here are no houses and no people. Again, as in the case of the Alps, the American hole is a little less terrifying for not being the seventeenth. If we insist on pitching our third shot, like the obdurate Taylor, instead of running up, perhaps by easy stages, on to the narrow little plateau green 'perched up between the devil and the deep sea,'we may very likely run over into the hazard that corresponds to the road and lose the hole; but there are eleven holes left instead of only one in which to retrieve the error. Yet as far as a copy can be perfect, this one is, barring perhaps something of the hardness and pace of the St. Andrews turf.

It is just this impossibility of getting exactly the same quality and speed of turf which makes the thirteenth at the National seem decidedly unlike the High Hole. Strath and the Shell bunker and the rest are all there to a fraction of an inch, but the green is a little softer and greener and the ball does not go bounding over into the Eden so relentlessly. Besides, there is here one quite definite difference. Some people urge it as a reproach against the St. Andrews hole that there is nothing directly in the way between tee and flag, and that the hole can be played with a wooden putter. It may be so, though personally I have never seen it done. It certainly may be said, however, that by a judicious 'scuffle' from the tee with no higher ambition in view than a four, calamity should be avoided. This cannot be done at the National, where there is a water hazard in front of the tee and the ball must be played into the air. Nevertheless by reason of the slower green it is, I think, the easier hole of the two.

There are many other holes that come back to my mind and seem to clamour for description. There is a really cruel short hole for example, the sixth, where the hole is cut in a little tiny islet of safety shaped something like a horseshoe. If you stay in the horseshoe, well and good. If you do not, the green slopes everywhere away from the flag towards a surrounding bunker. The tee shot is only a pitch with the niblick, but what a nervous one! There is the Cape hole too, the fourteenth if I remember rightly, with the green almost jutting into the waters of Bull's Head Bay. I once described it as a little 'meretricious,' and perhaps it is not so classical and so sound as the rest, but wonderfully fascinating.

Finally, there is one of the very best home holes I have ever seen, that gives one no rest and does not let one play a nice safe otiose game even if one is dormy one up and the enemy is in a bunker. First, there is the tee shot with a bunker on the left and 'tiger country' on the right: then the second to be slashed over a big cross-bunker: then the run up on to a wavy green and the awful possibility of running over into space. What a hole and what a round, but what a good lunch one gets after it is all over!