All day long Duncan had been having just a very little the worst of it. He had been chasing Mitchell, catching him up by a spurt and then seeing him go away again. With but nine holes left Mitchell seemed to have got away once and for all, for he was three up. Then with the wind blowing strongly on his back he began to slice : back came the three holes till the match was square with two to play. At the seventeenth, Duncan was home in two with the loveliest of spoon shots: Mitchell was away in rough to the left and ultimately by no means dead in four. Duncan had two for the hole. His tail was up and it was all Lombard Street to a China orange that he got his four and made himself dormy one. If he did that it was almost certain that he would play the last hole with triumphant accuracy and win the match. His first putt was not a good one: he dragged the ball to the left of the hole and was not quite dead. Mitchell must have thought his putt for five rather a forlorn hope, but still he took plenty of trouble and holed it manfully. And poor Duncan just missed his short putt and did not make himself dormy. To have been pursuing all day, to have the quarry at last in your grasp and then let it slip-this is the hardest thing to bear at golf. The whole situation changed in a flash. Duncan pushed his drive out into the heather and could do no better than a five. Mitchell, made his own man again by his reprieve, played the hole with perfect confidence and won it and the match. I said that golf was a cruel game. In that match it was at its cruellest.

The finishes of team matches can be painfully exciting, the more so since there is here little chance of indifference mercifully to numb the spectators' emotions. We must be praying for one side or the other and suffer the more. In the Amateur International Match there were two thrilling finishes in 1903 and in 1910, the years in which England won. I should add that Scotland won as a rule, and that easily. In 1910, at Hoy lake, everything depended on Mr. C. V. L. Hooman, then an Oxford undergraduate, keeping a short lead against Mr. Edward Blackwell, and very gallantly he kept it to the end. In 1903 the match was all square and there remained the last hole at Muirfield to be played by the last couple, Mr. C. E. Dick of Scotland and Mr. G. F. Smith of England. It was a desperate moment, the more so because that last hole with its big cross-bunker took a good deal of reaching, and Mr. George Smith, though a truly admirable golfer, was not a very long driver. Both tee shots were on the course and Mr. Smith had to play the odd, a full bang with a wooden club. It was a very full bang, and there must have been an extra crease or two, I think, in that highly respectable black coat in which he always played golf; but he stood as firm and hit as truly as ever. Up came the ball, over the bunker but only just over and safely on the green; Mr. Dick retorted with an equally good cleek shot. The balls were almost equidistant from the hole and Mr. Dick had to play the odd. He had been putting magnificently. He seemed to take an age over that putt, though I daresay it was really only a few seconds, and then hit the ball rather more than half-way to the hole. Mr. Smith put his dead, or rather, since there is no dead on such an occasion, he put it very close. Mr. Dick made a great effort to retrieve his first error and just failed: Mr. Smith, sedate and methodical as ever, popped his ball in and England won. It was a great finish, the more so because patriotic feeling always runs so high on Scottish courses. In the circumstances

Mr. Smith's was as fine a last hole as I ever saw.

The University Match has produced some last holes to curdle the blood. 1920 was a desperate affair, the more so because poor despised Cambridge was not supposed to have the slightest hope. And then gradually it dawned on us in the second round that they had a chance, a real chance, a glorious chance. The occasion proved almost too much for the players, and there were some wonderful last holes. Mr. Walls of Cambridge was dormy one on Mr. Mellor of Oxford. If he won Cambridge won. Mr. Mellor completely missed his second to the home hole and did not even reach the bunker. 'O sweet, O lovely Walls,'we whispered, slightly emending the language of Pyramus and Thisbe. 'Anything in the air will do now.' But the ball did not go into the air. It went straight along the ground into the bunker. It stayed there for a little but it got out at last: Mr. Mellor hit a shot off the shank of his mashie and did other singular things, and ultimately won the hole in six to seven. Off they went to the thirty-seventh hole, and there came to the home hole Mr. Morris of Cambridge and Mr. Gurney of Oxford. Here the parts were reversed. Oxford went along the floor into the bunker. Cambridge missed more heroically and completely and stayed short. The sequel differed, however, for Mr. Morris then rose to the occasion and laid his pitch within six inches of the hole. It was too much for Mr. Gurney, as well it might be, and just as Cambridge broke into delirious cheering, a faint, echo came from the far-away first hole. Mr. Walls had won at the thirty-seventh and Cambridge had won by six matches to three. Nunc dimittis!

A wonderful finish was that in 1911 at Rye when Oxford won. Here it all depended on the last couple (poor devils, it always does), Mr. Marzetti of Cambridge and Mr. Wakefield of Oxford. There are few more alarming holes to play in a crisis than the eighteenth at Rye. First there is a carry over a big and towering bunker, and then a second shot down a comparatively narrow neck with perdition below the green to the right and a chance of breaking the club-house windows on the left. The situation was this, that Mr. Wakefield had only to halve this hole to win the match for Oxford. Both had good tee shots and Mr. Marzetti played the odd, a sound enough shot in the circumstances but a little hooked, and the ball lay in the hummocky ground to the left of the green. Mr. Wakefield pushed his right out. Over the bank it went and plunged down the precipice into the wilderness of sand and ruts and bents below. Mr. Marzetti might not get a four, but, thought Cambridge, 'a five will do, for that poor young man will never get up the hill again.' Mr. Wakefield's ball lay clear but on a slightly hanging lie. To pitch up was very difficult, and if he did pitch up he would certainly run over. He did the one possible thing: took a straight-faced iron and banged the ball hard into the bank. Up spouted the ball, cleared the crest, and lay within six feet of the hole. It was a blow that could not be parried-a shot so deadly that it seemed in the moment of bitterness to be a fluke, but if I ever thought so I now recant and apologise.