In the first five months of 1903 the American people shipped 40,000 dozen of their balls to this country. So were the tables turned. Now they ship very few indeed, as we make our balls ourselves. Instead, they are threatening American golfers as to what will happen if they catch them playing on American courses with British balls. Of the little ball that was thought out over the dinner table in Ohio on those hot summer evenings there are now half a million used in a week in the busy season on British courses, and some fifteen millions, at a cost of about a million pounds, in the course of the season!

But yet not one man in a thousand who looks upon his beautiful white rubber core when it is new knows what and how much is inside it. In one ball there are 192 yards of thread, the whole of which is stretched to eight times its original length, so that, as it is in the ball, there are 1536 yards of it - nearly a mile. This thread has to be wound round something. It has commonly been wound round a tiny piece of wood; now, in the case of some balls, it is being wound round little bags of gelatine and things like that. Some people are under the delusion that in the case of such balls the whole centre is gelatine, and that there is no rubber.

VII

The man who has the courage to enter upon a medal round or a match with a keen opponent and play with a cheap, or cheaper, ball, is a rarity, and an admirable one. Faith goes for a long way in these matters. Give a man the most expensive ball on the market to play with, and he feels that he has got something which will do justice to his capabilities, and occasionally let him off with light penalties for some of his errors. Let him have a cheap ball and he is uneasy, with the idea that nothing is likely to go right for him. When he has faith in his ball - his expensive ball - he plays accordingly, that is to say, he plays with confidence, and the probabilities are, of course, that in such case he will play better than he would otherwise do, especially if he makes a good start. If he has not so much faith in his ball - because it is cheap - he will not play so well, because he will play without confidence. This is really a truism which is emphasised over and over again on the links every day. As this player cannot test his balls accurately and show for a certainty which one is better than others, he has naturally faith in the more expensive, because it ought to be better, whether it is or not. So one comes quite logically to the conclusion that the most expensive balls are the best. Now suppose that the makers of any of our leading brands of florin balls were at this stage to reduce the price of their specialities to a shilling each. What would be the attitude of these golfers to that ball ? They would say to themselves, or suspect, that these makers were taking something out of the quality of their wares, and if they suspected that, they would almost certainly find innumerable happenings in their next match, which in their opinion would give the utmost possible support to their theory. Every drive that fell short of the proper standard would be put down to the makers of the ball; this really very funny golfer would shake his head and say that it was a great pity, and so forth, but that he would have to give up this shilling ball, of which at two shillings he was so very fond. And he would do it. But all the time there may not be a particle of difference between the old two-shilling ball and the new shilling one.

Once again one is tempted to the fancy that there is a good future for a reasonably good ball to be sold at five shillings. It would not be a popular ball, because there is a large proportion of players to whom this one would at last be too expensive; but all who could afford to play with it by making some little sacrifice, such as by cycling to the links instead of going by train, by carrying their own clubs two or three times a week instead of employing a caddie, or, simpler still, by reducing the weekly or monthly allowance for domestic purposes to the lady of the household because of the hard times, would certainly do so. And as the rich golfers would play with it also, it would have a good sale, and if it cost no more to make than the florin balls it would be very profitable to the manufacturers. All the ordinary golfers would play well with it. They would feel that they had the very best, that at last they could do themselves justice. They would have confidence. Queer world this of golf!

VIII

"The course is black with parsons," was said one fine Monday at the outset of his game by a man who had been kept waiting for a most unconscionable time while a minor canon and a plain vicar had been worrying away in bunkers on opposite sides of the first short hole. In this observation there was some evident exaggeration, but it is being borne in upon us every day how more and more popular is this diversion becoming with the cloth, as indeed it should and might be expected to be, since golf makes its greatest appeal to those of the most thoughtful and philosophical temperaments, such as clergymen should possess. Excellent is this association, and it is a poor and threadbare humour that is constantly fancying the cleric in such exasperation with his game that ordinary modes of expression are insufficient for him. Having heard of the worthy divine who was horribly bunkered and in a heel-mark at the Redan at North Berwick, to whom the most excellent of caddies, "big" Crawford observed, "Noo, gin an aith wad relieve ye, dinna mind me"; and of the other one who was reported as repeating the Athanasian Creed at the bottom of "Hell" - the bunker of that name on the St. Andrews course - one would wish to go no farther with such stories. The celebrated Bishop Potter of New York was playing golf on the course at Saranac, and he made a mighty attempted drive that topped the ball, and another one that tore up the turf, and yet a third that almost missed the ball, and each time he uttered a soothing "Sh-sh-sh-sh-sh!" But the caddie was himself a golfer of a very stern and human school, and in his great annoyance he exclaimed, "Man alive! sh-sh-sh-sh won't send that ball where you want it to go to!" The Rev. Silvester Home, who is one of the keenest of the clerical golfers, and has been known to captain a side of parsons occasionally, once drew up a system of conduct to be observed by brother clergymen when playing the game, and a very excellent system it was, with severe adjurations against the doing of many things such as are common with the ordinary golfer, and certain small licences permitted to make the path a trifle less difficult than it might otherwise be.