Adding up the records of positions and scores of all golfers who took part in these championship competitions when the triumvirate did, and making, so to speak, one long championship of it, the triumvirate lead the way, and the rest - the very best of them - are absolutely tailed off. The scores registered in the championships, added up, afford the following result: Harry Vardon, 3426; James Braid, 3446; J. H. Taylor, 3454. Herd fittingly comes fourth with 3527, and then there is an enormous gap between him and the fifth man. Taylor would, of course, be in a different position if we counted in the two early championships that he won, and let it be said for Taylor that, including this year of 1907, he has been second for the championship four times in succession and five in all - a magnificent record such as stamps him as the most brilliantly consistent champion of all time. But it is a heartbreaking record for Taylor all the same, and this great and populer player has all golfers' sympathy.

Golfers are not like the brooks of poets; they cannot go on for ever. We shall look to see the great men of to-day playing fine golf in twenty years from now, and upon occasion they will play such rounds as will make us say, "That was just as in the olden time!" But their average of merit must diminish, and probably all the premier three, or at least two of them, have passed the high-water mark of their ability and their tide of supremacy is receding. Who, then, is to succeed them ? For years past we have been looking for likely and worthy successors. There are many fine golfers on the links, and occasionally great things are prophesied of some of them; but disappointment almost invariably follows. The times do not seem to be breeding any more Vardons, Taylors, or Braids. A triumvirate of the future is not yet in the making. Our grandparents and other good people constantly tell us that there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, and it might seem a foolish thing to suggest that we shall never again have such a band of supreme artists at the game as those whose works we enjoy witnessing in these days. But are not the chances heavily against there being again in our time simultaneously three more men of such outstanding ability as these three, each one of whom would be the sole man of his generation if it were not for the other two? Cricket did not produce three Graces at the same time; billiards had only one Roberts. You could not imagine three Graces and three Roberts. But we have had them in golf in late years.

One is inclined to think that the fact is that the men who are great to-day were trained in a severer and more heroic school than their successors will be, and they had each a spark of genius which the conditions of the time fanned into the full flame of glory. We cannot expect three more of them to come along at the same time; but we might expect and do want one more, someone who shall be an acknowledged chief of the game, someone whom we shall be glad to see win the championship, as we cannot be so glad when it is won by a golfer than whom there is no one more unlikely ever to win it again. I am no believer in these things going in a round of comparative mediocrity. What seems to be the matter with most modern aspirants is that they have not that touch of genius which is so evidently possessed by the men who have been making golfing history during the past decade. They may drive well, play their irons well, putt well, and they may do many grand holes and accomplish numerous brilliant rounds, breaking many records. At times they may beat the champions and past champions. But they are not the same golfers. Watch them play a round and you can see the difference. They have not the same genius. They are merely ordinary human golfers, though good ones at that; they are palpably suffering too much from mere human weakness. You see them trying hard, trying so very hard. The triumvirate do not seem to try. It is just there. There is one of them who tries less than any golfer who has ever been born, and he does more when trying less than those others trying hard. Yes, it is just there - the genius for the game.

VIII

We may set it down with some conviction that William Shakespeare was a born golfer. It does not matter that golf was as rare in the glorious days in which he lived as are eagles in twentieth-century Britain. We do not say that he played golf, had seen it played, or had ever heard of it. So far as we are aware, there is no evidence to support any such propositions. Yet he was a born golfer, and if the game had come his way he would have played it, and one doubts not that he would also have excelled in it; so that it is well that it was after his time, or England would not have been proud in the possession of such work of his as is the envy of all other nations. For, of all the classic writers whose work we read, there is none who gives such evidence in almost every line of it that he was possessed of a perfectly ideal golfing temperament, of a philosophy that seems constantly to have a subtle and most perfect application to the life of the links. Through and through it is the real golfer's philosophy, that which is the best suited to the intensity of the game, to its deep humanity, and that which serves for the complete appreciation and full joy of the game. You may read all the other poets, from Homer and Virgil to Byron and Tennyson, without ever a thought of the links obtruding upon your study; but it is no evidence of a vagrant mind, or one that is indifferent to the sweetest music of words, that not three consecutive minutes can hardly ever be spent in reaching Shakespearian lines without the fancy being touched by the perfection of the philosophy and sentiment when applied to the peculiar pleasures and pains of the golfer. Only one other classic writer with whom we are familiar can give such solace to the troubled player, such wise counsel to him who errs or is in doubt, such chastening admonitions to those who have offended against the spirit of the game and whose consciences are disturbed. That is Marcus Aurelius, and we pass on the volume of his rules of life to all those players who from time to time seek their homes at night weary and depressed after a day on the links, when all has been for the worst and despair broods darkly over the soul. After all, the golfer who is indifferent to the ills he sometimes, nay often, suffers, and can in an hour completely forget the tragedies of two rounds, is somewhat too phlegmatic, and there will always be denied to him the higher ecstasies by which the men of finer and more nervous temperament are uplifted. We do not set it against a man that when he has done discredit to his capabilities, he should show many signs of inward turmoil and display much active vexation towards innocent persons and things on seeking his home. He may rail against the arrangements of his household, and he may appear peevish to the members of his family, and find new faults in their manners and conduct. If they are the kind, sympathetic people that they so often are, they will bear with him and wait patiently for the passing of the cloud. On the morrow the good game may be back in all its fulness and richness, and then at eventide there will trip lightly homewards a happy and withal a penitent golfer, who will not be slow to confess his fault and to make a full measure of amends. The colour of life will have changed from the dull grey to the red of roses. And how much thinner and poorer would be the days of our golfing life did they not contain such constant change and yield to us such a variety of emotion! But it is the days of sorrow rather than the days of gladness that teach us the great lessons that all worthy golfers should learn, and they should not neglect the cultivation of the philosophic spirit 3 for which the best opportunities are then afforded. So it is likely the stricken player may find a deep and wholesome contemplation in his lonely privacy at the end of the day, by meditating with Marcus Aurelius on the morals of life and events. He will tell you that "you have suffered a thousand inconveniences from not being contented with performing what your capacity was given you to perform," and so, by such a little hint as this, he will lead you home to the simple truth that your proper game is not your best game, and that much of the misery that obtains in the world of golf is due to the universal habit of too high appraisement of the quality of one's play.