I

"THE problem of the golf ball's flight is one of very serious difficulty." That is what was said to a gathering of savants by Professor Peter Guthrie Tait, one of the most brilliant scientists of the latter part of the last century, and the only man who has probed deeply into the real science of the game of golf. He was a wonderful man in many respects. He applied his marvellous scientific knowledge and powers of investigation to everything that came his way. One day he would be extracting cube roots from the most unsuspected quarters, and another he would be analysing the character and formation of the ripples on the surface of a viscous liquid. A few flourishes of the knife of science, a sharp explosion with one of his specially prepared formula - consisting of the most wonderful combinations of the , the , the , and the - and the common but stubborn thing of everyday life was made to yield up its innermost secrets, so that thenceforward it was regarded in a quite different way from that which it had been in the past.

Nothing was sacred from the application of the Professor's science, and golf was not; but to the credit of the game be it said that some of its scientific problems baffled this great man of science as nothing else that he had ever tackled before so seriously had done. He spent weeks, months, and even years, in occasional periods, upon it; he employed the most intelligent men of science with marvellous powers of reckoning as his assistants, he bombarded the game with the most terrible formula that even he had ever invented; but golf still held the upper hand and retained some of its secrets, while it often smiled derisively at the Professor when it had sent him a long way along a false path. The Professor would not give up. He returned always to the attack, and golf and he came to closer grips. He did, indeed, obtain many wonderful secrets from its possession, and he found out more about it - all of it very wonderful and very interesting - than any man had ever done before, or possibly ever will do again. Now and again he told his learned brethren of the difficult nature of the task that he had entered on. Before he died he had found out most things, but golf still held some secrets from him.

Many of the things that he knew, and the way in which he found them out, were never published to the golfing world. He issued one or two papers of a quite popular character, and very elementary; but they did not contain a tithe of what he had discovered or say how he had discovered it. Here we will try to tell the golfer a little of what the Professor found out about the things that happen when the ball is driven from the tee. They will interest him, and perhaps cause him some surprise. Only those conclusions will be given which he proved beyond question, and the truth of them must generally be taken for granted, as it may be safely, since the professor's lines of study would take a volume to expound with any lucidity, and even then a considerable scientific knowledge on the part of the reader would first of all be necessary.

II

It should be said that, while the Professor played a little golf himself, and was much in love with St. Andrews as a resort, what led him in the first place to make his investigations was watching the play of his famous golfing son, Fred Tait. A few idle, fanciful conjectures on the flight of the ball that was sent skimming through the air from Freddie's driver led to a more serious calculation, and then, like a siren, the great mystery of golf drew him on. But early in his investigations he committed himself to the statement that nobody could drive a golf ball that would have a carry of more than 180 or 190 yards without exerting at least three times the strength that is generally exerted by a strong man when driving; that is to say, that a carry of such distance was practically impossible. But this statement was no sooner before the public than young Fred proved the fallacy of it, by celebrating his twenty-third birthday by driving a record ball which had considerably more carry than that.

"Stuff! Humbug!" said the Professor; but the fact was there, and when the golf world came to know about it, they asked the Professor what was the use of all his calculating - and to this day that error is chiefly what is remembered by the general public about his investigations. This incident may have been largely responsible for the fact that thereafter he only once or twice let the golfers into the secrets of what he was doing and had found out, reserving the story of his investigations for learned bodies who were most closely concerned about them.

The mistake that he made, which was exposed to him by his son, set him out on a new line of thought, and showed him vaguely where his error was, though not the nature of it. And the discovery which he made at the outset was a startling one, and it may cause some astonishment to the player of to-day who will reflect upon it for a moment. The steadiest, most constant, and most persistent force with which we are generally acquainted is the force of gravity. It is always there; it acts unceasingly upon everything. To defeat gravity, therefore, is almost for a while to suspend the working of Nature. Suddenly it burst upon the mind of the Professor that the golf ball was made as it were to defeat gravity, and so in a sense it does. He found this out by observing the time of flight of the ball, and discovering that it was nearly twice as long as it ought to be, if gravity had free and unfettered play. This is to say, that if gravity were allowed to act in the usual way on the ball from start to finish, as it acts on other things, it was quite inevitable by all the laws of nature and science that a drive of 200 yards would be completed in three and a half seconds. If a man threw a ball so as to describe as nearly as possible the same trajectory as a golf ball, and to stop at the same spot, it would only take three and a half seconds. But the golf ball takes six and a half seconds ! Somehow or other it was clear that gravity was being beaten all the way. If it were not so, it would be impossible for the golf ball to remain in the air so long while it was accomplishing such a short flight. That was the great mystery that the professor had to solve, and he solved it at last. It may be said here, in passing, and will be more fully explained another time, that he found out that it was due to the rotation given to the ball by the club, and the nature of the stroke when it was struck from the tee, a rotation which in many ways was responsible for some most extraordinary happenings; all of which the golfer will be a much wiser man for having knowledge of. But before he could go thoroughly into the mystery of this rotation he had to make many other preliminary investigations, and some of the results of these may be quoted.