Chapter III

THE TRAGEDIES OF THE SHORT PUTT, AND A CONTRAST BETWEEN CHILDREN AND CHAMPIONS, WITH THE VARIED COUNSEL OF THE WISEST MEN.

The case of an earth so well explored by golfing travellers having been considered as the third of the wonders of the sphere, and the peculiarity of St. Andrews as the fourth, there is a clear suggestion as to which is the next or fifth wonder of the series. Inevitably one recalls the tearful situation of the mighty hunter in a story which is passed in company as fact. He declared he had encountered all the manifold perils of the jungle, had tracked the huge elephant to its retreat, and had stood eye to eye with the man-eating tiger. It is believed that he had done all these things. Then he added, "And never once have I trembled until I came to a short putt." For me one of the most remarkable things I have seen in golf was at an Open Championship meeting at St. Andrews when, watching and musing by the side of the eighteenth green, I saw four of the greatest players of this or any other time come up to it in the competition one by one and have putts of less than eighteen inches at that hole. Three of the four missed! In the old days, at all events, when the greens were not quite as they are now, but became very glassy and slippery with much wind and constant play upon them, I believe there were more short putts missed on the old course at St. Andrews than on any other two courses in the world, and the task of holing the little stupids on that home green was a most tormenting ordeal.

So, with the broken-hearted explorer, and the tragedy of St. Andrews, there is pointed to us for the next wonder of the game the missing of the short putt. And I do believe, and so must others, that the missing of such a short putt as it seems humanly impossible for any man, having the control of his limbs and being _compos mentis_, to miss is one of the most remarkable features of any game, and one that would be completely and absolutely inexplicable did it not in itself offer a most splendid illustration of the full effect of strain of mind on physical action, of the pressure of great responsibility on an over-anxious man. It embraces nearly the whole psychology of golf. The short putt largely explains the game, and it is testimony to the soundness of this view, and the rightful selection of this as a permanent wonder, that the general public would never believe the truth as we know it, that it is possible for the greatest players with what is to them, for the time being, almost as much as their lives depending on it, to miss putts so little that no walking baby properly fed would miss. The general public, with its vast stores of common sense, would not believe the fact; it would ridicule it and treat the whole suggestion with contempt, and it might in a sense be right; but then the general public has not been fighting its way round a golf course against another and very truculent general public, driving, playing seconds and thirds, getting bunkered and recovering, and encountering all manner of difficulties and dangers, and then had its fate for the day depending on a short putt at the eighteenth green! By psychology of the game, as just mentioned, we mean, of course, the way in which the mind and the emotions act and react upon the physical system and its capacity, how doubts and fears are engendered, and things from not seeming what they are become really different, so far as the attitude of the player to them is concerned. Thus, as has been well said, a putt of ten inches on the first green is, as one might feel, a putt of thirty inches--though still in fact of the same length--when that green is not the first but the thirty-seventh, and that on which a long-drawn-out match is being finished.

One summer's day, on a course in France, a little party of us were discussing the slow and sure methods of certain Americans then in Europe--if, really, they were quite so sure as they were slow. Indeed they hustled not. The point was put forward by one of us that there is a moment in waiting when inspiration and confidence come together, or at least come then as well as ever they can or will, and that if the hesitation is prolonged beyond that moment, the result is inevitably loss of faith, increasing doubt and timidity, and a distorted view of the situation arising from fear of fate. Half the difficulties of golf are due to the fact that the player has an abundance of time to think about what he is engaged to do and how it should be done. In that time hopes and fears and many emotions race through his mind, and tasks which were originally simple become every moment harder. In no other game has the player such ample leisure in which to think, to be careful, to be exact, and to decide upon the proper action, and thus responsibility is heaped upon him for what he does as it is in no other sport or recreation. He is oppressed with a mighty burden. That which he does he is entirely responsible for, and it can never be undone. It follows that this game has an extensive and peculiar psychology such as is possessed by no other. I shall proceed to tell a little story, dramatic in its circumstances, abounding in significance. It embraces the meanings and mysteries of golf.

* * * * *

The strange case of Sir Archibald Strand is one that caused much excited attention among the members of the golf community in general some months ago, and it is still discussed in the club-houses. Sir Archibald Strand, Bart., is a fair example of the thorough, enthusiastic, middle-aged player, who treats golf as something rather more than a game, which is as it should be. He is one of tolerably equable temperament, a good sportsman, and a man of strong character and physique, who did a long term of military service in India. Nowadays he spends an appreciable portion of his time in golfing, and a fair part of the remainder in contemplating the enduring mysteries and problems of the links. The game worries him exceedingly, occasionally it leads him to unhappiness, but, on the whole, he feels he likes it. He is a member of several London clubs, including Sunningdale, Walton Heath, Mid-Surrey, Coombe Hill, and Woking, and of his seaside clubs those he most frequents are the Royal St. George's at Sandwich, and Rye. His handicap is 5, and generally he is what we consider and call a good reliable 5.

He and his opponent, to whom, as a matter of discretion and confidence, we must refer as Mr. A., had just ended their match at Mid-Surrey one pleasant day, and Sir Archibald was trying his last putt over again as golfers often do. It was a putt of two feet. He had missed it before; but now, of course, he rolled the ball in every time. A question arose about circumstances altering cases, as they so commonly do in golf, and of responsibility weighing heavily on the mind that hesitates; and Sir Archibald declared that nobody in good health could be such a fool as to miss a two-feet putt like that, if he really examined the line thoroughly, and took the proper pains. Just then the open champion of the period was passing by the green, and they called him up and asked his views upon the missing of two-feet putts. Taylor denied that a man was a fool for missing them. He mentioned the psychology of the business, and very forcibly argued that a two-feet putt was a very difficult thing, that the more important it was the more difficult it became, and that the longer one thought about it the more impossible did it seem to hole it. "Ah!" said he, with the solemn countenance he assumes when discussing the terrors of this game, and the deep emphasis he makes when he admits the difficulties it creates for him, "Ah!" he murmured, "if I had never missed any putts of one foot, let alone the putts of two! I tell you, sir, the two-feet putt, when it has to be done--mind you when it has got to be done--is one of the most difficult things in the world to do, and never mind the fact that your babies can do it all the time! Take that from me, sir!" This was a touch of the real Taylor, the true philosopher, one who knows the game.

Mr. A., who is sometimes aggressive in manner, brought the matter in discussion to a pretty point at once. "Look here, Strand," said he, "I will tell you what I will do. I will place this ball here, so, exactly two feet from the hole, and I will give you a fortnight, but not less than a fortnight, to hole that putt. You are not to practise it here at this hole on this green in the meantime; but you may place the ball in position if you like, and look at it. And a fortnight to-day, at ten o'clock in the morning, you must make the putt, and I will bet you fourteen guineas, being a guinea a day for waiting, that you do not hole it. We will have the position of the hole properly marked, so that a fortnight hence it shall be in the same place."

The champion said he would tell Lees, the greenkeeper, and that should be done. Strand, with a laugh, accepted the wager, and the matter was settled.

The events that followed were curious. In the club-house there was then little disposition to attend to the accounts of the proceedings that were furnished by both parties. The men who had finished rounds were too much occupied with their own troubles or joys.

At his club in town that evening, Sir Archibald, over dinner, related the circumstances of the wager to a few friends, with an appearance of considerable satisfaction with himself, and seemed a little surprised that the other members of the party did not at once approve of his proceeding as sound and businesslike.

"Of course, you know, Strand, my good man," said Mr. Ezekiel Martin, a successful stockbroker, "these putts are missed sometimes, and I don't suppose it makes it any easier for you by waiting a fortnight. It's like carrying over in the House till one is a very tired bull."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Sir Archibald, "I could go out now and hole that putt nineteen times out of twenty in the dark!"

"I believe you could," answered Martin, "but doing it in the dark, when you cannot see the hole and realise all the imaginary difficulties, is very different from doing it in broad daylight; and putting now, on the spur of the moment, as it were, is very different from putting when you have a whole fortnight to think about what you are going to do."

"I don't see it," replied Sir Archibald, yet he began to feel a little uneasy. On returning home that night, instead of going to bed at once he went into his study, laid a tumbler on its side on the carpet, and putted from a measured two feet for about half an hour. He holed most of them, and tumbled into bed feeling that Martin had been "pulling his leg," as people say. In the morning he engaged a gardener to smooth down a piece of his lawn, planting in a little putting-green turf, and he had a hole made in it, and a circle with two feet radius drawn round the hole, so that he could putt from every point. When this work was done, he spent an hour in practising there, and succeeded well. He only missed about one in ten. He tried seven different putters, with approximately equal results. In the afternoon he went down to Mid-Surrey, played a match, and lost it by missing a short putt at the home hole. After tea, he went out on to the eighteenth green, found the spot where the hole was the day before, examined it carefully, and saw that there were slight differences in the texture of the grass round about, and that there was a little depression to the left side. He had not noticed this before. However, said he to himself, it would be easy to make allowances for these things, but he began now to doubt whether thirteen days ahead he would use his wry-necked putting cleek or bolt the putt with an aluminium putter. Where there are troubles of that kind it is often better to make short work of the putt by the bolting way, and have an end of it. At home that evening he did more putting practice on the carpet, and did not hole them quite so well. Lady Strand, who understands her husband thoroughly, and is the sweetest, gentlest sympathiser, coaxed him to telling her the trouble, for she saw that one existed. With perfect wisdom she suggested that he should wipe the fourteen guineas from the current account as already lost, and face the task as one who had all to gain and nothing to lose. Of course, her husband said, it was not the money, but the frightful jackass he would look if he missed the putt.

He went to his club in town the next day instead of going to golf, and took with him a book containing a chapter on putting, by Willie Park. He stretched himself out on a Chesterfield in a corner of the library, and gazed at two spots on the carpet which he had measured as being two feet from each other. Eventually, he decided that that was not good for him, since equal distances in furnished rooms, as is well known, look longer than they look outside. He lunched with a few friends, and brought up the subject again.

"Give him the money and have done with it, Strand. You are sure to lose!" said the brutish Martin.

"I wish I had not to wait for a fortnight," murmured Strand.

"Ah! He knew! The other man knew!" rejoined Martin. "He knows the game of golf! What I cannot understand is why he did not give you a year and make it 365 guineas. You would have sold out in six weeks at L200!"

Sir Archibald wrote a letter to Mr. A. that evening, intimating that he would probably have to leave town the week after the next. He hinted that it might be convenient if they got their wager out of the way beforehand, and if he putted a week from then. Mr. A. replied that he was sorry it would not be convenient for him to attend then, and that the signed terms of the contract had better be abided by.

Sir Archibald bought two new putters on the following day, and in the afternoon he had Taylor out for an hour, and they went practising on the putting lawn just outside the garden gate. Sir Archibald was putting very well then; but he insisted that it would be a good thing to change the ball he was using, which was rather lively. After he had done with Taylor, he went to look at the place on the eighteenth green where he would have to putt, and it seemed that the coarse grass had fattened up considerably with the rain that had fallen, and that the sand below it was distinctly gritty. It began to seem that he would have to run the ball in at the right side of the hole. He asked Lees some questions about the grasses on that green, and was sorry he could not take a little Mid-Surrey turf home with him. He was feeling a little tired when he reached his home that night, and as it was Thursday he suggested to Lady Strand that they should go to Folkestone for the week-end, and not bother at all about golf, which they did accordingly. He found it delightful to linger on the leas and not be worried with the game.

This kind of thing continued and became worse and worse again during the days that followed. There was practice, thought, and purchase continually, and unfortunately the proportion of missed putts at two feet, both on the carpet, on the practice lawn, and on the greens at Mid-Surrey, Coombe Hill, and Woking, began to increase. At putts of three feet, four, and five, Sir Archibald was marvellous, and, of course, he never missed the very little ones; but the two-feet putts bothered him all the time. He attributed it to his liver; and he was certainly looking worn. Matters were not improved by such inconsiderate remarks as were made by Martin, Evans, and others, whenever he had a two-feet putt to do, such as "Now, Strand, that's just your distance!" It was only a joke; but in the circumstances it was not perhaps in good taste.

On the evening of the twelfth day Strand, after deliberation, wrote a letter to A. in which he said he feared he would not be able to go down to the course at the appointed time, and intimated that, according to the terms of the wager, he would hand over the fourteen guineas to him when next they met. Before posting this letter he went and did a little practice in the dusk on the lawn outside the house. He seemed to get them down with some confidence on this occasion, and Lady S., watching him, called out cheerily, "Silly boy! as if you could really miss! Now what shall I buy with the fourteen guineas?"

So Strand tore up the letter and went to bed for rest.

On the night before the appointed day he slept badly. He was putting in his mind until three o'clock in the morning. Then he rose, went in his pyjamas into the study, made a line on the top of his aluminium putter indicating the striking point, and went back to bed, but did not sleep. For some time he tried an imaginary humming of the "Jewel Song" from _Faust_, and repeated a few lines from Scott's "Lady of the Lake"--old dodges of his for assisting distraction and sleep--but they did not serve, nor did a fixed vision of millions of balls falling in an endless stream from the mouth of a pump and disappearing instantly through a golf hole in the ground.

At five-thirty he rose again and took his bath. He hesitated as to what golfing suit he should wear. Finally, for the sake of complete ease, and that there should be nothing to attract his eye from the ball, he put on some dark-blue flannels.

He looked at his breakfast, pecked at a sole, and at nine-fifteen, feeling distinctly unwell, he took a taxi for the course. He had one great consolation upholding him. At five minutes past ten it would all be over. He felt that he knew how glad a condemned criminal must be that at five minutes past eight on a certain morning--or a minute or two earlier with a little luck--a black flag would be hoisted on the prison pole.

At seven minutes to ten he drank a large brandy and soda and went out to the eighteenth green. Mr. A. and a few others were there to see the business properly carried out. Taylor placed the ball exactly two feet from the hole, which was cut in the proper place. He had his watch in his hand.

Sir Archibald bent down and examined the putt with great care. He essayed to pick up what seemed to be a "loose impediment" on his line, but saw that it was not loose. The putt seemed very difficult now, and he wished he had brought his plain putting cleek out with him, but it was too late.

At ten o'clock exactly, Taylor said, "Now, Sir Archibald, will you kindly putt?"

Sir Archibald Strand looked like a man who had been hunted down. He made one swift glance around him, but saw no escape, so he pulled himself together, smiled a little sadly, and said to himself, "Don't be a fool, Archie!" Then he faced the putter to the ball; the club was trembling slightly. He swung it back much too far, checked it in the return swing, and came on to the ball in a nervous, stupid sort of way, doing little more than touch it. The ball took a line to the right of the hole, and did not run more than fourteen inches.

You may have thought that Sir Archibald used unfortunate words and was dismayed. He did not. A look of established happiness and placid contentment spread upon his countenance, as a streak of sunlight might flash across a plain. "Ha!" he sighed in relief. He took from his pocket a cheque for fourteen guineas already made out, and handed it to Mr. A., and then joyfully exclaimed: "Thank heaven, it is finished! Now, my friends, we will honour this unusual occasion in a suitable manner at your convenience, and this afternoon I leave for Sandwich for a week of golf. And no letters are being forwarded."

* * * * *

Let us now enter consideration of this matter in a proper frame of mind, seriously and not looking contemptuously upon the problem of holing even the very shortest of putts as no problem at all after the affected manner of the inexperienced and uninformed general public. Let us approach it cautiously and in an analytical spirit. We should take the evidence of expert witnesses upon happenings in their careers, in our endeavour to discover the real truth. We have already remarked upon the case of the hunter who shot tigers and cringed at putts, and of the great champions who all missed them on the eighteenth green at St. Andrews, when they were playing for nothing less than the championship. We have also contemplated the circumstances of the distressed baronet who was given a fortnight in which to hole a two-feet putt, suffered intolerable agonies during the period, and was only restored to happiness when he had failed at the stroke. Now let us pay regard to the experience of a little child only six years old, who was completely successful at many putts in succession, at distances of from one to six feet, all the most perilous situations. This remarkable demonstration was witnessed by the proud parents, by a great professional, and by myself.

The child is a boy, and not, as has been stated, a winsome little girl. There is, if I may say it without offence, nothing remarkable about his parents. They are excellent kindly-mannered people, of tolerable middle-class education, simple in their manner of life, and of no pronounced tastes in any direction. The father is in a large timber business in the Midlands, and has probably an income of about six hundred pounds a year. His handicap is 14. He is not a very keen golfer, and seems to spend a fair amount of his time in his garden. A total abstainer, he smokes little, and has no strong tastes in art and literature; but he once told me that in addition to much Scott and a sufficiency of Dickens he had read one of my books on golf. That is the father. As to the mother, she is just one who might be called in the north a nice little body. She is a thoroughly good housewife, domesticated, affectionate, and if she does not play golf she sympathises with it. These are people who are tolerably satisfied with their state. They live in a pleasant house, employ two maidservants, and have no motor-car. Here, surely, is nothing to suggest the creation of genius. Yet they are the parents of this remarkable child who did, with no hesitation, with confidence, certainty, and frequency, what the mighty hunter, the champions, the bold but misguided baronet, and you and I have failed to accomplish.

There is a man of wit and wisdom, Andrew Kirkaldy, who, when you inquire of him what is the most difficult thing in golf, responds with no hesitation that it is to hole "a wee bit divvle of a putt that long!" and so saying he will hold his hands four feet apart. Occasionally he may vary the phraseology, not to its advantage, but the meaning and effect remain the same. Andrew is solid on four feet. But authorities differ a little in this matter of measurement. Some will reduce the distance to thirty inches; others have it that the yard putt is the most trying; I have heard eighteen inches put forward. But it all amounts to much the same thing, that what looks ridiculously easy is very, very difficult. Now this tender little child, who knew nothing of the fears and dangers of this awful game, placed the ball at a distance of two feet from the hole on a curly and slippery green, and with a sublime aplomb hit it straight to the middle of the hole--the first putt of his life and a good one. Then he putted from a yard and holed it again, then from Kirkaldy's distance and played the stroke just as surely and successfully, and then repeated them many times, never faltering, never failing. We who watched were a trifle sad, and perhaps ashamed. We knew that with all our thought and skill and golfing learning, all our strength and manhood, we could not do the same when at our games, and that, the more we needed to do it by the importance of the golf that was being played, the more difficult it was. Our selfish consolation was that in time the little child would grow up and then he would not be able to hole those putts, for then he would know that it was a difficult thing to do, and would be embarrassed and defeated accordingly. For it is the golfer's consciousness of imaginary difficulties that makes him such a strange coward when this putting business is being done. He knows that really the putting is easy, but he knows also that he must not miss, that an inch lost here is as much of a loss as two hundred yards in the driving--and he fears his fate. It is consciousness of the stupidity of missing, nerves, fears, imagination, that make this missing of short putts by the cleverest players, champions as much as any others, the most remarkable thing that happens constantly in any game. There is nothing like it. If it were not so easy, if there were good excuse for failure, those putts would not be missed so frequently. In putting, said Sir Walter Simpson, there is much to think about and much more not to be thought of. "When a putter," he reflected, "is waiting his turn to hole out a putt of one or two feet in length, on which the match hangs at the last hole, it is of vital importance that he think of nothing. At this supreme moment he ought studiously to fill his mind with vacancy. He must not even allow himself the consolations of religion. He must not prepare himself to accept the gloomy face of his partner and the derisive delight of his adversaries with Christian resignation should he miss. He must not think that it is a putt he would not dream of missing at the beginning of the match, or, worse still, that he missed one like it in the middle. He ought to wait, calm and stupid, till it is his turn to play, wave back the inevitable boy who is sure to be standing behind his arm, and putt as I have told him how--neither with undue haste nor with exaggerated care. When the ball is down, and the putter handed to the caddy, it is not well to say, 'I couldn't have missed it.' Silence is best. The pallid cheek and trembling lip belie such braggadocio."

* * * * *

The truth is that the man who golfs will unceasingly think of the things he should not think of, and that is what makes this easy putting so difficult, and it explains why the innocent child, unthinking, finds the business as simple and pleasant as swinging under the boughs of a tree on a sunny day in June. While there is one quite easy way of doing nearly every putt, there are perhaps a dozen more or less difficult ways of missing it, and it is these that are uppermost in the golfer's mind when the time of his trial comes, and so once more is vice triumphant while angels are depressed. There is the hole, a pit that is deep and wide, four and a quarter inches in diameter, and there is the little ball, only an inch and a half through the middle, and the intervening space between the two is smooth and even. It would seem to be the easiest thing in theory and practice to knock the ball into the large hole; but how very small does the hole then appear to be and how much too big for it is the ball! But the golfer knows that he should hole that putt, and that if he fails he will never, never have the chance again. Should he putt and miss the act is irrevocable; the stroke and the hole, or the half of it, are lost, and nothing that can happen afterwards can remove that loss. Should he at the beginning of the play to a hole make a faulty drive, or should his approach play be very inaccurate, he knows that he may atone for these mistakes by special cleverness displayed in subsequent strokes, and with the buoyant hope that constantly characterises him he thinks he will. But the hope seems often to desert him at the end; confidence lapses. The short putt is the very last stroke in the play to that hole, and if it is missed there is no further opportunity for recovery. In this way it does seem sometimes that there is a little of the awful, the eternal, the infinite about that putt. The player is stricken with fear and awe. He knows it is an easy thing to do in the one proper way of doing it, but raging through his mind are hideous pictures of a dozen ways of missing. Once upon a time I put the question to a number of the greatest players of the age as to what were their thoughts, if any, when they came to making one of these little putts on which championships or other great affairs almost entirely depended, and almost invariably their answer was that at the last supreme moment a thought came into their minds and was expressed to themselves in these words: "What a fool I shall look if I miss this putt!" Those words exactly did Willie Park, the younger, say quietly to himself just as he was about to make the last short putt of a round at Musselburgh, which would or would not give him a tie for the championship with Andrew Kirkaldy. He did not say that if he missed the putt he would lose the championship. He said he would look a fool.

The other day in a quiet corner of London, away from the game but, as it happened, not from the thought of it, I had Harry Vardon with me engaged in some serious talk in a broad and general way upon golfing men and things. Ten years ago, when we were doing some kind of collaboration in the production of a new book, he said to me very impressively and as one who wonders exceedingly, "It is a funny game; let us impress that upon them all, it is a very funny game," and now, having played perhaps five thousand more rounds and won another Open Championship, he went forward to the admission, "It is an awful game." He meant it, and one reason why we like our Harry Vardon is because he too has always been awe-stricken by this so-called game, and because there is no other man in golf who sympathises better with the trials and tortures of the moderate player. On this morning of spring he was telling me of another new and great discovery he had made in putting methods, and in giving to me an account of his pains, his sufferings in missing all the short putts he had failed at in recent times--how dearly have they cost him!--he said it was the two-feet putt that frightened him most of all, and declared solemnly and seriously that he would rather have a three-yarder than such a putt, and that he would hole the former oftener than the latter. He said the two-feet putts frighten him, that as soon as he settles himself down to the business of putting in such a case the hole seems to become less and less. "I am overcome," says he, "with the idea that in a moment it will be gone altogether. Then I am in a state of panic, and I snatch at my putter and hit the ball quickly so that with a little luck it may reach the hole before it goes away altogether and there is nothing to putt at. When I have missed I see that the hole is there, and as big as ever or bigger!" Vardon once tried putting left-handed, a doctor having advised him to do so, and he found that the idea worked splendidly, but he did not like the look of it. He believes after all his sorrows that one of the greatest and best secrets of good putting is to keep more absolutely still than do most golfers, who seem to think it matters less in putting when it matters so much more.

* * * * *

Now the golfer in his wisdom, ingenuity, and resource has tried every way he can think of to solve this problem of nerves and doubts by mechanical and other means. Those who would be successful in competitions have retired to bed at nine o'clock in the evening for a month, and some of them have sipped from bottles of tonics hoping that physic would serve to give them strong nerve, steady hands and courage, but such methods have not availed. For no part of this or any other game have so many different kinds of instruments been invented, though the little child could do the putts with the head of a walking-stick or a common poker. Scarcely a week goes by in the season but some new kind of putter is introduced to the expectant multitude of harassed players, and now and then a thrill runs through the world as they receive a clear assurance that at last some special device has been discovered which will make their putting ever afterwards easy and certain. There is a thrill as if a secret of long life had been found. But the chill of disappointment follows quickly. Golfers have now tried all things known, and more short putts are missed than ever. Hundreds of different kinds of putters have been invented. They have been made with very thin blades, and with thick slabs of metal or other substance instead of mere blades. They have been made like spades, like knives, like hammers, and like croquet mallets. They have even been made like putters. They have been made of wood, iron, aluminium, brass, gun-metal, silver, bone, and glass. Here in my room I have the sad gift of the creator of a forlorn and foolish hope. It is a so-called putter made in the shape of a roller on ball bearings which is meant to be wheeled along the green up to the ball. Like some others it was illegal according to the rules. To such extravagances of fancy the desperate golfers have been led in their desire to succeed in this putting that the authorities have had to step in for the defence of the dignity of the game to declare a limit to the scope of invention in this matter. And yet I once knew a man who for a long period did some of the best putting that you would ever fear to play against with a little block of wood that had once served to keep the door of his study ajar, to which had been attached a stick that was made from a broom handle. This improvised putter was a freak of his fancy at a time when he thought there might be some virtue in a return to prime simplicity. Then Mr. James Robb, who has won the Amateur Championship once and been in the final on two other occasions, has putted all his life with a cleek that his sister won in a penny raffle when he was a boy and gave to him. Likewise Mr. John Laidlay has also putted uninterruptedly since he was a boy with a cleek that is now so thin with much cleaning that his friends tell him he may soon be able to shave himself with it. But these are the grand exceptions after all. Such fine settlement and constancy are unknown to the average player. It was but the other day that I learned that a friend of mine, one most distinguished in the game and of the very highest skill, had used fifteen different putters on the day of an important competition--three in the morning's play, nine others in noonday practice, and three quite fresh ones in the afternoon game. The same good man carried a choice assortment of his own putters to a recent amateur championship meeting, but at the beginning of the tournament made love to one of mine, borrowed it, and used it until he was beaten--not a long way from the end of the competition. Sometimes it seems that what is rudest in design, almost savage, is now best liked when in our frenzy we have ransacked art, science, and all imagination in search of the putter with which we can putt as we would. There is the spirit of reaction; we would return to the primitive. Putters that look as if they might be for dolls, some of those stumpy little things made of iron on a miniature aluminium-putter model, which some of the great champions have been using, have hardly become popular. The crude and the bizarre, suggestive of inspiration, please well. I shall not forget Jean Gassiat, good golfer of France, coming up to me one championship day at Hoylake, holding forward in his right hand, and with its head in the air, what was evidently meant for a golf club, but which was as much unlike one as anything we had ever seen. On the face of the player was spread the grin of pleasure; wordlessly he suggested that at last he had found it, the strangest, the most wonderful. In principle this new club, as it has to be called for courtesy, is akin to the affair of the door-stopper and the broomstick. It consists of a plain flat rectangular piece of wood about four inches long, two inches wide, and three-quarters of an inch deep, and its two-inch nose is cut quite square, while for a couple of inches at the end of the shaft the grip is thickened to twice its usual size. It is weighted and balanced by large and small lead bullets in the sole. It is possible to frame a good argument in favour of a putter made of anything; nothing is without some advantage. It could be said for a ginger-beer bottle that it would insist on the ball being most truly hit from the middle of the vessel as the ball ought to be hit, and, given notice, one could prepare a statement of claim on behalf of an old boot seeking to be raised to the putterage. So there are good things to be said for this putter from France, and one of the best is that after smiling upon it Jean Gassiat began to wonder, then thought, experimented, and fell in love with this putter completely. Some weeks later I saw him doing those marvels on the green as are only done when man and putter have become thoroughly joined together, and Gassiat has always to be taken seriously in these matters, for, like Massy, he is a Basque, and, like the old champion, he is one of the most beautiful putters, with an instinct for holing. This most remarkable invention, without desiring its extinction in the least, one would say, surely departs a whole world of fancy farther from the traditional idea of what a golf club should be than the poor Schenectady of the Americans which St. Andrews proscribed. It was not the idea of Gassiat, nor of any other than the Marquis de Chasseloup-Laubat, a French sportsman of thoroughness and a very keen golfer. Seeing what Gassiat was doing, James Sherlock obtained one of these barbaric tools, and at this the public came in.

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Every thinkable variety of putting method has been adopted. Bodies, hands, feet have been placed in all positions, and the stroke has been made in every conceivable way. Are there any two players who do it just the same, or have the same advice to give? For a violent contrast take two of the most able amateurs of the time, both of them long since distinguished in the foremost competitions, Mr. John Low and Mr. H. S. Colt. The former favours the wooden putter, and he has one of that kind to which he is keenly attached, but he putts with all sorts of things as the spirit moves him on consideration of special circumstances. He was one of the early members of the thoughtful school of golf which has made such a strong advance in recent times. Nearly always, however, you will find him standing nearly upright when doing his putting, grasping a club with a tolerably long shaft somewhere quite near to the top of the handle. This erect attitude is that which our fore-fathers of the traditions mostly favoured. Those splendid gentlemen, as we have agreed, were fine golfers who conducted their game nobly, but it has always seemed to me that they were an unimaginative lot. It never appears to have occurred to them that because the club has a handle at the top was no reason why they should grasp it up there instead of nearly at the opposite end, as do a large body of the most enterprising and inquiring amateurs these days. Of this advanced party the eminent architect is a shining example, for he holds his putting cleek so far down, so near to the ironwork, that the shaft seems useless, and in addition to this he defies all teaching in putting by planting the heel of the club down on the green and holding the hands so low that the toe of the putter is cocked up, and with this toe he hits the ball, and, as it looks, he tops it. But that putting of his is too much for most of the men who have to play against it. When those who do not understand see men putting in this way, or something like it, they say to themselves, and perhaps to others, that they cannot see why the men do not have the unused part of the shaft cut off so that it may not be in the way. But there they show their deficiencies of knowledge, though one is not sure that all the men who putt with a low grip quite know why they do so. They only know that the method suits them, but the truth is often that in these cases the balancing piece of the shaft above the hands acts as a steadier for the piece below. A few students have carried this idea a point further by having a piece of lead attached to the top of the handle to increase the weight and the balancing influence of that part. Mr. Hammond Chambers is one of them. The amateurs are the most original and peculiar in their putting methods. For the most part the professionals, although adopting widely different stances, hold themselves fairly well up when doing their work on the green, and putt with an easy following-through stroke as is recommended by the old masters. Strange that we should realise that quite the most impressive, stylish, and beautiful putter of the erect school is M'Dermott, the brilliant young American champion, who stands straight up with his legs and heels touching, grips his putter at the very end, and moving nothing but his club and hands, makes the most delightfully smooth swing. The low-grip method is not at all conducive to the gentle swinging, following-through putt, but encourages a sharp little tap.

All the old original philosophy and instruction in putting can be summarised in a very few words, but hundreds of thousands would be needed for discussion of the variations, most of which have been used successfully at some time. The majority of advisers make a point of it that the ball must be hit truly, but they would not all be agreed on what that "truly" was except that it was hitting it as they meant to do. What most of them have in mind is that there is on the face of the putter a proper hitting point, from which the ball will run more accurately and with less disposition to slide off the right line than when hit with any other part, that being the point of balance or the sweet spot which every iron club possesses, and this point should be brought to the ball by an even swing from the back, and the swing should be continued after impact by the steady smooth advance of the head of the club along the line that it was making at the moment of striking. Absolute steadiness of the body is quite essential, and lack of it--just the most trifling and almost undiscernible lack--is responsible for more putting failures than almost any other cause. Most of those who tell us what to do in golf advise that we should keep the arms and forearms quite still also, and putt entirely from the wrist. And yet even these canons, as they are considered, are defied by large bodies of players. There are thousands of golfers who putt from the toes of their clubs, and believe in the method. They say they can feel the ball better and direct it more surely.

I quote again one of the first preceptors, Sir Walter Simpson, because I think in most matters of feeling and practice he stands so well for the old solid school of golf that has nearly died away. He insists on the wooden putter, to begin with, and maintains that no good thing upon the green can come out of iron, but therein he was mistaken and time has cried him down. And then he writes: "I have just said there are, at most, two or three attitudes in which good putting is possible. We are nowadays inclined to be more dogmatic, and to assert that there is but one. The player must stand open, half facing the hole, the weight on the right leg, the right arm close to the side, the ball nearly opposite the right foot. To putt standing square, the arms reached out, is as difficult as to write without laying a finger on the desk." Had he lived on to these more modern days he would not have been nearly so dogmatic as that. Some of the very best putters do not play with the open stance, but putt entirely from the left leg, that leg thrown forward and in front and bearing all the weight, the right being merely hanging on behind. Then they have the ball right opposite the left toe, and they putt with a sense of strain which they believe in such circumstances is conducive to delicacy. Tens of thousands of others could not putt in this way, but those who can are very successful, and this is just another indication of the danger of dogma in golf. As to the right arm at the side, it may be said that there is now a fast increasing practice on the part of those who bend down somewhat to their putting to rest the right elbow or forearm on the right knee. J. H. Taylor experimented with this idea on the very eve of the 1913 championship at Hoylake, his putting for some time having been bad. He adopted it, won the championship, and gave the new way of putting all the credit.

Now see how high and deeply thinking authorities can differ about the ways and means of doing this thing that the little child does so thoroughly and well. "A great secret of steady putting is to make a point of always 'sclaffing' along the ground," said the baronet. "The best putters do this, although it is not evident to an onlooker, the noise of the scrape being inaudible. To be sure of the exact spot on the putter face which is invariably to come in contact with the ball, is, of course, essential to the acquirement of accuracy. If you play to hit clean, your putter must pass above the ground at varying heights, as it is impossible to note how much air there is between it and the turf. In the other way you feel your road. But the greatest gain from treating putting as a sclaffing process is the less delicate manipulation required when short putts are in question. At a foot and a half from the hole the clean putter often fails, from incapacity to graduate inches of weakness, whilst the sclaffer succeeds because he is dealing with coarser weight sensitiveness."

Now time and experience have showed us all that we cannot be dogmatic about anything in golf except that the ball must be struck somehow, and least of all may we venture to dogmatise in the matter of putting, and we will only say now that the late Sir Walter has a heavy majority against him on this suggestion that in doing the short putts it is well to let the putter scrape along the grass when going forward to the ball. It seems a small matter (that little man child never thought of it, but I noticed he did not sclaff), yet a whole world of good and ill upon the links is bound up with it. We shall set this happy golfer as he was, and friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, against one of the great champions and one of the finest putters who have ever handled clubs, and that is Willie Park, the younger, who says, "One of the secrets of putting is to hit the ball, and the ball only--a sclaffy style of putting is fatal; and, with the object of making absolutely certain of avoiding it, rather aim to strike the globe just the least thing above the ground. The ball should be smartly tapped with the putter, the stroke being played entirely from the wrists; and it should be neither struck a slow, heavy blow, nor shoved, nor should it be jerked."

Most golfers will be with Willie in this matter, and those who have not tried already that way of putting, the sole of the club being kept clear from the turf when the stroke is being made, might do so to their very likely advantage. It is a point that a player of limited experience might never think about, and I know many who have been converted from bad putters to good ones by it. Some of the leading players of the Hoylake school have long been addicted to a slight elaboration or variation of this method. As they bring the club on to the ball they lift it slightly so that at the moment of impact a peculiar running spin is given to the ball, one that is not quite the same thing as is imparted by merely topping it. The way appears to help the hole to gather the ball when it arrives, but it is a method that needs natural aptitude and much practice to make it quite safe in application. And then again, right away to the contrary, I have witnessed in recent weeks a way of putting by one or two of the best players in the country, which is new, and which they declare to be most effective when dealing with the small heavy balls that are now in vogue and which are so difficult to manage, especially on very keen greens. We have all heard of the push shot, generally done with cleeks and the more powerful irons--and many of us have tried to play it as Harry Vardon does, and the things that I have seen done and described as push shots by ordinary amateurs have been very dreadful. But, no matter; the idea of the push shot is to hit the ball a kind of downward glancing blow, the club coming to ground after impact, the result being that the ball starts off quickly and pulls up suddenly. The players to whom I have referred have applied this stroke to their putting, coming on to the ball above the centre and gently pushing the club through it, and in the circumstances I have indicated there can be no doubt they have succeeded. Balls being so tricky now, these matters are worth considering.

You would perceive how boldly dogmatic was the writer of the early classic on the question of stance. On that point there is just one more word to say. The tendency seems to be increasing in these days towards holding the feet closely together. It is a stance to which Harry Vardon, after all his putting troubles, has nearly settled down, and many of the best men on the green, Tom Ball for one, are given to it. But there is no law, no recommendation even, only the most timid suggestion to be made to any man in this matter. That way which suits him and gives him confidence is the best, and one may find men putting marvellously well when their stance and attitude seem to be so ungainly and difficult as to cause them pain.

* * * * *

The method of holding the club has, at least, as much to do with good putting as anything else, and in this matter one may almost dare to dogmatise. The majority of players hold their putters with the two hands close together but detached from each other, in much the same way as they hold their other clubs. All of them have heard of what they call the Vardon grip, or the overlapping grip, by which, when the club is held, the left thumb is brought into the palm of the right hand, and the little finger of that right hand is made generally to ride upon the first of the left hand. Many try this grip for their long shots, but few persist with it, as they become convinced either that their hands and fingers are not strong enough for it, or that before they could master the method they would need to suffer too much in loss of the game that they already possess. Therefore they renounce the overlapping grip entirely. But if they would try it in putting they would experience none of the difficulties with which they are troubled when applying it to their wooden club shots, no sort of force having to be given to the stroke, and almost from the first attempt they would enjoy an advantage. It is a matter of the most vital importance in putting that the two hands should not interfere with each other to the very slightest extent. One of them should have the general management of the putting, and the other, if detached from it, should do little save act in a very subordinate capacity as a steadying influence. Everybody is agreed upon that; it is absolute. But when we have the two hands separate, as with the ordinary grip, there is always a danger of the subordinate asserting itself too much, or at all events varying in the amount of work that it does. It cannot be avoided; it is inevitable. This, we may be sure, is the cause of much bad and uncertain putting.

Join the two hands together, as with the overlapping grip, and we have them working as one completely, and the risk of undue interference by the subordinate vanishes. This is the best hint on putting that all our counsellors have to give, and they one and all declare it will do more than anything else to raise a man to the high level of excellence of the innocent child. Sometimes we see men putting one-handed, and one may believe that for medium and short putts this way is more certain than the separate hands. Mr. Hilton once putted that way in the Amateur International match, and I have seen many other good putters do well with it. But it savours of freakishness, and, as a famous professional said to the distinguished player who adopted the method, "God did not give us two hands for one to be kept in a pocket while the putting was being done." The simple truth is that the one-hand way approximates very closely to the two-hand overlapping method. It is nearly the same thing, the same principle--all the work being done from one point. Upon thought, we often come to realise that what appear to be some of the most freakish methods of putting have the same fundamental principle at their base. Thus, take the case of Sherlock, who putts extremely well and consistently. He almost alone, among players of the game, holds his two hands wide apart on the handle of the putter, the left one uppermost, of course. This looks very strange, and at the first consideration it might seem that surely one hand will upset all the good work and reckoning that is done by the other. But the simple fact is that the left is so far away that it cannot interfere, and that is the secret of the quality of this method. When the left is close up to the right we cannot prevent it from meddling; we are unconscious of it when it is doing so; but get it far away and we have it in subjection, and all that it does in Sherlock's case is just to steady things up a little while the right hand does the business of the time.

Mr. Walter Travis, the most eminent American, than whose putting in the Amateur Championship he won at Sandwich nothing better has ever been seen since time and the game began, long since adopted a slight variation of this overlapping grip, specially for his putting, which, I think, has something to commend it. Instead of letting the little finger of the right hand rest on the forefinger of the left, he reverses the situation, and puts the forefinger of the left hand on the little one of the right, thus leaving the right hand in full possession of the grip, both thumbs being down the shaft. In the other way it is the left hand that has hold of the club with all its fingers, and it will now be remembered that while the left hand is the chief worker in driving and playing through the green, the right is the one that most frequently does the putting.

Having thus mentioned Mr. Travis, one can hardly refrain from quoting some of his instruction in this matter as he once conveyed it to me. "I believe," said he, "that putting should always be done with one hand--with one hand actively at work, that is. The left should be used only for the purpose of swinging the club backwards preparatory to making the stroke. When it has done that its work is ended and the right hand should then be sole master of the situation, the left being merely kept in attachment to it for steadying purposes. When only one hand is thus employed the gain in accuracy is very great. Two hands at work on a short putt or a long one tend to distraction. When the stroke is being made the grip of the right hand should be firm, but not tight, and after the impact the club-head should be allowed to pass clean through with an easy following stroke. The follow-through should indeed be as long as it is possible to make it comfortably, and, with this object in view, at the moment of touching the ball the grip of the fingers of the left hand should be considerably relaxed, so that the right hand may go on doing its work without interruption. Never hit or jerk the ball as so many players do. There is nothing that pays so well as the easy follow-through stroke."

Yet we find that there is less than ever of that easy follow-through being done in these days, and putting may be no better for the fact, almost certainly is not. These are days when old maxims are being abandoned and new systems are being proclaimed season by season. Jack White, a splendid putter and a magnificent heretic, lately declared that it is time to get rid of what has been regarded as the most inviolable of maxims, "Never up, never in," asserting that the determination to be past the hole in putting, if not in it, leads with these lively balls we now play with to far too many of them running out of holing distance on the other side. His counsel, therefore, is that the ball should be coaxed gently up to the hole with as much drag applied to it as can be. Then for years past it has been recommended that one of the best ways of managing the putting with these speedy balls is to have much loft on the putter, and so in that way do something to create the drag; but lately a change of opinion began to be made, and I am finding some of the best players using putters that are perfectly straight in the face, believing that by their agency they can putt more delicately and with a surer judgment of strength.

It is a little bewildering. Arnaud Massy, the French player who once won the Open Championship, and who is better at the putts of from six to ten or twelve feet than any man I know, says that he has come to believe that Nature has planted deep down in us a sixth sense, and it is that of putting. In the development of that sense lies the way to success. But after all such meditations as this, I go back to the remembrance of that wonderful little child who could never miss, and then from it all there emerges the only real secret of success in putting. The child has a quality which we elders do not enjoy, and never shall have it for any length of time. He knows not the hardness of the world. Having innocence and faith he looks trustingly upon it, and the old world and its four and a quarter inch hole is a little ashamed, perhaps. The child has Confidence.