He is on a smooth green which looks so fast that it terrifies him, while if it should slope slightly down hill he is more terrified still. Why is it more of a trial to nerves than billiards, which is wholly a question of strength with a reasonable amount of accuracy? The player with only an ordinary capacity perhaps may feel really confident with only one club, and yet has to play with several; so of him it may be said that every stroke-except that played with one club-is a trial to his nerves. In one sense it was refreshing for an ordinary mortal to see great men fail in the way they did, for we could all flatter ourselves we could quote this instance as a proof of how hard putting was, when we failed ourselves. We all admire the gentlemanlike courtesy with which some accept their fate, and play with some opponent of about the same age, or in congenial foursomes; but how painful, and yet how humorous is the sight of a man who under similar circumstances becomes irritable, fussy, fidgety, a pitiful sight to men and angels. He or she must try to tag the kids, who are trying to jump from square to square, when they land in the hot zone.

If you dislike long losing hazards, you must and can try and play the cannon and potting game at the top of the table; if you hate those strokes, because you cannot do them, play an open game and go in for losing hazards from baulk. In football you run your hardest and kick your hardest, and few spectators are much the wiser; and a nervous man can always hit hard at golf off the tee and through the green, for as he has not got to think of strength, he is less likely to fidget and foozle the ball. I have played many games in my time, but I confidently say that for a test of nerve, golf is far the most trying game in the world, and next to it billiards. I watched a final match once in the amateur championship, in which two most distinguished amateurs were struggling for the mastery, and both drove and played through the green as well as could be desired, and both putted in a way that a charity-school boy would have been ashamed of.

But he is somewhat pachydermatous and case-hardened when he gets on the green, and it is astonishing what a difference a deadly long putt can make in the fortunes of a match. The cue ball is then placed behind the head string, and the game can begin. In cricket you either hit a ball as hard as you like or you merely stop; that at any rate is the case when you first go in, and when you are nervous. But it is true of golf that you will find it impossible to avoid being compelled some time or other to play with a club you have little confidence in, and to negotiate distances you hate. The middle-aged player perhaps realises the fact that golf is a game, while to the youngster it is business: the veteran plays philosophically, and if he does this he may very likely find himself putting respectably.

Take a stroke of eighty yards and one of forty, the mashie or some sort of lofted iron would be used for both these shots; and yet a player knows that at one distance he has a good chance of making a good stroke, at the other distance his heart goes into his boots. A man who foozles his drive and slices his approach, but who is nevertheless always down in two strokes after he has got on the putting-green, if not in one, is very hard to beat except his opponent is a really good player. To prove how much nerve is the first, second, and third necessity in putting, you may take a man of thirty years old who has been and perhaps still is a good cricketer, and has a good eye for games generally. But putting has to be gone through every hole, and no golfer exists who does not know that putting is more than half a matter of nerve and nerve only. For some reason which it is impossible to explain, golfers always seem to be far more frightened at being two yards beyond the hole than they are at being two yards short.

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