will be able to play something approaching to his best game
when he is in the mood for playing it. The acquaintance which is begun
in the shop is complete a few days later. But a man may see a golf club
which he strongly fancies and buy it, and yet find himself utterly
incapable of using it to good advantage. He may purchase club after
club, and still feel that there is something wanting in all of them,
something which he cannot define but which he knows ought to exist if
his own peculiar style of play is to be perfectly suited. Until he finds
this club he is groping in the dark. One driver may be very much like
another, and even to the practised eye two irons may be exactly similar;
but with one the golfer may do himself justice, and with the other court
constant failure. Therefore, the acquisition of a set of clubs, each
one of which enjoys the complete confidence of its owner, is not the
task of a week or even a year. There are some golfers who do not
accomplish it in many years, and happy are they when at last they have
done so. Then they have a very sincere attachment to each one of these
instruments, that have been selected with so much difficulty. It is not
always possible to give reasons for their excellence, for the subtle
qualities of the clubs are not visible to the naked eye. Their owners
only know that at last they have found the clubs that are the best for
them, and that they will not part with them for any money--that is, if
they are golfers of the true breed. In these days I always play with the
same set of irons. They are of different makes, and to the average
golfer they appear quite ordinary irons and very much like others of
their class. But they are the results of trials and tests of more than
one hundred clubs.

Therefore no golfer in his early days should run away with the idea that
he is going to suit himself entirely with a set of clubs without much
delay, and though his purse may be a small one, I feel obliged to
suggest that money spent in the purchase of new clubs which he strongly
fancies, during his first few years of play, is seldom wasted. Many of
the new acquisitions may be condemned after a very short trial; but
occasionally it will happen that a veritable treasure is discovered in
this haphazard manner. With all these possibilities in view, the
beginner, knowing nothing of golf, and being as yet without a style to
suit or any peculiar tastes that have to be gratified, should restrain