careful coaching by those who are qualified for the task, and by
immediate and constant practice of the methods which I set forth, this
book may be of service to all who aspire to play a really good game. If
any player of the first degree of skill should take exception to any of
these methods, I have only one answer to make, and that is that, just
as they are explained in the following pages, they are precisely those
which helped me to win my five championships. These and no others I
practise every day upon the links. I attach great importance to the
photographs and the accompanying diagrams, the objects of which are
simplicity and lucidity. When a golfer is in difficulty with any
particular stroke--and the best of us are constantly in trouble with
some stroke or other--I think that a careful examination of the pictures
relating to that stroke will frequently put him right, while a glance at
the companion in the "How not to do it" series may reveal to him at once
the error into which he has fallen and which has hitherto defied
detection. All the illustrations in this volume have been prepared from
photographs of myself in the act of playing the different strokes on the
Totteridge links last autumn. Each stroke was carefully studied at the
time for absolute exactness, and the pictures now reproduced were
finally selected by me from about two hundred which were taken. In order
to obtain complete satisfaction, I found it necessary to have a few of
the negatives repeated after the winter had set in, and there was a
slight fall of snow the night before the morning appointed for the
purpose. I owe so much--everything--to the great game of golf, which I
love very dearly, and which I believe is without a superior for deep
human and sporting interest, that I shall feel very delighted if my
"Complete Golfer" is found of any benefit to others who play or are
about to play. I give my good wishes to every golfer, and express the
hope to each that he may one day regard himself as complete. I fear
that, in the playing sense, this is an impossible ideal. However, he may
in time be nearly "dead" in his "approach" to it.

I have specially to thank Mr. Henry Leach for the invaluable services he
has rendered to me in the preparation of the work

H.V.

TOTTERIDGE, _May 1905_.

CONTENTS

PAGE

CHAPTER I

GOLF AT HOME