your bag. Then at the third hole let the new one
have its trial. Over and over again have I found this method succeed
most wonderfully, and I am a particular believer in it in connection
with putters. A golfer may have been putting badly for a long time, but
directly he takes a new putter in his hand he feels that a great change
for the better has been effected, and forthwith he begins to astonish
himself by holing out from almost anywhere, or at least always getting
his ball dead the first time. There is no accounting for these things.
They seem very absurd. But there they are, and no doubt it will be
agreed that a medal or a cup is worth a new putter any time.

I do not believe in any sort of training for important golf matches. It
is not necessary, and it generally upsets the man and throws him off his
game. If he is a smoker let him smoke all the time, and if he likes an
occasional glass of wine let him take it as usual. A sudden stoppage of
these luxuries causes a feeling of irritation, and that is not good for
golf. The game does not seem the same to you as it was before. For my
part I am neither a non-smoker nor an abstainer, and I never feel so
much at ease on the links and so fully capable of doing justice to
myself as when smoking. But at the same time I believe in the most
complete moderation. Only by the constant exercise of such moderation
can that sureness of hand and eye be guaranteed which are absolutely
necessary to the playing of good golf. On one occasion when I had a
championship in view I stopped the tobacco for a short period
beforehand, and I am bound to confess that the results seemed excellent,
and perhaps some day I may repeat the experiment. But there was nothing
sudden about the abstinence in this case, and by the time the big days
came round I had become thoroughly accustomed to the new order of
things, and the irritation had passed away. However, these are matters
which every man may be left to decide for himself according to his own
good common sense, and the only object I had in introducing them was to
counsel the avoidance of sudden whims and freaks, which are never good
for golf.

Another question is how much or how little golf should be played
beforehand when a man desires to give himself the best chance of playing
his best game on a certain specified day. That depends largely upon how
much golf he is in the habit of playing in the ordinary course. If he is
a man who plays regularly,