will be invaluable
to him when he comes to play his own round, for he will now be possessed
of the most excellent hints as to difficulties which demand special
efforts to avoid, and of particular strokes which it is in the highest
degree necessary to play well. Not until he has watched the play of
others in this manner will the enormous significance of the position of
a particular bunker be made clear to him; he will discover the great
danger of being short with certain strokes, and of overrunning the green
at various holes. By thus watching other competitors' play he will
probably learn more about the nature and peculiarities of the course and
the way it is playing on this particular occasion, than if he were doing
a round with his own clubs. Therefore, if there is time to be killed,
this is most decidedly the way in which to kill it, and I may add that
it is the method which I myself adopt on every possible occasion. I know
that in championships and tournaments I have reaped great advantage in
watching closely the play of my fellow-competitors, their triumphs and
their failures, while waiting for my own turn to begin.

CHAPTER XVII

ON FOURSOMES

The four-ball foursome--Its inferiority to the old-fashioned
game--The case of the long-handicap man--Confusion on the
greens--The man who drives last--The old-fashioned two-ball
foursome--Against too many foursomes--Partners and each
other--Fitting in their different games--The man to oblige--The
policy of the long-handicap partner--How he drove and missed in the
good old days--On laying your partner a stymie--A preliminary
consideration of the round--Handicapping in foursomes--A too
delicate reckoning of strokes given and received--A good foursome
and the excitement thereof--A caddie killed and a hole lost--A
compliment to a golfer.

I think it is to be regretted that the old-fashioned foursome, in which
the respective partners play together with the same ball, has so
completely lost favour of late, and that it has been superseded to a
large extent by the four-ball foursome. To my mind the old foursome
provided a much more interesting and enjoyable game than its successor,
and tended much more to the cultivation of good qualities in a golfer.
It seems to me that this new four-ball game is a kind of mongrel
mixture. It is played, I presume, because men feel that they would like
to have a game of partners and