s being the best and soundest, and that without knowing who had
prepared them. Time and the aggregate of pleasure given to golfers of
all degrees would justify the selection.

Therefore, when a new club is established and a new course is to be laid
out, I suggest that it is the wiser and the better plan to take time
over it and to secure the best advice. A good links is not made in a day
or a week. Perhaps the cleverest and most ingenious constructor could
not in a whole year make one which was in all respects the best that the
land could give. Almost every time that the course was played over
during the first hundred rounds, a new thought for its improvement in
some small detail would occur. The moving of a tee twenty yards to the
right, the addition of a couple of yards to the end of one of the
bunkers, the placing of a shallow pot bunker some eight or ten yards
across at some particular point--all these and many other matters of
equal significance will constantly suggest themselves. My experience
tells me that the perfection of a good course is slowly attained. Like
wine, it takes time for the richness of its qualities to mature.
Therefore, when the committee of a new club in the country sits in
conference with a plan of its newly-acquired land laid on the table, and
decides unanimously that a tee shall be placed at a point marked A, a
bunker along the line B, another bunker at C, and the hole at D, and so
forth, I protest that they are doing poor justice either to themselves
or to the game. But on many links made during the past few years--made
in a hurry--the results of such mechanical methods are only too
apparent. I hope that the few hints that I offer in this chapter may be
of service to old clubs with improvable courses and new ones with none
as yet, and to those fortunate individuals who contemplate laying out a
course in their private grounds for the use of themselves and their
friends. Private courses are increasing in number; and for my part,
though I must obviously be guilty of prejudice, I can conceive of no
more enjoyable acquisition to a country house than a nine-hole course,
and assuredly the possessor of it will be envied and his invitations to
week-ends much coveted.

The question of the amount of land that shall be called into service for
the fulfilment of a scheme for a new links is one that is usually
outside the control of those who project it. They have to cut according
to their cloth. I need o