g
some point to a recommendation that I shall have to make later on. Never
in my life have I putted better than I did in those two rounds. If, when
I had a putt the whole length of the green, I did not actually rattle it
into the tin, I laid it stone dead on the lip of the hole; on no green
did I take more than two putts. Yet in the various rounds I had played
on several days before my putting had been very indifferent. How came
this remarkable change? It seems to me that it was entirely due to a
chance visit that I paid to Ben Sayers's shop when I was at North
Berwick in the interval between tieing with Taylor and playing the
deciding rounds. I told the clubmaker who was in charge that I was off
my putting, and wanted a new putter. Hitherto I had been playing with
one of the bent-necked variety. While I was looking about the shop my
eye was attracted by an old cleek that lay in a corner--a light and
neglected club, for which nobody seemed to have any use. The strange
idea occurred to me that this would make a grand putter, and so I told
the man to take out the old shaft and put a new and shorter one in, and
when this process had been completed I determined to experiment with it
in the play-off with Taylor. I fancied this new discovery of mine and
had confidence in it, and that was why I got all those long putts down
and achieved the golfer's greatest ambition. But though I keep it still
and treasure it, I have never played with that putter since. It has done
its duty.

I must tell just one other story concerning this Muirfield Championship.
Among the favourites at the beginning of operations were Ben Sayers and
Andrew Kirkaldy, and a victory on the part of either of them would have
been most popular in the North, as it would have settled the cup on the
other side of the Tweed. Ben was rather inclined to think his own
prospects were good. Someone asked him the day before the meeting who
was the most likely Champion. "Jist gie me a wun' an' I'll show ye
wha'll be the Champion," he replied, and he had some reason for the
implied confidence in himself, for he knew Muirfield very well, and no
one had better knowledge of how to play the strokes properly there when
there was a gale blowing over the course, and pulling and slicing were
constantly required. But neither Ben nor Andrew was as successful as was
wished, and not unnaturally they thought somewhat less of Muirfield than
they had done before. Therefore it was not fair