for as
surely as anything he will be a long driver in good time.

In the course of this volume there are several chapters describing the
way in which the various strokes should be played, but I am no believer
in learning golf from books alone. I do not think it likely that the
professional teacher who is giving the pupil lessons will disagree with
any of the chief points of the methods that I explain, and, read in
conjunction with his frequent lessons at the beginning of his golfing
career, and later on studied perhaps a little more closely and
critically, I have hope that they will prove beneficial. At all events,
as I have already suggested, in the following pages I teach the system
which has won Championships for me, and I teach that system only.

It is perhaps too much to hope, after all, that any very large
proportion of my readers will make up their minds to the
self-sacrificing thoroughness which I have advocated, and undertake a
careful preparation of from three to six months' duration before really
attempting to play golf. If they all did so we should have some fine new
players. It is because they do not learn to play in this way that so few
good players are coming to the fore in these days. One is sometimes
inclined to think that no new golfer of the first class has come forward
during the last few years. In my opinion it is all due to the fact that
nowadays they learn their game too casually.

CHAPTER IV

THE CHOICE AND CARE OF CLUBS

Difficulties of choice--A long search for the best--Experiments
with more than a hundred irons--Buy few clubs to begin with--Take
the professional's advice--A preliminary set of six--Points of the
driver--Scared wooden clubs are best--Disadvantages of the
socket--Fancy faces--Short heads--Whip in the shaft--The question
of weight--Match the brassy with the driver--Reserve clubs--Kinds
of cleeks--Irons and mashies--The niblick--The putting problem--It
is the man who putts and not the putter--Recent inventions--Short
shafts for all clubs--Lengths and weights of those I use--Be
careful of your clubs--Hints for preserving them.

The good golfer loves his clubs and takes a great and justifiable pride
in them. He has many reasons for doing so. Golf clubs are not like most
other implements that are used in sport. A man may go to a shop and pick
out a cricket bat or a billiard cue with which he may be tolerably
certain he