and full of driving power. Usually the bare face of such a club is
good enough for contact with any ball on any tee, but the time will come
when the golfer, developing innumerable fads and fancies, will reach the
conclusion that he must have an artificial face of some kind fitted on
at the place of contact with the ball. Or such an artificial face may
become necessary by reason of the wear and tear on the face of the
driver. Why forsake the old leather face? There is an idea abroad in
these days that it is too soft and dead for the purposes of the new
rubber-cored ball; and the impression that the latter likes the very
hardest surface it is possible to apply to it has resulted in horn,
vulcanite, and even steel faces being fitted to drivers and brassies. I
do not think that in actual practice they are any better than leather,
though some golfers may persuade themselves that they are. If a man, who
is a good and steady driver, makes several drives from the tee with a
club which has a leather face, and several more with another possessing
a steel or vulcanite face, I am confident that he will on the average
get at least as far with the leather as with the other, and I shall be
surprised, if the test is fair and reliable, if he does not get further.
I have leather faces on my drivers, and I think that latterly I have
been driving further than I ever did. A point of objection to the
harder surfaces, which at times is very serious, is that the ball is
very much more liable to skid off them than off others, and thus the
golfer may often blame himself for shots that look like a mixture of
foozle and slice when the fault is not his at all, but that of the
peculiarity of the club with which he is so much in love. On the other
hand, it must be admitted that he scores over his opponent with the
leather-faced club when the weather is wet, for the leather is then
liable to soften and becomes very dead.

Never select a club because it has a long head, but let your preference
be in favour of the shorter heads. The beginner, or the player of only
moderate experience, puts it to himself that it is a very difficult
thing always to strike the ball fairly on the face of the club, and that
the longer the face is the more room he has for inaccuracy of his
stroke. But he is wrong. Whatever the length of the face, unless the
ball is hit fairly and squarely in the centre, it will not travel
properly, and the effect is really worse when the poin