the common enemy
has been beaten by a stroke. Perhaps the result is a record round, and,
so great is the enthusiasm for the game at this moment, that it is
regarded as a great misfortune that the sun has set and there is no more
light left for play. These are the times when the golfer's pulse beats
strong, and he feels the remorse of the man with the misspent youth
because he was grown up and his limbs were setting before ever he teed a
ball.

Well, at least I can say that I have not missed much of the game that I
love with a great fondness, for I played a kind of prehistoric golf when
I was a bad boy of seven, and off and on I have played it ever since. It
was fortunate for me that the common land at Jersey was years ago the
ideal thing for a golfing links, and that golfers from abroad found out
its secret, as they always do. If they had failed to do so in this case,
I might still have been spending my life in horticultural pursuits. For
I was born (on May 9, 1870) and bred in Jersey, at that little place
called Grouville, which is no more than a collection of scattered
cottages and farmhouses a few miles from St. Heliers. Both my parents
were natives of Jersey, and my father, who was seventy-four on the 5th
of last November, has been a gardener there all his life, holding the
proud record of having changed his place of employment only once during
the whole period. There was a big family of us--six boys and two
girls--and all, except one of my sisters, are still alive. My brothers
were George, Phil, Edward, Tom, and Fred, and I came fourth down the
list, after Edward. As most golfers know, my brother Tom, to whom I owe
very much, is now the professional at the Royal St. George's Club at
Sandwich, while Fred is a professional in the Isle of Man. In due course
we all went to the little village school; but I fear, from all that I
can remember, and from what I have been told, that knowledge had little
attraction for me in those days, and I know that I very often played
truant, sometimes for three weeks at a stretch. Consequently my old
schoolmaster, Mr. Boomer, had no particular reason to be proud of me at
that time, as he seems to have become since. He never enjoys a holiday
so much in these days as when he comes over from Jersey to see me play
for the Open Championship, as he does whenever the meeting is held at
Sandwich. But when I did win a Championship on that course, he was so
nervous and excited about my play and m