true cause is blamed for the extraordinary things he does. A fair
sample of many others was the clergyman who, having missed a short putt
when playing in a match over a Glasgow links, espied in the distance on
an eminence fully a quarter of a mile away from the green, an innocent
tourist, who was apparently doing nothing more injurious to golf than
serenely admiring the view. But the clerical golfer, being a man of
quick temper, poured forth a torrent of abuse, exclaiming, "How could I
hole the ball with that blockhead over there working his umbrella as if
it were the pendulum of an eight-day clock!" When this is the kind of
thing that is happening, I advise the golfer to try variations in his
stance for putting, effecting the least possible amount of change at a
time. There is a chance that at last he will drop into his natural
stance, or something very near it, and even if he does not there is some
likelihood that he will gain a trifle in confidence by the change, and
that will count for much. And anyhow there is ample justification for
any amount of manoeuvring of the body and the feet when one is off
one's putting, for at the best, to make use of something like an
Irishism, the state of things is then hopelessly bad, and every future
tendency must be in the way of improvement. There is one other
suggestion to make to those golfers who believe what I say about the
natural stance, and by this time it will have become more or less
obvious to them. It is that when they are fairly on their putting, and
are apparently doing all that Nature intended them to do, and are
feeling contented in body and mind accordingly, they should take a sly
but very careful look at their feet and body and everything else just
after they have made a successful long putt, having felt certain all the
time that they would make it. This examination ought not to be
premeditated, because that would probably spoil the whole thing; and it
usually happens that when one of these long ones has been successfully
negotiated, the golfer is too much carried away by his emotions of
delight to bring himself immediately to a sober and acute analysis of
how it was done. But sometime he may remember to look into the matter,
and then he should note the position of everything down to the smallest
detail and the fraction of an inch, and make a most careful note of them
for future reference. It will be invaluable. So, as I hold that putting
is a matter of Nature and