Removal of natural
disadvantages--"Penny wise and pound foolish"--The selection of
teeing grounds--A few trial drives--The arrangement of long and
short holes--The best two-shot and three-shot holes--Bunkers and
where to place them--The class of player to cater for--The shots to
be punished--Bunkers down the sides--The best putting greens--Two
tees to each hole--Seaside courses.

Many as are the golf courses with which the coast, the country, and the
suburbs of the towns and cities of Great Britain are studded, they will
no doubt be still more numerous as time goes on, and it is earnestly to
be desired that in the laying out of links in the future, more thought
and ingenuity may be exercised than has been the case in far too many
instances during the past few years, when clubs have been formed and
links have been made in a hurry. Certainly some are excellent, and I
cast not the least disparagement upon them. I enjoy them. Frequently the
hand of the master architect of golf is visible where one observes how
shrewdly and exactly the hazards have been placed, and the peculiarities
of the conformation of the country turned to the utmost account when
useful, or cunningly dodged when it has been considered that they could
be no good to the golfer. Without a doubt, generally speaking, those
courses are the best which have been designed by good players, because
none know better than they what makes the best golf. A man whose
handicap is some distance removed from scratch, but who has played golf
for many years, and thinks with good reason that he knows a fine course
when he sees one, would nevertheless, in designing a new one, be led
unconsciously to make holes which would be more or less suited to his
own style of play. He might, indeed, in a most heroic spirit, place a
bunker at a point which he knew would be more than usually dangerous for
him, and he would feel a better and a braver man for this act; but a
hundred of its kind would not prevent the course from being the ideal of
the long-handicap man and not the ideal of the fine player. If plans
were prepared for a new links over a particular piece of territory by a
12-handicap man and a scratch player, it is highly probable that in the
most material matters they would differ greatly, and it is fairly
certain that a committee of the oldest and most experienced golfers
would unanimously pick out the scratch player's plans from all the
others a