There has been lately a sort of revival of the game of attempting to punch another man so very hard that he can stand up no longer to make the smallest punch in answer. He has to be battered and pounded until he is made practically lifeless for a period of ten seconds, and then the other man is given the money. This is what we call the "noble art of self-defence," but, obviously, it is nine parts of such defence to reduce the other man to such a jellified condition that no more defence is needed. When well played it is a good game. Now golf never has been called a "noble" game at all. It is "royal" and it is "ancient," and it leaves its qualities to speak for themselves, as most eloquently they do. The boast has indeed been made for golf that, while in so many other English sports something flying or running has to be killed or injured, golf never calls for a drop of blood from any living creature. It is then inferred that it is a gentle game, as in some ways it really is. Also it has been demonstrated that it is a game at which elderly men may play and play quite well, as was proved in a recent year when golfers who are becoming older than they like to think of won so many of the trophies. But the result of this boom in the noble art of squashing another man for a prize of a few thousand pounds and the brave words that some of the lovers of this sport sometimes use, telling us that things like this made English hearts so strong, nearly giving us to understand that Sayers and his like had some influence on the fortunes of the British Empire, is that a kind of reflection is cast upon some other sports for their mildness and their timidity. Girls do not fight in rings and nearly kill each other, but girls can play golf and do, and they even play with men.

Let us consider the proposition that golf is a game that needs a greater and a stronger heart than any other game. It demands fine manliness, such determination as strong Englishmen are made of, and courage of the best. The strain of a severe golf competition on the men who win, or nearly, is enormous. No weakling has ever won success at golf, and never will. The truth is that it is such a game that if the charge is made that it is a brutal sport we can barely stand for its defence. For there is cruelty in golf, cold hurting cruelty in this game. If now you hesitate, consider. The difference between the effect of boxing and the effect of golf on the human system is that golf hurts more and the pain is more enduring, for it is psychological. That may seem like an attempted escape from the proposition, because it may be suggested that maiden aunts can and do bear such psychological pain at golf, and bear it well. But we discuss real golf of the championship kind, and match play wherein two good and keen players are really playing against each other, parry and thrust as it is in championship golf, with the issue in even balance most of the time, not taking sevens and eights and so being nearly indifferent to what the other may do until the clerking takes place on the putting green and the state of things is calculated.

Golf, as we know, is a game for the emotions. We agree that it plays upon them continually, and chiefly through the medium of the supreme emotion, hope. While this hope is the most uplifting of emotions, it is also, with the strain it makes, by far the most exhausting. Now every golfer knows that in the real game if a good stroke is made by one party the gain is not only in the extra nearness to the hole that his own ball obtains, but also by the "moral effect" the shot has on the other man. This other may have been in a good state of hope before; now he receives a sudden shock - and it is indeed a shock sometimes when in a second, as the result of the other's effort, his hope is reduced to fear or complete dejection. Do you think the man who made the shot does not know that? He knows it well. There! he knew! The dejected man has foozled, and the hole has gone. This bout is ended. There is a rest of a few seconds, and then the contestants start again and smash each other on the mind, just as they did the other time. Some may suggest that the effect of these mental hurts is small, that they draw no blood, and that they are not to be compared with a left hook on the jaw which sends a boxer toppling. To that there are replies to make. In the first place it has to be remembered that a match at golf between two good players (we do not now write of habitual foozlers in whom the golfing emotions cannot, in the nature of things, be well developed) is taken very seriously indeed, and therefore the emotional effect is greater than might be supposed by one who does not play. Second, the effect is cumulative, and every golfer knows again how intensely depressing is the continual fight against a relentless opponent who scores with nearly every stroke and never lets one's hope burn bright again. Bang goes every shot of his on the sensitive temperament of his foe, and that is exactly why temperament has all to do with success at golf. It is the man who can stand punishment who wins; no other sort ever has won in greater golf, or ever will. And then again, if it is suggested that mental pain is after all not such a hard thing to bear with courage as pain of body, let us ask which has the longer effect, remembering also that, with full respect to boxing people, the golfer is a man of keener feelings. In championships how often has a man who has had a punishing match in a morning round, one that has gone to the nineteenth hole or after before victory has come to him, won again in the afternoon? Not frequently. If you had merely with a fist blow knocked that man senseless for a little while before his lunch, he might have been readier for his golfer opponent in the afternoon. It is notorious that some of the finest play in championships has been accomplished by men who were enduring much physical suffering at the time. And again, how exactly is the effect of the winning putt on the defeated man like that of the knock-out blow. His last hope is extinguished with the suddenness of vanished consciousness. So this psychological pain is a very discomforting thing. The law recognises it, and herein the law is surely not an ass. We have the legal cruelty of the divorce court. Husband who tells his wife he dislikes her new hat or gown is held to have been cruel as though he had smacked her pretty face, or something worse than that. He could kiss away a red mark from a dimpled cheek, and surely if permitted he would do so, but nothing could change the judgment on the hat. And in golf the mental injury is more real than that.