Now we hear very much about 300-yard drives, which one is half given to understand have become the regular thing with the most modern balls; but we know, as a matter of fact, that the average man does not drive anything like this distance, and that he would give a part of his income to be able to drive as far as some of the very best girls do at the championships. They achieve their distance not at all by hard hitting, for they hit quite gently, but by long, free swinging, perfect timing, and especially by full following through, that is to say, they swing in just the same way as it was necessary for the best men players to swing in the days of the gutty ball. They finish their swings with the club head and shaft right round their backs and their hands well up; I saw some of them who made nearly as perfect models of the golf swing as Harry Vardon does in the picture made of him by Mr. George Beldam and in the statuette by Mr. Hal Ludlow. Their style was most excellent and it was a fine thing to see. Necessity has caused it. These girls have not the strength of arm, wrist, and fingers to get a good length in the same way that men get, or try to get it now; the rubber-cored ball has not made the game so easy for them that they can dispense with an inch of the fullest swing that they can make. They seem to use their wrists but little, and all their movements are as smooth and harmonious as they can be. In this way they drive many yards farther than the average man golfer does. In the Amateur Championship you will not see one man in three drive the ball in this way now. Short swinging, imperfect following through, and a jerky, snappy kind of hitting have become almost general now that the balls can be so easily driven by the exercise of mere wrist power. The result is that good style in driving has become very rare among men. From the point of view of results obtained this is well enough for men who play in championships; they drive much farther than the best girls do, though I do not think that they are generally so straight. But the average golfer, consciously or unconsciously, copies his superiors, and most of them have now no style and do not know the sensuous pleasure that is obtained from a full swing, a clean hit, and the complete finish which seems to give a thrill to every nerve in the system. Then, if these men with all their jerks and wrist strain still do not get that length to which they may think they are entitled - as most of them do not - would it not be worth while to go back to the old way of better style and practise most assiduously at the full swing until they get it right? The very best girls show evidence of fine schooling in this matter. They hit the ball with marvellous cleanness. In a large proportion of cases the advice to male players in these days to swing short and hit hard is sound so far as mere results are concerned. But all men are not so strong in the forearm as they may think, and they do not get the length they seek, while another thing to remember is that the long complete swing when once mastered is less frequently thrown out of gear than the short one, which is a very difficult thing to keep in order.

Then there is something to notice also in the preliminaries to the drive as the really good girls go through them. Not all players suspect what a deep influence the preliminary waggling of the club has on the subsequent swing. The influence is enormous, and the way that the majority of male players waggle is one that directly encourages jerky hitting. You will find that they tighten their wrists as they lay the club to the ball and move the head of the club back in two or three short, quick movements, rarely letting the head go forward over the ball. This is strongly conducive to a fast back-swing, a fast on-swing, and no follow through. It makes for the hard hit pure and simple. Now many girls who get long balls by big swings keep their wrists very loose in the waggling and allow the head of the club to swing easily backwards and forwards like a pendulum two or three times, four or five feet in front of and behind the ball each time, so that when the real swing is entered upon it is almost a continuation of the waggle and is made at much the same pace. This is a direct encouragement to the long swing, long follow through, and smooth rhythm of the entire movement. Between the man's waggle and his swing when done in the manner described there is no sort of connection whatever, and the driving is always much the poorer for the fact.

Again, in the putting the ladies' play is full of morals for men. I do not hesitate to say, after an immense amount of observation, that the putting of many of the girls at their championship is quite as good as most of that we see in the men's Amateur Championship. They are deadly with the short putts up to two yards, and they hole the long ones with astonishing frequency. They come to their conclusions speedily as to what is the proper thing to do, and, having done so, they make their strokes with no further hesitation. We see very little tedious and laborious examination of the line, and, we may be sure, that they are the gainers for it. In the men's Amateur Championship the wearisome ways of some of the competitors are notorious. They study the line meditatively from north, south, east, and west, convince themselves of the existence of influences which do not in reality exist at all, next they hang over the ball with their putter addressed to it until one suspects them of having fallen into a cataleptic state, and then they miss the putt. The girls putt with a great confidence and accuracy. Of course these eulogiums refer only to the best of the lady golfers; between them and the others there is a very big gap, and it would be ridiculous to pretend that the average championship girl is yet within miles, as it were, of the corresponding man. But she has ways that the average man might often copy to advantage. Miss Cecil Leitch, who is surely the finest mistress of golfing method and style that her sex has ever yielded to the game, and is splendidly worthy of the championship that at last, after much waiting, she won at Hunstanton in the summer of 1914, comes as near to being a perfect model as any one I can think of. She has graced a masculine way in golf with some feminine delicacy, and there is art, there is science, and there is rhythm in all her golfing movements. And she is splendidly accurate. Her iron play is a thing to be admired, and one might say of her as one cannot of all players who have been many years at the game, whatever may have been their success, that she is indeed a golfer.