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Reminiscences of Golf on St. Andrews Links/Hints on Golf
Reminiscences of Golf on St Andrews Links/Hints on Golf Author:James Balfour, Horace G. Hutchinson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 45 HINTS TO GOLFERS OF RIPER YEARS. TF you lose your temper you will most likely -- lose the match. Most great golfers, and some others, have certain id... more »iosyncrasies of manner and gesture, which are brought out in course of playing the game, but are quite unconnected with their actual method of striking the ball. Do not make it the object of your assiduous study to imitate these little tricks. It may be only inunessential peculiarities that your game at all resembles theirs. Genius is the gift of few, though all can affect its eccentricities. Even the worst golfer can play the game perfectly so far as observance of the rules is concerned ; yet even the best often do not. If your ball, as you are addressing it, rolls over, a quarter of an inch, from contact with your club, it is as truly a stroke as the longest shot ever driven from the tee. Do not, therefore, ask your adversary " if he wants you to count that?" or coolly replace it, remarking that " you suppose that does not matter." If an adversary makes such an appeal to you, and you have too great a regard for his feelings to insist upon your rights, you will find it a good means of rebuke, after acquiescing in his breach of the law, to make a similar error yourself shortly after, and when he requests you to put the ball backwithout penalty, to remark that "you always play the game." If he should oinit to make this request, your case is indeed a hard one; but you need have no delicate scruples about wounding his feelings in the future. Certainly it would be far more satisfactory if it were universally understood that the game was to be played according to the strict rigour of its rules. Do not use a long club when a short one will answer your purpose better. It is better to be five yards short of a bunker than fiv...« less