and he needs much local knowledge to be sure whether he is ten yards short or stone dead; a better hole than it was, maybe, but not quite worthy of Sunningdale yet.

The fifth and sixth are beautiful holes, and the tee-shot to the fifth sends the blood coursing more briskly through the veins. There is an exhilaration in driving from a height and rushing thence down a steep place on to the course which cannot be gainsaid. The more scientific may point out that there is no justification for such emotion and that we have far less on which to plume ourselves than if we had struck our tee-shot from the flat. The fact remains that hitting off a high place, if it be not done too often and we are not too scant of breath, is wholly delightful; the difficulty is that we are so intoxicated with the situation that we hit much too hard and the ball totters feebly down the hill-side, suffering from a severe wound in the scalp.

The drive from this particular high place having been safely accomplished, there is an accurate second shot, which varies greatly in length according to the wind, to be played between a pond on the right and a bunker on the left. Some will pitch it and pitch into the pond; others will run it and run into the bunker, and Mr. Colt will play a peculiar low, scuffling shot straight on the pin and win it from us in a four, which will very nearly be a three. Another wonderfully good two-shot hole is the sixth, where the green lies in the angle of a wood, and we must hold our second shot well up to the left so that the ball shall trickle slowly down the sloping green towards the hole; that is supposing we have hit a straight tee-shot, a thing by no means certain, for there is a horribly attractive clump of fir-trees to the left which catches many and which once proved particularly fatal to Jack White in a big match against Tom Vardon.

The seventh is a bone of contention, some averring that it is a fine ‘sporting’ hole, while others have no names too bad for it; when not alluded to with profanity it is generally known as the ‘Switch-back’ hole. Those who like a blind tee-shot and a blind second will admire it, and those who don’t wont, and there is the whole matter in a very small compass. The eighth is quite a good short hole now (it used to be bad and blind and stupid); and the ninth we may skip, although there is a fine straight tee-shot needed, and then from the tenth tee we drive down another steep place into the lower country. Those who make a loud outcry when they drive “a perfect tee-shot, sir, straight on the pin,” and find it in a bunker, may here have cause for annoyance. There is no bunker on the straight line, but there are bunkers to right and left and a somewhat narrow space between, and a shot that is very, very nearly well hit sometimes finds a resting-place in one or other of them. It is a poor thing, however, to demand perfect immunity for any respectable drive, and the shot that is placed where it ought to be gives the chance for a really fine second shot between more bunkers on to a green of fascinating but fiendish undulations. At the back of the green is a hut, where live ginger-beer and apples and other things, and he who has done the hole in four fully deserves them. This tenth hole will be celebrated in golfing history for a truly tremendous second shot played by Braid out of the left-hand bunker in the final round of the News of the World tournament, his opponent being Edward Ray. Braid calls it in his book the most remarkable bunker shot that he ever played, and that is praise indeed. Poor Ray! He had a perfect tee-shot and a perfect second, laid his third stone dead, and yet lost the hole, for Braid, having driven into the left-hand bunker from the tee, gallantly took his iron for his second, reached the green with a terrific shot, and completed the roll of his infamies by holing his putt for a three.

Provided we do not top our tee-shot into a formidable sandy bluff, the eleventh should be done in four, with a chance of a three; and the twelfth should be another four, if only we can be straight enough from the tee. This is a hole to be approached warily and in instalments, and the prudent man generally takes a cleek or a spoon from the tee, and even then breathes a fervent thanksgiving if his ball lies clear, since the fairway narrows down to a horribly small point.

The thirteenth, as I said, was once one of the very worst holes in the world, and is now a thoroughly attractive one; the player must produce some stroke whereby the ball shall sit resolutely down on a slanting green surrounded by bunkers, and stay there. The fourteenth is a two-shot hole for Mr. Angus Hambro, and rather more for most other people, save under favourable conditions. Then comes another short hole—I should have said there were four and not three—but this is a long short hole; a wooden club shot is often needed, and when that wooden club shot has to be held up into a stiff right-hand wind, the difficulties of the situation are not easily to be overrated.

Then we face homewards with three good long holes, all of which may be done in fours, though most people would thankfully strike a bargain with Providence for two fours and a five. The most difficult of the three, as is only right and fitting, is a seventeenth hole, and here Mr. Colt has worked a great transformation and turned a hole that once possessed no merits whatever into a thoroughly good one, with a most difficult second shot—one of those shots which produce an instinctive and fatal tendency to slice. After that two good, straight, steady shots should get us safely on to the home green, and we have finished at last; if we have done a score which is perceptibly lower than 80, we have done well. If we have not been too frequently ‘up to our necks’ in untrodden heather—nay, even if we have—we ought to have enjoyed ourselves immensely.

From Sunningdale we go to Walton Heath—a thing far easier to accomplish in the imagination than by a cross-country journey, and there we have another fine, long slashing course laid out in the grand manner, especially to suit the rubber-cored ball.

The course is the work of Mr. Herbert Fowler, who is perhaps the most daring and original of all golfing architects, and gifted with an almost inspired eye for the possibilities of a golfing country. He is essentially ferocious in his methods, and there is no one else who is quite so merciless in the punishing of shots that are quite respectable, that are in fact so nearly good that the striker of them, in the irritation of the moment, calls them perfect. This fell design he will accomplish either by trapping the long shot that is almost straight but not straight enough or by planting his green amid a perfect network of bunkers. The result is that there will always be found some to call down maledictions upon his head, and in truth some of his devices are almost fiendish, but they are nearly always interesting.

The trend of modern golfing architecture is all against the old-fashioned cross-bunkers, which used as a matter of course to be dug at regular intervals across the fairway, but, curiously enough, the cross-bunker plays a not unimportant part at Walton. Two holes in particular come to mind, the long seventh and eighth, where bunkers have to be crossed and cannot be circumvented, while the crossing of them in the proper number of strokes is a very essential matter, since the necessity of playing short often involves the loss of a whole stroke.

Wild and bleak and merciless the course looks—a vast tract of wind-swept heather. In truth it is a very long one, and the casual visitor often brings against it a charge of monotonous length, but when he has played there more often he will probably discover