Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/181

146 readily be said that inasmuch as golf can be played by men and women to really an advanced age, it is a game for age as opposed to youth. Rowing, football, hockey, and polo are really for the period of life that ends at thirty. Cricket in moderation may go on to forty, but golf may be played in foursomes, and one round a day style by men as long as they can walk. The drives become shorter and the handicap gets longer; but as the famous old St. Andrews player, Tom Morris, and the late Mr. Whyte Melville show, you can play to eighty years of age if lumbago and rheumatism, and active disease, which of course prevents everything, does not interfere. Golf is a very great game on account of its elasticity. The youth may play it in such a way that it becomes a test of physical endurance that only youth can supply; but the old and comparatively feeble can also play it, and play it well, with intense enjoyment, because the game adapts itself to practically every physical condition. I know no other outdoor game of which this can be said. There are men who play country cricket after fifty years of age, but they are very few in number,