Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/193

158 handicapped or the game must suffer. There is no necessity for this in golf. If nature did not provide bunkers, the game would be so dull without them, and it would be so easy to make them, that made they would be, and made difficult. With a sufficient number of bunkers and hazards, however good the greens and lies through the greens may be, you nevertheless find that golf is not an easy game except when you are at the top of your form, and when that rare event happens, everything is easy in games and sports of all kinds. The links at Westward Ho afford a very practical illustration of a magnificent course made difficult by careful use of natural and artificial bunkers and hazards. The links, where not bunker or hazard, are all putting-green; every lie is good, but the golfer has to use all his skill to avoid these bunkers. Golf is therefore unlike cricket in this important respect, that the pitch or ground where you play the game can never be as a rule unduly easy; you can always remedy this to the great advantage of the game.

When we come to the question of clubs and balls, the state of things seems to be very