Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/201

166 because modern methods of the treatment of grounds has revolutionised the wicket, which has become so easy that almost any fool can bat. In golf, on the other hand, the links are very much the same, so are some of the clubs also; and if balls are considered, it is so long since the feather sorts were used, that for purposes of comparison we may begin from the year when gutta-percha superseded the old feather ball. The only basis to start from, which may account for the development of golf, is that of numbers, the increase, that is, of golf links and the golf invasion of England. We are all wearied with statistics in these days, so I certainly shall not encumber these pages with figures. I leave it to any casual reader to fix in his own mind how many golf links there are in England and Wales now, and merely quote the single figure 1, as representing the exact number of links outside Scotland in 1868. What this means and how this affects the whole game of golf it is impossible to say, but affect it enormously it must. Thirty years ago there were hundreds of undeveloped golfers who never had an opportunity