Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/222

Rh knows there come times or spells of times when all skill with one class of club seems to vanish. A great player—I may say a very great player—once told me that he had been unable to drive off the tee to his satisfaction for no less a period than four years—this player must have been more than human if to a greater or less degree he was not during all that time in an important match troubled with nerves when he took his stand on the tee. Driving off the tee for the majority of players is, I should say, on the whole the stroke where less foozling or bad play takes place than in any other stroke, and yet here is the case of a great player failing at it for four years, when he was very near the prime of life. Mr. Hilton, who has twice won the Championship, has said somewhere that he uses wooden clubs, brasseys, and spooned wooden clubs of sorts all through the green simply because he is absolutely unable to use iron clubs and play a champion's game with them. But Mr. Hilton has to take out an iron club, because there are some occasions when it is absolutely impossible to use any other club. If a man is off his drive he nevertheless has to play with his driver or brassey off the tee, for to drive