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184 with a cleek is ignominious and fatiguing withal. The player with only an ordinary capacity perhaps may feel really confident with only one club, and yet has to play with several; so of him it may be said that every stroke—except that played with one club—is a trial to his nerves. A fearless man is fearless because he has confidence, and to feel confidence is impossible when playing with a club that bitter experience has told you you cannot use.

Certain players, therefore, hate and cannot play with certain clubs; perhaps it may be said of a few, very few, that they play equally well or badly with all clubs. But even if this is true of clubs, there is yet another aspect of the question, and that is, the question of distance. I very much doubt whether any player in England could truthfully say that all distances were alike to him, that he played equally well or equally badly at a shot that wanted a 180-yards knock or a thirty. Take a stroke of eighty yards and one of forty, the mashie or some sort of lofted iron would be used for both these shots; and yet a player knows that at one distance he has a good chance of making a good stroke, at