Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/273

230 to enable a dangerous bunker or hazard to be "carried." Our golf hero nevertheless brings off the stroke: his adversary is tempted to try and do the same, and the result is disaster. He is not affected by a strong cross wind, and cheerfully takes his brassey and hits a long ball out of a cuppy lie. He may have a ten yards' putt to win or halve a hole; he takes time and care and the ball goes down; and lastly, as has been pointed out before, the golfing hero produces more or less of a paralysis in his opponents. It is the same at all games; the field are nervous when the batting hero is in, and he is more often missed than the ordinary batsman. In golf the genius is always tempting his mediocre rival to imitate him. If the genius drives a long ball, his rival presses to do the same and tops the ball into a bunker; and it is the same with a brassey shot through the green.

It is this nervousness, which all golfers seem to possess when playing against the Vardon and Taylor of the day, that really decides the issue. The golf hero may even be a little "off" his game, but somehow in a match the opponent cannot take advantage of this. He is conscious