Old curler's letters to his nephew

3
0
AN OLD CURLER'S LETTERS
ing to them " that the old devil who was
skipping against me to-day couldn't curl at
all. He only played three decent shots the
whole time, and by bad luck he cut us out of
a sitting five with his first one and scored a
three and a four end respectively against us
with his other two." My dear boy, there was
no fluke at all about it. The actual fact of
the matter was that for the first time in your
life you were up against a real skip, past his
best, no doubt, and yet you failed to realise
it. What you entirely omitted to observe
was that the " old devil," as you call him,
(i) was getting his men cheerily to do the
hard work, and do it well, and (z) still re-
tained the supreme quality in a skip of being
able to rise to the occasion and steadying his
team by playing his three good shots when
they were needed. Where so many skips
who are excellent curlers signally fail is that
through temperament or otherwise, they,
unlike your old devil, select the critical
occasions as the most suitable times to play
the few bad shots which they play during the
whole game.
I used to consider in a tight golf match that