Spirit of the links

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36 THE SPIRIT OF THE LINKS
year when he really does play his best, his real
game. The only time when he does not believe
that he plays his best game in the spring is in the
spring.
The fact is that the conditions of springtime are
rather made up of a set of contradictions of a very
aggravating character, and they often play the
devil with the game of this Average Golfer, the
system of which is not too firmly consolidated.
This person, one takes it, is a man of medium young
to middle age, a great enthusiast, of good means, one
more or less constantly engaged in business, having
a fair number of social obligations to attend to in
evenings, and a golfing handicap of somewhere
between six and twelve. This man is possibly
afflicted with a troublesome liver, and this organ has
a peculiar and most aggravating way of asserting
itself in the springtime as it has at no other season.
Then it is up to all kinds of tricks, the entire physical
system of the man is disarranged and thrown out of
gear, and the result is that when all Nature is smiling
and the larks are piping as though their little throats
would burst with the fulness of their melody, the
erstwhile hopeful golfer is in a wretched state of
mind, trying new stances for his drive, new ways of
gripping, a swing much longer or much shorter than
usual, and manoeuvring with his strokes in all other
kinds of ways, in the vain hope that he might be per-
mitted to drive at least as well as he did in January,
instead of foundering one ball in three and lifting up
one of the others high towards the heavens. But
there is compensation in the increased hopefulness of
spring. The game may be poor, weaker than it was
hoped to be. But it will mend; it will surely mend.
I
,-WWI