Old Age, Gender and Physical Activity The 'older the more valuable' Philosophy and Golf The Allurement of Golf The Moral Value of Golf Every Golfer His Own Doctor The Up Swing - Golf Different forms of Swing - Golf The Making of a Putting Green A Few Golf Maxims Watering Greens The Right and the Left Hand "Strength is Health”: George Barker Windship Health Through Sport Learning to Svim Svimming Learning to Svim - Complete Confidence of Pupil Swimming - Dog Fashion The Great American Spa Boom How to Train the Body for Health and Poise Medicine, Science and Sport Running Back to Nature The Changing Face of Rugby League The Bicycle and Tricycle as Aids to Health and Recreation Passive Smoking What is Strength? Health Insurance Decisions What Makes Man a Sprinter? What to Fish for in February? Sport and its Economic and Social Importance Use of Weights for Health Long live the Revolution British Football Does Ageing Drive Health Expenditures Medicare: Policy Issues Indoor Training for Outdoor Sport Starting and Starters Insured versus Not Insured A Case for Bilateral Taxation and Amenity Rights Theories of the Universe Babylonian Astrology The Wrath of Heaven The Displaced Zodiac and the Beginnings of Astronomy The Duty of the Son of Heaven: Orientation Time Was Once Relative Why Mohammed Needed Astronomers Hamburgers - Sunday and Holiday Variations	Philosophy and Golf "I came to the conclusion that the greatest pleasure was to be derived from a study of the various possible strokes, and further, by degrees, to a consequent position, which has ever since been my steady view point. I determined that for the amateur the playing of the game, not the winning of it, is the greatest good. This point having been settled, it became plain that almost as great intellectual and physical pleasure could be obtained from the play whether the player were a winner or a loser. In a game both sides strive to get the verdict, but the verdict is not really important; it is the striving which makes the game worth the energy expended" I quote these words from a declaration of faith and performance that Mr. Low once made to me at my request for use in some public way, because not only do they seem to present to us at once, well explained and defined, the splendid golfer whom we are about to consider, but because also they embrace a point in golfing philosophy—and indeed in the philosophy of all games—that is of quite supreme importance. It behooves every player for his happiness' sake that he shall take this philosophy into his deep and independent consideration, and judge closely upon the great fundamental truth that it embraces. It is of great importance that this should be done. Upon it depends entirely the player's attitude towards this pastime for as long as he shall be devoted to it, which, most generally, as we know, is always. And it is of more importance in this present era than ever it was, for it has come about that in the general scheme of golfing things competitions have assumed a most extravagant degree of importance. It was not always so, and it is unfortunate because an excess of competitions and a passionate devotion to them such as is exercised by so many modern players, is bad both for the golfer and for golf, and it is unfortunate again in that this game is really less dependent upon the competitive element than any other. It provides all that is necessary in the way of competition in itself. With its faithful and most resourceful ally, Nature, it places itself in opposition to the player, and they twain fight each other. And it is a desperate fight at times. I can compare it only to angling, and is the golfer indeed not always angling for the hole? He has Nature and the wayward ball always against him, and he exercises all the art and science of stroke and the choice of materials that are at his disposal for the overthrow of the opposing circumstances. In this there is a most absorbing study, and the completeness of the game in itself with but one person given to it is sufficiently indicated in the fact that each one of us may and does often go out alone to the links with clubs and balls and there finds sufficient entertainment and a full measure of the pleasure of real combat. There are indeed a few happy and contented men to whom this lonely, and contemplative way is quite enough and rarely seeking the introduction to their studies of a third and human element. Sometimes it seems that such introduction is a needless complication, disturbing to the complacency achieved in the other and simpler golf. It is as if in angling we set another angler besides us and made it the supreme endeavour to catch our fish more quickly than he would catch them. By such effort we tend to subordinate means to the result, and lose much of the pleasure of the study. Especially do we seem in golf to have the game more complete in itself and more independent of the outside human competitive element than in any other form of sport with a ball. In such diversions as baseball, cricket, and football, the opposing man is an absolute essential. Without him there is no game at all; nothing can be done. The art and science of the action are dependent for their exercise and enjoyment upon the human opposition. It is sometimes set against our golf that it is indeed fully independent of the human opposition, and it is contended that it is a point against it as a game that the human adversary is not an influence upon the action and its result; but those who urge in this way exhibit a stupid ignorance of all that is embraced in golf. They do not understand that without indeed simple physical opposition and obstruction on the part of a human adversary, he is when present an incessant and severe obstacle and may sometimes be as much an influence upon the effect of our strokes and in their shaping as if his own hands were upon our clubs. The opposition is not the less material because it is purely temperamental, and that mind and the strength of mind are opposed to the same forces in the other. We play golf best with confidence, and we are confident only when we feel that we have assumed or are about to assume a certain spiritual ascendancy over the opponent. We are encouraged by his failures, and yet stimulated to greater efforts by his successes. But if we be weak of spirit his successes may deject us. Each of these moods has its direct and marked effect upon the strokes that are played, varying with the temperamental quality of the man. Therefore it is a game of mind and nerve and muscle, associated with each other in the making of the stroke as in no other game. This is well enough, and it makes of a match at golf such a complete and wholesome joy as is yielded in no other diversion of its kind. If, then, golf is a whole thing in itself, and in simple match play it is comprehensive of the full possibilities of true sport, what can there be when we seek to go beyond these boundaries? We are going beyond them in some measure as we engage in many and highly organized competitions, when, with a compilation of emotions and desires something has to give way and be attenuated. Then it happens most frequently that the mind is concentrated on the mere winning of the competition, and it is inevitable that some of the other and greater and purer joys are sacrificed. To what extent they are so sacrificed varies with the mind of the man and also with his degree of skill. They are sacrificed most in the case of the inferior player who has not such a command and control of stroke that he can and does in dire emergency and in the full stress of the fight trust his fate to the stroke that he thinks—but is not sure—he can play best of all. He fears, he niggles, he chooses safety, he bungles, and he spoils his sport. On the other hand competition play is more justified in the case of the really accomplished and resourceful player, because, with skill and confidence, he throws his best into his play and gains his full delight from doing so. This line of thought seems to lead us to the conclusion that there should be no competitions in golf save for the masters of the game, and that by consequence all competition should be of the scratch variety without any handicap allowances to inferiority. I myself believe that in an ideal state of golf this would indeed be the best arrangement, and that, in other spheres of golf, competitions should only be encouraged for what we might describe as social purposes, as when the golfing societies go out for a day of their own and feel that they must decide something in doing so. But for the rest we see the average golfer passing through a period of innocence and joy in his first experiences at the game, when indeed he derives his full intellectual and physical pleasure— sometimes disguised as pain—from the mere making of his stroke. Then comes his match play and the awakening of a new ambition; and later come the competitions. And the canker of the competitions eats into his soul and destroys the game for him. The cultivation of variety and finesse and finish in his stroke, and the delight of it, cease to some extent as his only object is to drive far and approach closely and putt well. One means to an end is enough for him, though the game may hold a dozen, and, from the moment of his standing upon the first teeing ground, the one object dominant in his mind is to get round the course in something less than eighty or seventy or whatever his own particular standard may be. Result is everything and method seems next to nothing. In this fever of anxiety for the result, and contempt for method, a stroke only gives pleasure for what it produces in material gain, and such is the moral decline of the player that he incontinently and exuberantly rejoices when he succeeds through some outrageous freak of luck in holing an approach or two, and by such means completing a round of the course in fewer strokes than it had seemed possible for him, or, it may be, any other man, to do. This line of thought and philosophy seems to lead us directly and convincingly to one end, which is that it is impossible to be wholly given up to the desire for success in the result of the game and enjoy the playing of it in the full measure. If it is the result we want, then some of the pleasure, perhaps very much of it, of the process must be sacrificed. On every day on every course this sacrifice is unwittingly and nervously being made. It is a pity. Something very good is being lost. But, the critic of philosophy would ask, must then we all play alone, or each man in a match play his own game of pure study and experiment without any regard to the opponent, only comparing notes of their proceedings when each has eventually holed out, discovering then who of the pair has won? By no means. We desire as little to lose the conflict of temperament and spirit as we do to lose the science and skill of the game. It is possible, however, to make a complete compromise, and to discover the intrinsic joys of the game and the special joys of human opposition, and this is done in simple match play wherein the sense of competition is just enough but not too much. There is nothing that is irrevocable in the result of the ordinary match with a friend, however seriously it may be taken, and it should always be taken very seriously for the full enjoyment of it. The match that is carelessly played had better not be played at all. But, subconsciously, one feels that in such a match the course of history and the destiny of states and nations in the sporting sense are not being interfered with, and, again, that if there is defeat in the morning the whole thing may be played over again in the afternoon, or on the morrow of the next day. In such a match, well made and thought of in advance, against an opponent whose game we understand there is a human enjoyment to be derived as in no other form of golf, and by some subtle arrangement of the mysteries, all that is best in the golfing sense, the skill, the resource, the imagination, and the strong heart of the player, are brought out as in no other way. In competition play the enhancement of the value of the result tends to stultification of these others, and that is why match play is so good and why the true golfer often has the best time of his life when he grows old and the fevers of competition have died from his spirit. It is often said of this game that one of its greatest advantages is that it need never be given up while the player is whole and retains a fair amount of health, that it can be played until the end. It might be added that the best pleasures of golf are to be gathered in when middle age is filling up its card, and the serenity of autumn is stealing over the mind. Golf in the twilight of life is no empty thing. Points of this philosophy might be pursued much further but, one trusts, the truth has already been firmly established. Not for a moment is it suggested that there should be no competitions or no championships, but that each player should consider this question early in his golfing career and at different stages in it afterwards, and reflect as to whether he is drawing the most satisfaction out of the game, and if not, why, for surely it is his object to obtain the most from it. In most cases there is an overdoing of competitions, tournaments, and championships, and surely there is no more lorn and more pathetic figure in all golf or any other sport than that of the man who has devoted his whole life on the links to the pursuit of prizes in tournaments, and has never succeeded! What indeed he has lost! The craze for competitions is a feature of the materialism of the twentieth century.