I well remember the immense excitement with which I followed those matches. They did not play a three ball match for the prizes offered, but a species of American tournament in singles, and my delight was huge when our local friend defeated the renowned Tommy Morris. Then Tommy defeated Bob Kirk. Now if our Johnnie could only beat Bob Kirk (as he certainly would, we said, seeing that he had beaten Morris who had beaten Kirk), why then he would prove himself beyond denial best man of the three. Unhappily the propositions of golf do not work themselves out as logically as those of Euclid, though often arriving at his conclusion "which is absurd," and Bob Kirk had the better of our local hero most of the way round. He was dormy one. Then, at the last hole, came a great incident of golf which made on me so deep an impression that in my mind's eye I can see the whole scene even now. Coming to that last hole--mark this, that our favourite hero was one down, so that feeling ran high--Bob Kirk got his ball on one of the high plateaux, with steep sand cliffs, which at that date jutted out into the big bunker. His ball lay just at the edge of the plateau, and on its left verge, as we looked towards the hole, so that to play it in the direction that he wanted to go it seemed that he would have to stand eight feet below it, in the bunker. And, he being a little round man, we chuckled in glee and said to one another, "He's done now." But what do you suppose that pernicious little Scot did then? He went to his bag and selected a club--a left-handed spoon! He had a couple of practice swings with it. Then he, a right-handed man, addressed himself to that ball left-handedly, and drove it, if not any immense distance, at all events as far as he needed in order to make morally sure of his half of the hole, which was all that he, being dormy, required. It was a great _tour de force_. It exacted our grudging applause. We admired, but at the same time we admired with suspicion. It was scarcely, as we thought in the circumstances, a fair golf stroke. It savoured of the conjuring trick if not of sheer black magic. Really, considered after this lapse of years which allows cool reflection, it was a good piece of golf. There are not many right-handed men who trouble themselves to carry a left-handed club, even if they have the ambidexterity to use it. In fact it is the only stroke of its kind, played with a full swing in the crisis of a match, that I have ever seen. Young Tommy paid us another visit in the West not long after, and this time in company with his own dearest foe at St. Andrews, Davie Strath.