Johnny Laidlay did nothing effective in this first championship. He, too, had to "bide a wee" before he did all that was expected of him; but I made his much better acquaintance about this time and acquired the greatest respect for his game, especially for the accuracy and delicacy of his approaches with the mashie. It was a new club to me, and something of a revelation in its possibilities. For it would, of itself and without any special effort of the player, do all to the ball that might be done with our old irons only after a deal of cut had been carefully put on. I do not at all regret that labour; it was an excellent education; but there is no doubt that the mashie simplified the approaching problems. It made an easier game of it. I have been looking up the details of this championship, and find one of its "points" to have been the meeting of Johnny Ball and Johnny Laidlay, the first of very many encounters of its kind, resulting in the English Johnny's win by three and two. So that was the fate of the Scot; he fell by no unworthy hand. There is always consolation in this reflection. Henry Lamb, as I read on the same record, had fought his way to the final over the corpses of some stout foes. The first round gave him a bye; but then he had to meet Mr. Charles Anderson, forgotten by golfers of to-day, but a stalwart in his time. Next, Harry Everard fell to him; and then he had a bigger man than either, especially at St. Andrews, in Leslie Balfour. He beat Leslie at the last hole. Then, in the semi-final, he beat Johnny Ball by no less than seven and six to play, and it was by the same sufficient margin that I defeated him. What Johnny can have been doing I hardly know. That he must have been playing some game widely different from his real one is very certain. CHAPTER XV MR. ARTHUR BALFOUR AND HIS INFLUENCE IN GOLF