The best of the players more or less resident at St. Andrews in the later eighties were Leslie Balfour, Jim Blackwell (it was extraordinary to what extent he lost his game after a residence of some years in South Africa), Mure Ferguson, Andy Stuart and David Lamb. Leslie I have always regarded as one of the soundest golfers I ever met. "If you're playing your best you'll beat him, but if you're playing anything below your best he'll beat you." This used to be Johnny Laidlay's verdict on him, and it always seemed to me to express the reliable quality of Leslie's game very well. I cannot but think that Mure Ferguson became a better golfer in the later years than he was in these early days at St. Andrews, but it is rather difficult for me to do justice to the great game that he had in him because he seldom happened to play his best against me. I have seen him play great matches. In the amateur championship at Hoylake he was in the final with Johnny Ball, and though that champion of champions was four up at one moment of the match, Mure had him square with two holes to go--a great performance! Then Johnny went out for a great second shot to the then seventeenth (now the sixteenth) hole, right across the corner of the field, and so gained the green with his second; and that stroke virtually settled the match. Johnny asked me afterwards if I thought he was right in going for it. All I had to say was, "Absolutely, if you felt that you could do it." It all lay in that--in this confidence in himself. And no man knows Hoylake distances better. No doubt Mure was, and even is, a fine match-player, especially a fine finisher of those few last holes when the match is to be decided by them. David Lamb, brother of Henry, who has been often mentioned, was a great player in his day, but he could not make much of the game unless all was going right with him. And the quality of match-playing depends very largely, as I think, on the ability to make something of the game (if possible sufficient to avert defeat) when things are not going kindly. But of all these St. Andrews' players, just a little the best of the bunch, in my opinion, was Andy Stuart at that particular moment. His golfing day was rather a short one, but few folks realize how great a player he was, when at his best. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 5: Frank Kinloch, as gallant a golfer of his class as ever held a club, has died since this was written.] CHAPTER XXII THE FIRST AMATEUR WIN OF THE OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP