It is quite a short drive--not with a club--from Muirfield to =North Berwick=, but there is none of that resemblance between the courses that one might expect between such near neighbours. Muirfield may be called a narrow course of soft turf; North Berwick an open course of hard turf. Moreover, one may chance to have Muirfield to one's self and the curlews, whereas at North Berwick are to be found all the advantages or disadvantages of a fashionable watering-place. Whatever may be thought of their respective merits from a strictly golfing point of view, it can hardly be gainsayed that North Berwick has the best of it in point of looks. No golf course could look lovelier than North Berwick on a bright summer's day, when the Bass rock, the home of many gannets, is shining brilliantly white in the sunshine and only holiday-making man is entirely vile. [Illustration: NORTH BERWICK _The second tee_] No course has ever undergone a more complete metamorphosis, for whereas it is now long enough for any reasonable person, it was once noted for the abnormal number of threes that could be done in one round. Mr. Hutchinson wrote in the Badminton of the "sporting little links of North Berwick," and added "You might just as well leave your driver at home. If you are even a medium driver, it is scarcely ever in your hand." Incredible scores were recorded by Mr. Laidlay and Bernard Sayers, perhaps the most astounding being Mr. Laidlay's 33 for the first ten holes. Such a course was almost bound to produce a race of wonderfully adroit pitchers. Of the older generation, Mr. Laidlay and Sayers are still almost as good as ever, and the race of fine pitchers is not extinct, for amongst others there is Mr. Maxwell, whose obvious power rather blinds the unobservant eye to his beautiful short game; and Mr. Whitecross, a player much less well known, but a wonderfully deft wielder of the mashie. Mr. Whitecross's pitching at Muirfield in 1909 more nearly approached the supernatural than anything I have ever seen. If I remember aright, he actually holed two pitches in his matches with Mr. Angus Hambro and Mr. W. A. Henderson, and laid the ball several times on the lip of the hole; one shot in particular against Mr. Hambro, wherein the ball trickled very slowly down the steep slope of the seventeenth green and lay absolutely dead, was the most perfect shot conceivable, and was played, besides, at an intensely critical moment.