I have tried as a rule to avoid invidious comparisons between course and course, but it may be pardonable to make a short and wholly friendly comparison between Aberdovey and Harlech, because, although near neighbours, they have such very different characteristics. At Aberdovey the holes go straight out and home again; at Harlech they tack backwards and forwards, this way and that. In the same way the Aberdovey sandhills run in one unbroken line, while at Harlech they are more scattered, and can therefore be used in more different ways. Aberdovey is a course of small, undulating greens, while Harlech has larger and flatter ones. Finally, the charms of Aberdovey grow on one slowly, but also, I think, surely, while Harlech fascinates at the first glance. [Illustration: HARLECH _Looking across the fourth hole_] Small wonder if the visitor falls in love with =Harlech= at first sight, for no golf course in the world has a more splendid background than the old castle, which stands at the top of a sheer precipice of rock looking down over the links. Wherever we go it is never out of sight, and though we may glance away at the hills with Snowdon in the distance, we always come back to the castle with a never-satisfied longing. It is so obviously splendid that we might imagine that we should in time grow tired of it, but we never do. The holes at Harlech that have always left the most vivid impression on my mind, perhaps because, owing to the rather leisurely Cambrian trains, I have not been there half as often as I should like, are those at the beginning and end of the course. Those in the middle, possibly because they have been altered at times or because they are not so markedly characteristic, are more blurred in the memory. Yet it is, I hasten to add, that all the golf is good, very good indeed, and fit to test the very best of players.