It behoves every earnest golfer to keep a match-book in which there shall be faithfully recorded the results, with some particulars, of all the matches whatsoever that he shall play in the course of each season. Yet it is likely that not more than two or three golfers in every club, if indeed so many, keep such a record of the golf that they have played, which is sinking away into the forgotten history of their golfing lives. The idea of the private match-book may have occurred to many golfers, who, on a careful consideration of the circumstances of the case, have rejected it, though it goes without saying that the chief reason for the absence of the book in the majority of cases is simple neglect. Those who deliberately avoid the intellectual pleasures of the match-book do so either because they conceive that there is something namby-pamby in the thing, and that it savours too much of the keeping of a little diary which so few people know how to keep, consequently degenerating into a record of the trivial acts instead of the life-governing thoughts; or they are deterred by the fact that there are no such books with ruled columns ready for the purpose which are at all agreeable to their ideas as to what a match-book ought to be. Certainly there is no ready-ruled match-book; the little things to fit the waistcoat pocket are hopelessly inadequate, and really are only fit for doll’s golf, so that it is one of the things to wonder at that there are still apparently some thousands of golfers--beginners for the most part, you may be sure--who buy these trifles year by year.