On one of these courses “gate money” was charged, and again in 1906, on the occasion of another professional foursome, a charge for admission to the course to see the play was made by the local club. It has been mutely understood as a principle that no such charges should ever be made, being a violation of the spirit in which golf is played--the spirit that suggests that the game is for the men who play it, and for nobody else--and it can be fancied that the success of the “gate” on these occasions may have put ideas into the minds of enterprising commercial people, as indeed it is known it did. There is the danger, then, that some time an attempt may be made to hold golf matches as a show. If it were successful it would mean a complete upheaval of the game. If the professionals found that they “drew” to the extent of hundreds of pounds at a time, they would naturally be discontented with moderate fees for playing. They would demand shares of the gate; they would receive perhaps hundreds for playing on important occasions, and the modest, unassuming working professional, as we know him now, would exist no longer, the cohesion between the two sections in our little state of golf would be loosened, amateurism might suffer if only by the sense of mediocrity that would be thrust upon it, and the game would not be the same. All the tricks of trades would come into golf at once--“signing on,” bartering, bluffing, and even cheating. Considering the enormous “boom” in golf that is going on at present, and the millions of money that are spent on it in one way and another, it is wonderful that it has retained its purity,--not wonderful, perhaps, when you take the moral sporting quality of the golfer into consideration,--but still wonderful on an ordinary reckoning. Its continued purity may have given rise to an exaggerated sense of security. Certainly none of us can believe in the possibility of its sinking to the state which has just been suggested; but it is better to realise that the facts are as stated, and that there is the chance of such a thing happening at some future time, so that at the first sign of the enemy’s advance the golf world may be armed and ready to attack and kill it. It is one of those evils that will come insidiously when it does come, and will have gained a hold before we are aware of its presence.