The game no doubt is easier now than it used to be, and it is more difficult for fine distinctions in merit between players to be reproduced in the balance of holes; but still in the long run knowledge and skill will tell, and those men of the younger school who are deeply thoughtful and scientific golfers will in the end separate themselves from those of their rivals whose methods are more of the slapdash order. With all the advance of the young school, and its scores of men with high plus handicaps, each of whom is declared to be good enough to win the championship if it finds him on his day, one would seriously hesitate to suggest that there are more than five or six young players at the present time who show any promise at all of becoming as good golfers as Ball and Hilton and Laidlay have been. The remainder may be only the veriest trifle their inferiors, and the difference may be so small that it may constantly be not indicated in the results of competitions, or it may even show a balance to the credit of the players whom we are regarding as the inferior ones. But in the long run the minority, who know more about the game, will triumph, and will be separated from the general ruck. With all the talk that there has been about the levelling up of the players as the result of the rubber-cored ball, depend upon it that in twenty years from now we shall still have a high table in golf, at which will sit the acknowledged masters of the game, just as some of those whose names we have mentioned have sat at this table for the past decade or two. XI Perhaps it would be as well for the golf of some of us if now and again a time of quiet and inactive thought were enforced. It is certain that many men feel much the better in their game for having been deprived of play for a time, greatly irritated as they have been. The fact is that he who is a faithful golfer often plays it mentally when real shots on the links are denied to him. It turns out that this mental golf is of a very thorough order; never is the player so analytical and severely critical of his methods as then, and never does he grope more patiently or more intelligently for the hidden light that is the source of success. It is simple fact that men have discovered grave faults in their play in this way, such as they never suspected during the whole season that they had been committing them in real play on the links. And in the same way others have come upon great secrets of fine details of method, making for the improvement of their game, which they would never have encountered at golf on a course.