Although ladies' courses are now vastly superior to what they were a short while back, there is still room for great improvements in the matter of scope for brassey and cleek play through the green. The usual courses consist of a series of holes, generally nine holes--eighteen being the exception--closely resembling each other, interspersed with hazards of sorts, but in point of length and play nearly all these holes are reached by a fair drive, followed by a short iron or approach shot on the green. This is occasionally varied by a cleek shot from tee to green, which constitutes the whole and monotonous ring of change that is to be found, to say nothing of the total banishment of the brassey, one of the most useful clubs in existence. Excepting, therefore, when women play over men's courses, or at least over a part of them, they rarely find themselves called upon to play cleeks, or full iron shots either. A notable exception to this is the West Lancashire ladies' course, at Hall Road, near Liverpool. There we find not only eighteen holes most craftily laid out amidst hazards of all description, which call into requisition a variety of useful clubs, but the distances between the greens have been so varied that any monotony is quite impossible. For whilst at one hole it may require three full shots to reach the green, very likely the next will be but a cleek shot, and so on. One of the irresistable influences of the game to a beginner, is undoubtedly that vexation of spirit caused by some strange mixture of obstinacy and helplessness, which smarts and rankles bitterly after a morning spent in trying, to stand in the correct position with your club grasped firmly in your hands, and after the preliminary waggle, to swing up and down and hit the ball into space. It looks so easy, ridiculously easy, and as if it was quite impossible not to hit that little white globe, perched on its sand tee, but in reality, till the eye and the hand have been trained to do so, it is one of the most difficult tasks in life, and a process tending to many abusive speeches! The experience naturally produces a spirit of dogged determination not to be beaten, wherein lie the first seeds of interest, and the desire for improvement. The younger it is possible to begin the game, the better, for at an early age the muscles are tractable and supple, and the slightest stiffness which gives a noticable jerkiness to the strokes, is very difficult to overcome. The strokes should on the contrary be performed, and the arms and wrists should work, with the smooth evenness of windmill sails. But speaking of evenness and smoothness of movement, more especially in the case of a person in the act of driving, brings to mind the late championship at Gullane, where, for the first time, it became possible to compare, side by side, the styles of the Scotch and English players. Between some there was but little difference, excepting that the Scotch