Before I close my remarks on the simple putt, I feel that it is a duty to repeat once more those wise maxims relating to putting that have been uttered some tens of thousands of times already. "Never up, never in." There is nothing so true, and the number of matches and medals that have been lost through the reckless and foolish disregard of this rule must be enormous. The hole will never come to you; therefore make up your mind that you will always go to the hole, and let it be an invariable practice to play for the back of the tin so that you will always have just a little in hand. The most deadly accuracy and the nicest calculations are all wasted if the ball is just half a turn short of the opening, and there is nothing in the whole of the play between one tee and the next more exasperating than the long putt which hesitates and stops on the very lip of the hole. There is another very good reason for always playing very well up to the hole, which may not have occurred to all golfers who read these lines. Suppose that in the exercise of this rule about always being up at any cost, too much has been put into the ball, and, refusing to die when it ought to do, it skips over the hole and comes to a standstill several inches beyond. "That's the result of being up!" exclaims the irritated golfer. But he feels at any rate that he has given the hole the chance for which it asked, and has a far greater sense of satisfaction and of duty done than if the ball had stopped a foot or more short of the place that was made for it. This may be the reason why an eighteen-inch or two-feet putt back to the hole from the far side always seems easier and is less frequently missed than a putt of the same distance from the original side, which is merely making up for the shortage in the first putt. Whether that is the reason or not, there is the fact, and though they may not have considered the matter hitherto, I feel confident that on reflection, or when they take note of future experiences, most of my readers will admit that this is so. It is a final argument for playing to the back of the hole and never being short. One of the greatest worries of the glorious life of old Tom Morris was that for a long time when in the middle of his career he was nearly always short with his long putts, and his son, young Tom, used wickedly to say that his father would be a great putter if the hole were always a yard nearer. Tom, I believe, was always conscious of his failing, and made the most strenuous efforts to correct it, and this only shows what a terrible and incurable habit this one of being short can become, and what necessity there is for the golfer to exercise his strength of mind to get rid of it in his early days, and establish the practice of being up every time. Often enough he will run over, but sometimes the kind hole will gobble the ball, and on the average he will gain substantially over the nervous, hesitating player who is always short.