of grasping a club. Outside Scotland, except a few Englishmen who lived wholly or partly in Scotland, there were probably not many more than a hundred golfers. There is hardly any one spot in England where a game of golf cannot be played somehow. The links may be laid out on heavy, wet, clayey fields in Warwickshire, or among the fortifications at Chatham, on the cliffs at Brighton, on the Downs of Guildford, or among the coal-pits of Dudley and West Bromwich; but holes are cut, and more or less of a golf links made, and each links has its club; whilst each club has its prizes, medals, and spring and autumn meetings.
The multiplication of golf clubs and golf prizes has caused a large increase in the number of rounds that are played for score as opposed to hole play. It is impossible for thirty or more players to meet for one day to compete for a prize in any way except by score. The ball has to be hit into nine or eighteen different holes in the fewest possible number of strokes—that is the object of every one of the competitors. Every golfer, good, bad, and indifferent, knows the difference of match play and medal play.
