Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/224

the other distance his heart goes into his boots. But yet the ordeal has to be faced, the stroke must be attempted when it comes, as it assuredly will in due course. In billiards it is equally true to say that only a few men play equally well at different shots, the long losing hazard or the long winner, the screw, follow on, &c.; but at billiards it is far easier to regulate and engineer your game so as to avoid having to attempt a stroke you cannot play. If you dislike long losing hazards, you must and can try and play the cannon and potting game at the top of the table; if you hate those strokes, because you cannot do them, play an open game and go in for losing hazards from baulk. You can do this far more easily at billiards than you can at golf. It is possible to do it to a small extent only at golf. I have seen a player who was bad at lofting a ball over a bunker forty yards from the hole, play the previous stroke short in order, instead of having to play a forty-yards shot, to make one that took eighty yards to get over the bunker. In the same way you may go round a hazard instead of trying to get over it. But it is true of golf that you will find it impossible