Page:Out-door Games Cricket and Golf (1901).djvu/229

There are some tempers which Satan must have had a hand in forming, and if others are fortunately not afflicted in the same way, they must remember that golf is a very irritating game. Most players improve in temper, or, rather, a philosophical calm comes over them, as they grow older; but there are some, forming quite a respectable minority, of whom the exact contrary is the truth, and the melancholy fact has to be recorded that they get worse and worse. It is trying perhaps to find oneself beaten by youths, who a few years before used to touch their caps to you, and you presented with a third; but it is odd that everybody does not realise that this development is inevitable, and should therefore have come naturally and not as a violent surprise. We all admire the gentlemanlike courtesy with which some accept their fate, and play with some opponent of about the same age, or in congenial foursomes; but how painful, and yet how humorous is the sight of a man who under similar circumstances becomes irritable, fussy, fidgety, a pitiful sight to men and angels. Such cases, however, are painfully common, and like Jorrocks, we can only implore ingenuous