Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: GOLF, AND SOME OF ITS ANCIENT TRADITIONS " But we will put it, as they say." —Love's Labor's Lost, Act V., Scene II. JOLF, even more than tennis, is essentially the relief and the recreation of the middle-aged man. It gives him, in a mild form, something to think about, something to do, somewhere to go to, and some object to go for. It takes him out of doors, and out of himself. Exercise, as exercise and nothing more, is the hardest of hard work ; but if there be a goal at the end of it, the middle-aged man will take exercise, and willingly. In the city he will promenade, upon paved streets, for miles to buy a newspaper which he can purchase on hisown block ; while in the country he will walk even more miles, over grass and heather, simply for the sake of putting a little round ball into a series of little round holes ; and he will get no end of physical good and no small amount of keen pleasure out of the operation. Dr. Jamieson, who spells it "Golf," "Goff,"and "Gouf," speaks of it as a common game in the North Country; and he mentions " Shinty, an inferior species oi Golf generally played at by young people." " In London," he adds," the game is called Hackie. It seems to be the same which is designated Not [Knot] in Glouces- tershire," the name being borrowed from the ball, which is made of a knotty piece of wood. Shakspere is absolutely silent upon the subject of Golf, and Golf is almost the one point upon which there have been no Queries and no Notes. Even Strutt—who spells it " Goff "—devotes but little space to it, although in what he says about it he has been followed by all its later historians. He considers it the most ancient of all the games which are played with a ball and a bat; he says that it answers to a rustic pastime of the Romans, which they p...