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When it comes to the game of billiards, understanding the rules is essential for a successful and enjoyable experience. There is another reason why golf is a greater test of nerve than billiards, and that is the variety of weapons that you must have for different strokes. A man who foozles his drive and slices his approach, but who is nevertheless always down in two strokes after he has got on the putting-green, if not in one, is very hard to beat except his opponent is a really good player. See, the will implies a separation of man and nature, and therefore we ask the question, "Do we have free will? A golfer by practice may improve his play with a club, but he very likely will find that, during the time he has occupied himself with this club, another has mysteriously failed him; and in any case the terrible ordeal of putting has to be gone through, and it is the painful experience of bad putters that practice does by no means perfect, but only causes new terrors to appear. The player with only an ordinary capacity perhaps may feel really confident with only one club, and yet has to play with several; so of him it may be said that every stroke-except that played with one club-is a trial to his nerves.

The player pocketed the cue ball. If you get out, well you have no further opportunity of getting nervous till your second innings comes round, and under no circumstances ought a bowler to be nervous, as one bad ball may always be redeemed by a wicket next ball. I watched a final match once in the amateur championship, in which two most distinguished amateurs were struggling for the mastery, and both drove and played through the green as well as could be desired, and both putted in a way that a charity-school boy would have been ashamed of. I have played many games in my time, but I confidently say that for a test of nerve, golf is far the most trying game in the world, and next to it billiards. But it is true of golf that you will find it impossible to avoid being compelled some time or other to play with a club you have little confidence in, and to negotiate distances you hate.

But Mr. Hilton has to take out an iron club, because there are some occasions when it is absolutely impossible to use any other club. I do not pretend to say that an average player is always "off" with this or that club, but as every golfer knows there come times or spells of times when all skill with one class of club seems to vanish. Basic Play Each turn is called a ‘break’ and consists of a series of strikes of the cue ball that come to an end when a player makes a non-scoring strike or a foul stroke. Certain players, therefore, hate and cannot play with certain clubs; perhaps it may be said of a few, very few, that they play equally well or badly with all clubs. You cannot win a match if you approach and putt badly; but there are some courses, Sandwich, for instance, where you may just as well go home as dream of winning a match or making a respectable score if you are "off" your driving. But when you are fifty yards from the hole, and a bunker yawning between you and it, or when you have to lay an approach putt of twenty yards more or less dead to win or halve a hole, then the question of nerve becomes everything, because strength is everything.

The lofted fifty yards shot is perhaps the most difficult shot in golf, what is billiards and what does the nervous golfer do in most cases? At golf, however, it may be truly said that no one putting-green is exactly like any other-one is fast, another slow, one smooth, another uneven, one with one sort of turf, another with another. I know perfectly well that a man may feel unutterably nervous before he goes in to bat at cricket, but his nervousness goes when he has scored twenty runs, and been in half-an-hour. In putting, a man is generally so impressed by the fact that a reserve of strength is needful, that a contrary effect is produced, and he is nearly always short-nervousness in putting in nine cases out of ten makes a man hit too softly. He has lost some of his length, he cannot force a ball out of its bunker as he did formerly, and his eye is not quick at judging the distance of about eighty yards which he has to carry to get over some danger.