330 PETER GUTHRIE TAIT 



SCENE IV.TAe Run. 



Here pure chance is the main actor. The scene has no measurable duration 

 when the ball lands in mud or soft sand. It may continue for two, three, or more 

 seconds if the ball be topped or get a running fall, and the links be hard and keen. 

 The ball's progress may be by mere rolling or by a series of leaps. This is usually 

 (at least on a "sporting" course) a most critical scene, and the player feels himself 

 breathing more freely when it is safely concluded. 



Our chief concern is with the second and third of these scenes ; the fourth, 

 from its very nature, being of such a capriciously varying character that it would 

 be vain to attempt a discussion of it, and the first being of interest to our present 

 purpose only in so far as it is a necessary preliminary to the second. Its result, as 

 far as we are concerned, is merely to bring the club face into more or less orderly 

 and rapid contact with the ball. We say advisedly the club face (not merely the 

 club head), for operations such as hacking and sclaffing, however interesting in them- 

 selves, form no part of golf, properly so-called. 



All the resources of the pen, the pencil, and the photographic camera have 

 been profusely employed on behalf of the public to convey to it some idea of the 

 humours of Scene I., so that we may omit the discussion of it also. [Yet, after all, 

 sketching and word painting, even when the most amazing vagaries of the most 

 fertile imagination have been freely taken advantage of, are sometimes far less effec- 

 tive in this matter than is the simple verity as recorded by the imperturbably 

 truthful camera. For there are many things, sad or laughable, unimportant or of 

 the most immense consequence to the discovery of peculiarities of style, which 

 escape the keenest vision, and yet are seized upon and preserved for leisurely after- 

 study in a single wink, as it were, of that terrible photographic Eye.] 



Brief as is the duration of the second scene, the analysis of even its main 

 features requires considerable detail if it is to be made fully intelligible. I will 

 attempt to give this in as popular a form as possible. But before I do so, it may 

 be well to show its importance by a passing reference to some of its consequences, 

 as we shall thus have a general notion of what has to be explained. When the 

 ball parts company with the club this scene ends, and the third scene begins. Now, 

 at that instant, having by its elasticity just recovered from the flattening which it 

 suffered from the blow, the ball must be moving as a free rigid solid. It has a 

 definite speed, in a definite direction, and it may have also a definite amount of 

 rotation about some definite axis. The existence of rotation is manifested at once 

 by the strange effects it produces on the curvature of the path, so that the ball 

 may skew to right or left, soar upwards as if in defiance of gravity, or plunge head- 

 long downwards, instead of slowly and reluctantly yielding to that steady and 

 persistent pull. The most cursory observation shows that a ball is hardly ever 

 sent on its course without some spin, so that we may take the fact for granted, even 

 if we cannot fully explain the mode of its production. And the main object of this 

 article is to show that LONG CARRY ESSENTIALLY INVOLVES UNDERSPIN. 



Now, if golf balls and the faces of clubs were both perfectly hard (i.e. not 

 deformable) the details of the effects of the blow would be a matter of .simple 



