RETIRED GOLF 157 



sciousness that he could always defeat himself 

 if he desired, and this deprived the game of much 

 of its interest, and robbed the player of a good 

 deal of his natural zest. Uncle Horace, indeed, 

 would often become so tired of rushing wildly 

 round to the opposite court to take his own 

 services that he was tempted now and then to 

 serve eight consecutive faults into the net, so 

 as to bring the set to an end; and it is not to 

 be wondered at that, long before he had reached 

 the age of eighty, he should have decided to 

 renounce lawn- tennis in favour of golf. 



At the latter game, as I have already re- 

 marked, a solitary player can enjoy a suffi- 

 ciently exciting game either by matching him- 

 self with Bogey or by playing two balls, one 

 against the other, from the tee. Colonel Waters, 

 to whose eccentricities of conduct I have 

 alluded above, when he began to find it in- 

 creasingly difficult to persuade anybody to play 

 with him, adopted the latter system, to his own 

 and everybody's extreme satisfaction. 



He would start out in the morning with tw^o 

 caddies, two sets of clubs, and two balls — a 

 " Silver King " and a " Colonel " — and engage 

 in the most thrilling contests against himself, 

 from which he invariably emerged victorious. 

 In these games he had no chance of displaying 

 those peculiarities of temper which rendered him 



