Always use a clean ball, and carry a sponge to keep it clean with. It detracts from the pleasure of a game more than you may imagine if your ball is always dirty and cannot be seen from a distance. Besides, the eye is less strained when a clean white ball is played with, and there is less likelihood of foozled strokes. Moreover, your dirty ball is a constant irritation to your opponent.
Don't act upon the advice of your caddie when you are convinced in your own mind that he is wrong. If you do so, you will very likely play the stroke hesitatingly and without confidence, and the result in these circumstances is seldom satisfactory. It is not impossible that the caddie knows less about the game than yourself, and, on the other hand, his views as to the best thing to do in a particular situation are often regulated by what he has seen the scratch men do at such times. You may not be a scratch man.
When playing in a foursome, never forget that you have a partner. If you are the inferior player, make a rule, when in any doubt, of asking him what he would prefer you to do.
When you are addressing the ball, and a conviction forces itself on your mind just before making the stroke that your stance or something else is radically wrong, do not be persuaded that it is best to get the stroke done with notwithstanding. In such circumstances it is almost certain to be a failure, and you will wish then that you had taken a fresh stance, as you knew you ought to have done, and made a proper job of it, even at the risk of annoying your partner by fiddling about on the tee.
At a crisis in a match, some golfers, fighting desperately for victory or a half, give themselves up when on the tee to hideous thoughts of all the worst ways in which they have ever made that particular drive and of the terrible consequences that ensued. This is fatal. A golfer must never be morbid. If he cannot school himself to think that he is going to make the best drive of his life, just when it is most wanted, he should try not to think of anything at all.