No. 1.—Ball in earth bunker or fence, drop five yards back and add one stroke. Ball in sand, play off bare floor. No. 2.—Ball in "Serpentine," drop five yards back and add one stroke. No. 3.—Ball in pond is lost. Tee again and add two strokes. No. 4.—Ball in sand bunker, drop five yards back and add one stroke.
Suppose that our course is to be a nine-hole one, we must provide ourselves with some sheets of stout wrapping-paper, a three-foot rule, and an assortment of colored pencils. Each imaginary "hole" must now be sketched out upon a separate sheet, after the fashion shown in the plan. The sheet should be three feet long, and a convenient scale of measurement will be a quarter-inch to five yards. Five inches will therefore represent 100 yards; seven and one-half inches, 150 yards; ten inches, 200 yards; and so on. Thirty inches is equivalent to 600 yards, which should be the maximum. The putting-greens should be thirty feet, or ten yards, square. A line should be drawn from tee to centre of the putting-green, and each ten-yard point along it should be marked by a red dot with the number underneath, 10, 20, 30, and so on. A circle fifty yards in diameter is drawn around the hole, and the space enclosed is called the "approaching-zone." Water hazards may be indicated by blue shading, the ordinary earth bunker by red, stone walls by black, and the tees and putting-greens by green. Everything should be drawn accurately to scale, and the artistic appearance of the little map will be improved by introducing hole and line flags in the proper colors. On an eighteen-hole course red flags are used for the nine outgoing holes, and white ones for the incoming ones. Red and white flags are used to indicate the line of play at blind holes, and green flags may mark the boundaries of the course.
Any boy who has a practical knowledge of golf, and who is possessed of reasonable ingenuity, may lay out in this manner a series of holes which, if properly varied, will make the play very interesting. The principal difficulty is the proper arrangement of the hazards, and this will be largely determined by the average driving ability of the club members. Generally speaking, a bunker must never be so situated as to spoil a really good drive. Hazards are intended to punish bad shots and not to injure good ones. Accordingly we may place a hazard ten yards from the tee, or any distance between that and 100 yards. But a bunker 160 yards from the tee would be in just the place to trap a really good drive, while the topped or short one would go unpunished. Side hazards will not be required on our in-door course, as there is no way of determining the "slice" or "pull" of our drives. Each player must be provided with a stick-pin to mark his progress on the map, and these may be distinguished by dipping the heads into different colors of melted sealing-wax. The maps of the holes are tacked up on the wall in regular succession as the play goes on. And now we are ready for the actual match, and we will suppose that we are playing the "Longfellow hole."
M. and N. are the players, and M. has the "honor." This being his tee drive, he is allowed to use a rubber or some other kind of artificial tee, and of course he plays with the ball attached to the driving-machine. The dial shows that he has driven 115 yards, and has therefore carried the earth bunker. He sticks in his pin at the 115-yard point, and N. has his turn. We will suppose that N. tops his ball, and the dial shows that his ball has travelled only 50 yards. He sticks in his pin at that point on the map. N. being the farthest from the hole, must now play again, and this time he must not use a tee, but must simply place the ball on the "driving-pad." As he is fifty yards from the bunker he will probably use his brassie, and this time he gets in a good shot of 130 yards, which will advance him to the 180-yard point.
The play goes on in this manner until both balls have been played inside the "approaching-zone" or fifty-yard circle. Then the driving-machine is set aside, and the approach shot is made with a free ball, and at the stand (Fig. 3) or target (Fig. 2). As before explained, a ball in the bull's-eye means that the player has holed out, if in the smallest ring he is one foot from the hole, and six and fifteen feet away for the middle and outer rings respectively. A ball that misses the target altogether is held to be "foozled," and must be taken back and played again (counting a stroke each time) until the player has succeeded in hitting the bull's-eye or one of the numbered rings. And particularly note this: if, as in this case, there is a hazard between the player's ball and the green, the ball must not only hit the target, but it must do so above the horizontal mark called on the diagram (Fig. 2) the bunker-line. Failing in this, the player is held to be in the bunker, and must add a penalty stroke to his score, and try again, until he does succeed in hitting the target above the bunker-line. The balls being now within holing-distance they are placed at their respective marks (one foot, six feet, or fifteen feet from the putting-stand), and holed out in the ordinary manner.
The small type under the plans give specific directions for the playing of each hole, and may be varied at discretion. In sand the player must drive off the bare floor instead of from the pad, and for a heavy lie or long grass an old bear-skin (or other long-haired skin) rug may be substituted. The half-circles mean that a ball driven beyond the marked figures is out of bounds and lost.
Finally, in the event of a long shot that exactly covers the distance to the hole, the player may be considered to have holed out in that shot. M. is 110 yards from the green. He drives, and the dial indicates exactly 110 yards. M. is down by a lucky fluke, and does not have to do any approaching or putting.
It is hardly worth while to make any argument against the assertion that all this is not golf. Of course it is not golf, but it is as near to it as we are likely to get within the limits of our four walls. Driving with the machine is good practice for the "long game," even though it cannot help us in correcting that dreaded "slicing" and "pulling." But these last, again, are principally matters of a faulty aim; it is the eye that needs correction. Practice with the approaching-target may teach us the sense of direction with our wrist shots, and we can leave the distance problem for our open-air play. The putting will train both eye and hand. Finally, the game is a practical one, and with a little ingenuity and intelligence in laying out the imaginary course, it may serve very well by way of amusement during the winter afternoons and evenings when the mercury without is hovering around the zero mark and the snow lies deep upon the links.