How to read pupils' written themes

Abstract

The only way to learn to play golf is to play-to go out day after day and knock the little ball around the field. Reading a textbook about golf does not do it; neither does watching experts at the game; although, no doubt, both these things help somewhat, though little. A careful analytical cross-sectioning and analysis of golf balls and golf clubs of every sort, cutting them to pieces and studying each constituent part, is a pleasant and maybe profitable divertissement for an expert between his rounds of actual play; he loves and can enjoy everything connected with his hobby, even rattling its bare bones. For a beginner, however, or a self-distrustful amateur, it would hinder rather than help, by making him conscious of too many things beside the main point of his game. One cannot learn to play golf without practice, plenty of it. Practice alone, however, will not produce one's best game, even though it be indefatigable. There must be two accessory efforts, also persisted in. First, some one who knows golf pretty well-at least, better than oneself-must travel with one and watch and criticize one's game. This need not be on every round; in fact, every round under criticism can, no doubt, be followed profitably by several without, during which the suggestions are pondered upon. Neither need the criticism point out all the things that one does not do well. When one isn't really very good yet, it is disheartening and confusing to face at once everything which a good player might truthfully say about one's game; it makes one want nothing else so much as to quit and go home, utterly discouraged. Secondly, one must learn to analyze-to analyze both one's own game and the performances of experts whom one may watch. The mere onlooker learns nothing, although he may be entertained; the ambitious student penetrates beneath the spectacle to the elements which make it admirable. The ideal teacher of golf does for his pupil three things. In the first place, he dangles before the beginner's fascinated eyes the possibilities of really skillful playing-the attainment of certain difficult goals with almost marvelous ease. In the second place, after this first stimulus has produced well-nigh a fever of protracted and repeated effort, he leads the pupil little by little to separate his play into its elements and be conscious of the part which each element-desirable