I REMAINED in competition with my opponent until the 13th hole, when he had won six more holes than I had. This closed the contest, and, with terrible threats for next year, I left him and went to the dogs.

Forty "H'ya Jems" crashed through the refreshment room, and for a considerable time the beaten player explained how, if he had not been so wretchedly off his game, and if the other man had not had luck, the like of which never had been seen before, or ever was likely to be seen again that the match might have ended five and four, not six and five.

That afternoon we watched the semi-finals, sniffing audibly at the semi-finalists' mistakes, and pointing out, in generously loud tones, the outstanding faults in their respective methods of hitting the ball.

At five o'clock I began to get ready to start for Galway, where I was to play at 10.0 the next morning. At 5.15 I was beginning to get ready to start for Galway at 5.30 I was doing the same thing and by six o'clock I had abandoned hope of continuing the tour.

It went on in monotonous chorus: "What'll it be, Jem?" - "Same again, Jem"; and then came a break. There seemed to be a fancy dress ball at Bundoran.

The argument developed that always develops when more than two people are making up their minds to go to a dance. "Are you going over, Jem - I think I am. I'm bringing Jem, is Jem coming?" and more and more and more. By dinner time no one was going. Two minutes later there weren't enough cars to convey the huge crowds wild to go to the ball. Eventually the party arrived in ones and twos at widely divergent intervals.

We were resting after dinner in the hotel, when suddenly a thing sprang through the doorway. It was dressed in a goatskin, with chains swinging from its wrists. Its body was a dreadful mottled brown and black, two eyes glared at us through matted hair. It was tearing great crimson strips off some slaughtered animal.

With a scream the golfers launched themselves as one man beneath the table, where they lay, whimpering: "Never again will I touch a drop if only you'll take that thing away."

A pleasant, friendly laugh came from above us: "What'll you have Jem?" asked a voice. We looked out and there was a valued guest of the hotel dressed in a hearth rug, nibbling a beef bone from the kitchen regarding with enjoyment the clever manner in which he had disguised himself with burned cork.

The golfers issued a statement to this certain prize-winner, that of course, we knew it was you all the time, Jem, and it better be a large one and arranged themselves once more around the table.

"Aaaaaah" and I was first under this time. Our renunciations of the demon rum now were even more elaborate than on the previous occasion for around the smoking room, about three feet from the ground, circled a witch on a broomstick. Long, sharp fangs sprang from her gums beneath a cruel beak of a nose. Red-rimmed eyes glistened with venom, vulture-clawed hands snatched at us cruelly.

Of course, we knew all along it was one of the women staying in the Great Northern, and she had made herself up very well as a witch or something. We were only having a bit of fun. (Golfer B decided to go home. He said he had given himself a pain laughing.)

Some time later I discovered it was dawn and in a couple of hours I was pledged to be on the first tee at Galway, 90 miles away over winding roads. I left for Galway.

With a muffler over my mouth my overcoat buttened up around my ears, and two odd gloves, I drove miserably through the early morning. Cigarettes tasted like old bandages burning slowly (pipes meant a fairly long stop by the roadside) and the one attempt I made to sing ended in somewhat similar fashion.

With a bitter hatred I thought of those who had engineered this fantastic plan venomously and elaborately I cursed the profligates who had seduced me from my high tea and a rigg, with bed at 9.30, and with what emotion remained to me, I sketched out suitable deaths for the men who had built the 247 culverts in the road between Sligo and Castlebar. There are 247 culverts between Sligo and Castlebar, because I hit my throbbing head 247 times on the cast-iron hood support.

The culverts have been designed with ingenuity. Some way ahead, you see a pretty bad one, and you slow to 35 in readiness for it. It is 10 degrees worse than you expect and up goes the head to meet the waiting iron.

You won't be caught the next time, and you glide over it at 20 miles an hour. The engine begins to roar up to 50 again, and, as you hit the one you didn't see, a little blood trickles into the eyes. After the first hundred I gave up and at each new abrasion smiled a wintry, resigned smile.

Blinded with human gore, I sped into a small village, and thought I saw a singpost "Galway" point to a sharp turn on the left. I backed, and took the turn on the left. Up a narrow, stony land I struggled and then saw an agricultural worker with a donkey a few hundred yards on.

"Is this the Galway road?" I wheezed.

"Tis not," said the agricultural worker. He looked at his feet. I waited, thinking he would be bound to continue. He got more interested, quite unjustifiably, in his feet.

"Is that long straight thing with the hedges on each side and the comparatively smooth surface the Galway road?" I asked him.

"Tis," replied the agricultural worker. "Would you mind the donkey when you slip away?" Minding the donkey, I slipped away. A taci-turn man, but valuable.

"I'd like a game," said Quinn, the professional "but there's a man or something coming from The Irish Times that I have to play with." (All afternoon on my way to Ennistymon I thought up suitably humorous replies to this, but at the time I said: "As a matter of fact, that's me.")

We walked down over the road to the first tee. I left my overcoat behind with the most unhappy misgivings. Now at Rosses Point, feeling carefree most of the time, I had been using my Lawson Little slash - the one where you take a step forward with the left foot as you come to the ball - but the day of the carefree slash was over.

The cold had reached its apex; I'd left all my handkerchiefs (seven) in the changing room. I Was dropping off to sleep from time to time, and the results of "what'll it be, Jem?" were making themselves fully felt.

The Tom Morris style was the thing - a brief backswing and the follow through stopping at the waist. It worked like a charm for four holes, and then I got ambitious. I mingled Morris and Little and topped solemnly and terrifically the rest of the way round. Quinn was generous about it. He looked out to sea while I arranged the ball with my foot in the rough in front of the tee.

Galway is not a course for the in-firm. The first nine holes are comparatively straightforward, level hitting, and you're inclined to murmur on the 10th tee "out in 35, wasn't it?" Then you have a look at the 10th hole. Obliquely you must drive to the summit of a hill. Pull it a little and it bounds off the left-hand slope into the gorse. Push it for safety and you're out of bounds.

During the Amateur championship the year before last this 10th hole came in for much condemnation; but it looks like one of the finest holes in Ireland if you manage to stay on top of the hill with your tee shot. I took the route through the gorse. After the 10th you begin to go up and down the side of a mountain, losing a ball every time you touch the gorse and boulder-strewn rough. The 18th - a drive over rocks and rushes, and the green is on a plateau sloping towards you.

During the previously mentioned championship people used to bring out sandwiches and thermos flasks and spend all day there watching experienced golfers trying to make their third putt as short as possible. From the back of the green you seem to be putting down the side of a house. The results are much the same.

After lunch I lay for two hours in an armchair by the fire, and when some of the pain had diminished, I resumed by pilgrimage.

(To be continued)