Your Stage 2 research presentation is a genuine intellectual achievement. You have chosen a question, found and evaluated sources, built an argument, and prepared to defend it publicly. That is what historians do.

After your presentation, reflect: what did you learn from the research process itself — not just about golf history, but about how historical knowledge is created and what makes it reliable? What question did your research open up that you did not have before?

Stage 3 will take your historical thinking further. Instead of just presenting arguments, you will engage with contested questions — issues where historians and commentators genuinely disagree. You will read primary sources in depth, examine multiple perspectives, and develop the analytical maturity to hold complexity without resolving it prematurely.

The most important preparation for Stage 3 is finishing Stage 2 with genuine curiosity — with questions that feel unresolved and worth pursuing. If you end today wondering about something you did not know before, Stage 2 has succeeded.