The Winning shot

Front matter

^H

EROME-DTRAVERS

AND

Preface

There has been an abundance of golf literature which deals in the technical method of playing each shot.

But there is a great deal more to golf than any mere mechanism of form. There is also a wonderful psychology, an elastic humour, the thrill of many mighty matches and miraculous shots that add greatly to its lure.

There are also many inside tips and various suggestions a trifle of the beaten path that may furnish more real aid to improvement in play than any detailed accounts of grip and stance and swing.

Too often the essential things for improvement in play are overlooked in following a certain routine that may suit one where it is utterly unfit for another.

So the object of this book is not to present any definite instruction along established lines, but to take a wider scope: to range out into golf psychology — to show the

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PREFACE

value of concentration and control of nerves — and to entertain, if possible, with stories of championship matches and champion players; to show how these matches were won with certain shots or by unusual temperaments.

It has been the good fortune of one of the co-authors to have played against or to have seen the best golfers in Great Britain and America; which has made it possible to get first-hand information of how the Hiltons, Balls, Vardons, Travises, Ouimets, and Evanses go about their work of beating Par and reducing Bogie to subjection; to show what the game's greatest stars have done, and along broader lines, about how they do it — their strength and their weaknesses — with the entire scheme of things surrounded with incident and anecdote and opinion that help to illustrate the situation.

The idea is to both instruct and entertain — to follow the way of the Ancient Green in its devious windings, and turn the spotlight on those things that should appeal to the golf er' s fancy — not only of the low-handicap man, but of the duffer as well — as long as he has caught the

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PREFACE

spirit of the game or has felt, even in slight measure, its insistent appeal. Those playing golf in America are now verging upon the million, including all varieties of life and existence, and to these " The Winning Shot" is offered in the hope that it may help to increase the lure of the Nineteenth Hole.

The Authors.

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Contents

Preface vii

CHAPTER PAGB

Aye, MacPhearson ?

II

WHEN Jones comes in* at night with a desperate look in his eye, and a large grouch with it, barely speaking to his family as he slouches over in a corner out of the way, Mrs. Jones knows the answer.

Five or six years ago she would have been badly upset if she had seen her husband in any such fix. She would have been undecided as to whether he had just failed in business, or had committed murder, or had been poisoned. But having been a " golf widow" for several years, Jones doesn't have to tell her that he "was badly off his game" — slicing, hooking, topping, or something else all the afternoon.

This "off his game ailment" is one of our most prevalent and obnoxious diseases. It claims more victims than any other four scourges known. There are said to be eight hundred thousand people playing golf in the United States now, and of this number it is safe to say that seven hundred and ninety thousand are " badly off their game" over half the time.

This state of affairs results from various causes. I n the first place, there is no other game in existence where just a slight deviation from the right way of doing things will result in such damage to the play. In baseball, if the swing is a trifle late, the player may well hit a long double to right field in place of a single to left. But in golf such a swing would almost surely bring the ball up in some deep trap or in other trouble where from one to three shots could be easily lost.

Then again, a golfer who averages around ninety-five for the eighteen holes will some day lose control of himself and shoot an eighty-four. And from that point on "his game" — his regular "game" — is eighty-four, as he hunts in vain for some remedy to bring him back. As this golfer will very probably move back up to ninety-five again, he is always "off his game" from that point on.

If some expert could invent sure remedies for putting each golfer back on his "game," for correcting a slice, a hook, or the many other faults which arise, he could pick up a million dollars a year. He could ask his own price and still get all the customers he could look after, working twenty-four hours a day at his trade. As it is, there are a good many suggestions which, if properly tried, will be of much help, and these are always in order.

EVEN THE BEST GO WRONG

I'll never forget my own harrowing experience at Garden City in the Amateur Championship. I had drawn a rather fortunate spring and summer, and had been going at my best since May in almost every tournament. So when the Amateur Championship came on, I had fair confidence in my ability to make at least a good fight to retain my title.

And then the unexpected happened. It was like being shot from behind ! The day before the tournament started, before the qualifying medal round was to be played, my mashie went wrong. Any man who knows anything about golf knows the importance of this club, the big part it plays in the game. It is a club vital to success, and here, without warning, I was playing it all over the lot. Nearly every shot I hit twisted and spun off at right angles from the correct line. I tried every way I knew to correct the fault, but without success.

The next day the medal round started, and I'll never forget that day if I live to be five hundred years old. It was the longest day I have ever known. Try as I would, concentrate as I would, I simply couldn't make that mashie work. I was out the first nine in forty-four — several strokes above what I should have taken. I managed to steady down on the homeward journey, and by sinking some long putts got a thirtyfive, giving me seventy-nine for the round. This wasn't so bad, but in the afternoon I got steadily worse with this club, and finally, when I came to the last hole, a short pitch with the mashie, I took a seven and was thrown into a twelve-man tie for last place. If I had missed one of those long putts I got down, I would have failed to qualify and would have been out of the tournament then and there. It was the closest call I ever expected to have. I managed to slip through the next morning, and won my first match. But I was still way off, and the next day I had my hardest battle on: a thirty-six-hole match with Francis Ouimet, who had been playing brilliantly.

FINDS THE CAUSE

So, late that afternoon, I called in the services of Bellwood, the Garden City professional. He watched me play a few shots and then called the turn. I thought I had been doing a number of things badly, but I was wrong in each guess. My fault lay in the fact that as I started my club back I bent my left wrist too far, breaking the swing. Almost at the top of the swing this left wrist, in place of remaining firm, would break in toward my body. It was a matter of only an inch in the swing, but it meant fifty yards in direction.

I went out and practised early next morning, partially corrected the fault, which had started to become a fixed habit, and managed to win.

Which reminds me that the best advice I can give when one gets suddenly off is to look up a competent professional and find the cause at once. If I hadn't started in correcting that mistake in the right way, by another ten days it would have been a fixed habit, and I would surely have been up against it for many months.

Don't let these bad habits grow on you. And don't take it for granted that you know enough to correct them unaided. I made this mistake in regard to my driving. At one time this was one of the strongest parts of my game. Then I became ambitious for even more distance and began overswinging, that is, bringing the club too far back and around. I added distance, but at the expense of direction ; and before I suddenly realized where I stood, this overswinging had developed into a steady habit, and it has bothered me and affected my game ever since. As a result now my hands, drawn out of the plane of the swing, are forced up, and I am never sure just when I can master this fault. I simply waited too long before seeking some cure.

TWO UNUSUAL CASES

There are some features of returning to form which are logical, and others which are beyond any human reckoning.

At one time Walter J. Travis, who is one of the hardest students of golf that ever lived, got badly off his drive. He had drawn a spell, as I remember it, of topping the ball, and there seemed to be no remedy in sight. Travis tried out all the known systems, and when these failed, he took the case into his ownhands. He began to experiment, and finally found that he got much better results by only partially addressing the ball ; that is, in place of placing his club head directly back of the ball on the ground, the back swing was

GETTING BACK ON YOUR GAME started from a less rigid position with the club head still in the air. This system is different from any other I have ever seen, but it gets the right results, as there are very few who are any straighter down the course than the famous veteran. The logic of this stroke seems to be, in his case, that the club head goes through in better shape, with less tendency to tighten up just before the impact.

Another remarkable case is that of James Braid, the great English professional.

Braid had been a fine golfer, but, although a big, powerful man, his main defect had been inability to get distance from the tee. This had cost him heavily, as it had put him at a big disadvantage when playing against long drivers. He had worked upon this fault and tried every known system to cure it, without success. And then, one morning, starting a round, to his great astonishment he found that he had overnight added twenty-five or thirty yards to his drive. It had simply come to him and he could find no reason or cause for the sudden change. Ever since he has been one of the longest drivers in the game, and to this day he doesn't know where this extra thirty yards down the course came from.

THREE MAIN FAULTS

There are three main causes for golfing faults that I have noted in my experience with the game.

The first is " looking up," or moving the head.

The second is swaying or shifting the body in advance of the arms, thereby spoiling the timing of the swing.

The third is loss of confidence in making a shot, especially upon the putting green.

The first of these is a combination of the physical and the mental. More bad shots are made from "looking up" — not looking at the ball — than any other one factor.

The explanation of this fault is an easy one : Mind controls muscle, and the mind, also, works much faster than the hands. At the top of the swing the mind has already finished its work in regard to hitting the ball, and has moved on ahead to the bunker to be carried or the green to be reached. And the mind, being in control of the situation and working faster than the hands, sends the head flying up in an effort to follow the flight of the ball even before it has been struck. The result is disaster. As the head comes up the club is jerked from the plane of its swing and the shot wrecked to a certainty.

SUGGESTING A REMEDY

"Yes, I know," says the average golfer, "that I ought to look at the ball. But how can I make myself look at it? I've made up my mind to look at the ball on shot after shot, only to find my head still jerked up in the same old way. What can I do to cure this fault?"

I know of but one answer, and that is the practice of concentration. Most golfers are willing enough to practise physically, but they never think of practising mentally. Practise controlling your mind just as you practise swinging a club; practise keeping your mind on the ball as well as your eye; practise forgetting that any space exists beyond the ball, and practise the thought that your work is done when you get the ball away from that one small spot. How many golfers practise concentration? Not one out of a hundred. They expect it to develop naturally, and such a thing doesn't develop without aid any more than the swing would develop.

HARD WORK

I know how hard this practice is. I have always

thought that but for breaking this cardinal precept

I might have had a very good chance to beat Hilton

in 191 1 at Apawamis — when the English champion

carried away our chief amateur trophy.

In the morning round over the first eighteen holes

I had been playing badly, and finished four down.

Every one, including Hilton, considered the match all

in and over. But in the afternoon I started with a

rush and won the first three holes, leaving myself

only one down and well within reach. At the next i

THEN I BECAME AMBITIOUS FOR EVEN MORE DISTANCE AND BEGAN OVER-SWINGING — THAT IS BRINGING THE CLUB TOO FAR BACK AND AROUND hole I had an easy two-foot putt to make to win my fourth straight hole and square the match.

I have always thought that if I had made that putt the odds would have been in my favour. Now in putting I make it a set rule to look at the ball until my club has struck the spot I am looking at. I have been able to do this by constant practice of concentration. But on this occasion I had a downhill putt and I was over anxious. And just before my club struck the ball I looked up, pushed the ball to the right of the cup, and missed the shot. This upset me for a moment, and I topped my drive at the next hole, losing it. The combination, coming suddenly, restored Hilton's confidence, which had been ebbing away, and he got going again, with the result that I was beaten three and two.

TWO OTHER FAULTS

"But suppose I am slicing, or hooking?" queries the duffer. " How am I to stop that? Just looking at the ball won't do it."

Well, looking at the ball will help. But the main fault here is bad timing, which results mostly from letting the body get away from control.

And in this connection I would like to add a tip — most golfers are too ambitious. They want to do all the work themselves, with their arms and body and feet and head, leaving nothing for the club. Now the club has its part in the game. It has its work to do just as well as the hands. So why not let it do its share of the labour?

Too many golfers bring into play entirely too many muscles. On short shots make the stroke as simple as possible, using only the hands and arms, keeping the body out of it. On longer shots let the arms and club do more work, and the body less.

In other words, practise playing the shot in easier, simpler fashion, without all that unnecessary lunge and twist. Let the arms pull the body through, in place of the body pushing the arms through — which latter is the worst thing in the world for timing.

These are faults that should be corrected by a

GETTING BACK ON YOUR GAME visit to a professional, for, as I remarked before, if left too long they develop into fixed habits. I know the case of one golfer who was a club champion and a state champion. He had been playing golf for over ten years, and had fallen into a steady, even game. He was especially dependable with the wood . And then, almost imperceptibly, he began to break his swing at the top. The fault gradually became worse, until he was pushing his hands a foot out of the right plane at the top of his swing, and he soon was unable to hit a ball off the tee.

This player then called in the club professional, but found by that time the habit had become fixed. The man worked for over a year, practising steadily, without helping his case. He seemed to be hypnotized. With no ball to hit at, his swing was perfect. But the moment the professional placed a ball on the tee, his hands would push the club up over his head and wreck the stroke. The professional finally gave him up in despair. The golfer at last corrected the fault by practising driving with first his left hand and then his right, and by then going back to a half swing, extending it gradually. But he had two years of nightmare before he got going again.

THE MATTER OF CONFIDENCE

Getting back on one's confidence is even more important than getting back on one's game. And in this phase of golf come the most interesting cases connected with the game. Confidence or lack of confidence, making or breaking a player, may come or go at a single shot.

In this connection the case of Walter J. Travis at Sandwich in 1904 is an interesting example.

Travis had gone over to compete in the British Amateur Championship, but across the water he wasn't given a look-in. No one thought he had a chance. He had been playing good golf, but about ten days before the tournament started he suddenly went wrong in his putting.

Having always been a good putter, and knowing the value of putting in tournament play, this was a hard blow to the American's hope and dream. He worked for hours, tried out various stances and various grips and all the methods in sight, without effect. The day of the first competitive match in championship play drew on, and yet Travis was still floundering. He was unable to lay an approach putt close or to sink a short one. Something had happened to break that mystic link which joined confidence with his play. And then, on the day of the tournament, he threw aside his own putter in disgust and borrowed one from an American friend. The first putt he tried for went down with a cluck. And from that point on Travis gave the greatest exhibition of putting any tournament has ever seen. He simply walked through the field of England's best, and he turned the trick by sinking the most wonderful putts that England had ever seen. A fifteen-footer was dead easy. He got most of the twenty-footers and, strange to say, about the only putts of any sort that he missed were the wee ones that he should have holed easily. Travis met Blackwell in the final round and literally putted him to death. Blackwell would be five feet from the cup in three and Travis twenty feet in three. Travis would then sink his twenty-footer for a four, and the shock would upset the Englishman, who very often missed. What had happened? Nothing except that Travis had suddenly recovered his confidence with a new putter.

ANOTHER COMMON FAULT

There is still another mistake which I have noted frequently while watching others play over various courses. And this fault is especially common among the so-called duffers.

You see them playing up and down the course, missing their iron shots, topping most of them, and wondering what on earth has happened. It's quite easy to detect the cause. When they want to get the ball up in the air, in place of letting the club, which is built for that purpose, do the work, they attempt to get the ball up by jerking their hands up

GETTING BACK ON YOUR GAME as if they were doing the lifting. The iron face of a mashie, mashie-niblick, jigger, and mid-iron is constructed for the purpose of getting the ball in the air.

If the club head comes through properly, the ball will rise in the proper way. But a big section of the golfing clan doesn't seem to appreciate this. They feel that they must snap their wrists up as the club head meets the ball, to get the ball up. This is almost sure to result in a topped shot — certainly in a bad one. So, when you have a spell of topping with your irons, recall this, and begin to let the club head do the lifting. Let the club head go on through, and by no means make any attempt to jerk the ball up from its lie. This is a notorious fault and one that will bear watching, for it spoils many a shot in the course of a season, almost as many as looking up or shifting the body into poor timing.

A USEFUL HINT

One of the main things for a golfer to remember in starting to get back on his game is that golf, above all other things in the world, is a game of infinite patience.

Those who expect too much, who are looking for quick returns, worry too much, get peevish, and finally careless. In place of working more easily than usual and with more thought, they hit harder and harder, and let their tempers wreck their judgment. The only chance a golfer has to correct a fault is to secure the proper instruction, and then work at his comeback with patience and with deliberate thought. It is impossible to say how many golfers have been ruined by expecting too much in too short a time, and then letting discouragement set in.

I was playing in a two-ball match one day with a veteran golfer. We passed another golfer on the course who had been playing less than a year. We were right at him when he stepped up to a pitch shot over the bunker and then foozled, with the result that he carried nicely into trouble.

The aftermath was an explosion. He threw his club after the ball, and began to get profane in about five languages at the same time.

When he had finished his long list of expletives my friend, the veteran player, simply said, "What's the kick? You didn't expect to make a good shot, did you?"

And the profanity started all over again. But that was the trouble. The duffer saw no reason why he shouldn't make that shot like an Evans. And when he failed, instead of realizing that it was only natural that a beginner should miss a hard pitch shot of that type, he immediately flew into a frenzy, and probably got worse and worse. Suppose, in place of losing control of his temper there, that he had taken things as a matter of course, and put the same amount of energy into studying just what he had done wrong, and in thinking of some way to correct the fault. He would not only have found greater pleasure in the game, but he would have begun to improve beyond the average.

I cite this case because it is illustrative of a big body of golfers — an amazing percentage. Here we have a game that requires more calmness, judgment, stolidity, and control than any other game ever known — for the player here is at all times playing against himself — his own weakness. And yet we have thousands of players trying to learn it with frazzled nerves, with their tempers unleashed, with their judgment wrecked, simply because they haven't been able to control themselves, and all the while they are wondering why it is they don't improve and why it is they can't possibly "get back on their game." How can a man get back to a given point when he starts in exactly the opposite direction from that point? He might possibly do so by travelling around the world, but in no other way.

Any man with an average athletic tendency can get back on his game in golf if he will only follow a few set rules and regulations :

If he will first seek competent instruction.

If he will then practise concentration, and practise thoroughly the art of thinking how the stroke should be played.

If he will practise control of his temper and his judgment and will keep a clear head, working with patience and calmness.

I know this is easier to write than it is to do. But if a golfer finds it beyond his mental powers to follow this route he is in for a hard time of it, unless he is an exceptional genius, and he is quite sure to find that he will spend the greater part of his time "all off his game, simply unable to get going again." Life for him then will be just one alibi after another. He had better quit the sport entirely, and save his own nerves and the nerves of his friends.

SONG OF THE NINETEENTH HOLE

A blear-eyed golfer landed home at 3 o'clock one morn, About six down, or maybe more, to old J '. Barleycorn; And when he looked around and saw between him and

his bed His spouse had laid a stymie with a rolling pin, he said — " Vm sorry, dear, that I'm so late — / know that I'm

to blame — But I have been out playing bonny Scotland's grand

old game";

Whereat she seized the rolling pin with still a firmer clutch,

And showed him by this chorus that the Duffer was in

Dutch —

Chorus:

" I know about your golf, old boy, where twenty drinks

are par; How all your short approaches leave you close against

the bar;

SONG OF THE NINETEENTH HOLE

You move along from cup to cup until you're orey-eyed; The only Scotch game you can play has soda on the side:'

In vain the wretched golfer took an oath upon his death; In vain — because he could not put a hack spin on his

breath; In vain he foozled each excuse and topped each alibi, Until at last he played himself into a wretched lie; He said that he'd been "pressing" and he spoke of

"perfect form,"

To find that he was standing in the pathway of a storm; The lady took a Vardon grip upon that rolling pin, And as she took a Ouimet swing she said above the din —

Chorus : " I know about your golf, old boy, where twenty drinks are par" — etc.

Ill

WONDER SHOTS THAT WON GOLF CHAMPIONSHIPS

1HAVE watched a ball game and at some critical point I have seen a home batsman lash out a two-base hit just beyond some infielder's reach, scoring the winning run. And I have thought that I was thrilled to the limit.

I have watched football games, and at some close stage have seen a fast halfback suddenly swing loose, dash past all opposition except one lone man playing well back, and as this lone tackier dived for his man I was still sure that I was thrilled to the limit of things.

But at Brookline, Massachusetts, where America's Open Golf Championship was under way, I found that I had never been thrilled before — that I had just discovered what the word thrill really means.

We were standing around the eighteenth green that Friday afternoon, knowing that Vardon and Ray, the great English players, had tied for first place, when word came in that young Francis Ouimet, the fine young Massachusetts amateur, was still in the fight and with a bare outside chance to tie the two English stars.

The story of that remarkable finish, where Ouimet accomplished the miraculous, has already become old in the telling, but there are two shots concerning which I do not believe that " the half has ever been told/' To my mind these two putts outlined the most wonderful golfing psychology that the game has ever known in all its history. And before I take these two shots up I should like somewhat further to illustrate the psychological possibilities of the occasion from a section of my own golfing experience.

No one who hasn't been through it can ever appreciate the strain that comes in the winning of a first championship. It is almost unbearable, and has broken many golfers who might have added the title to their achievements.

MY FIRST CHAMPIONSHIP

My first championship came over the Euclid course at Cleveland, Ohio, in 1907. In the final round of that affair, playing against Archie Graham, I had come to the thirteenth hole in the afternoon with the lead of five up and but six to play. I had to win but one more hole of the remaining six to be champion. I had to halve but two holes to be champion. Yet when I came to my last putt on the thirteenth green I almost cracked. I had only a four-foot putt to make in order to win, and even if I missed it I would be dormie five. I felt that day that I couldn't make that putt if I had to be shot. I told Graham so. "Oh, drop it in," he remarked, "and end the agony. You couldn't miss it with your eyes shut."