The gist of golf

Chapter I: THE DRIVING SWING WITH SOME ADVICE CONCERNING CLUBS AND THE GRIP

Chapter I THE DRIVING SWING

WIT^ SOME ADVICE CONCERNING CLUBS AND THE GRIP

A GREAT deal of unnecessarily bad golf is played in this world. The people who go on playing it, year in and year out, with unquenchable hope and enthusiasm, constitute the game's mainstay, for their zeal is complete, and zeal that remains unabated in the face of long-sustained adyersity is the most powerful constituent in the whole fabric of a prosperous pastime.

All the same, these chronic sufferers from foozling would like to play better than they do. And they could play better. There is no reason why a physically sound individual, who takes up the game before old age with the determination to succeed at it, should fail to develop form justifying a tolerably low handicap — say, 5 or 6. After that, everything must depend upon the person's inborn faculties as a golfer. As a rule, it is some very simple error of ways that retards progress ; an error that becomes more or less perpetuated in the system.

There are various theories as to the best method of learning golf. I have no hesitation in saying that the struggling player should first make himself master of the swing with the wooden clubs — the driver or the brassie. It cannot be emphasised too strongly that, for most of the shots in golf the principles of the swing are the same. To the unpractised eye a first-class player may seem to wield his mid-iron dififerently from, the manner in which he swings his driver, but the variation comes only of the fact that the former is the shorter club and that, therefore, he has to stand nearer to the ball for it. The effect of the shorter club and the position closer to the ball is to make the swing more upright, but the good golfer is not conscious of any effort to change his manner of swinging.

The mashie and its stout brother, the niblick, call for a swing which is rather different from the others, and the putter is a thing apart, but for all the shots from the tee and through the green until we take the mashie for pitching up to the hole, the swings are — or should be — identical in their main principles.

Before discussing the golf swing, we ought to consider the player's set of clubs and his manner of holding them. More than once I have heard amateurs say: "No wonder professionals play so well, they always pick the best clubs." It is not so much a matter of choosing the best — everybody does that — as of selecting those which are in the nature of brothers. The golfer needs what I might call a family group of clubs. The "lie" — ^that is, the inclination of the club as it is held on the ground in the ordinary position for striking — should be similar in his set in the sense that the full extent of the sole of each club should be capable of resting naturally on the ground when the player is standing ready for the shot.

When the heel of the club touches the ground and the toe is slightly cocked up in the air, or vice versa, the results can hardly be good. Yet thousands of golfers are influenced solely by the "feel" of a club. They will use it in spite of the fact that its "lie" is ill-adapted to their stance, and frequently when, in the end, they discard it in despair, they cannot make out what is wrong with it.

I always advise the novice, or the person who is still in the throes of foozling after several years' application to the game, to concentrate for a time on four clubs — the brassie, mid-iron, mashie, and putter, and to leave the mashie alone until he can use the brassie and iron with some effect.

I recommend a brassie at the start, not for playing shots from the turf, but for learning how to drive. It has a stiffer shaft than the driver, and, as a result, there is a greater chance of keeping it under control. You want a little loft on the face of the club, so as to help in getting the ball into the air; this element of loft gives confidence to the novice, and even if sometimes there is luck in the circumstance of his making the ball rise (or if, at any rate, he would not have met with such success with a straight-faced club), the encouragement that he derives from the feat is worth a lot to him. He should accustom himself immediately to a low tee; if he succumbs to the temptation to poise the ball an inch or so clear of the ground for the drive, every shot that he has to play from the turf will seem twice as difficult to him as it should be.

It is sound policy to confine your attention to these two clubs for three weeks, assuming that you practise for an hour several times a week. If you want a change, the putter may be tried, because there is no harm in experimentation with a variety of stances and methods where this club is concerned. None of them will interfere with the fixed principles which you are trying to introduce into your system for the proper manipulation of the other instruments.

As time progresses, further clubs will be added to the bag, and a person who has been playing for two or three years ought to know what clubs suit him best. By that time he will have bought a great number in the hope of lighting on at least a few that seem divinely inspired, and very likely he will have fallen into the way of taking out with him a large collection.

There are many golfers who feel that they must have at least a dozen or fourteen. Seven or eight ought to be ample — the driver, brassie, cleek, iron, mashie, niblick, and putter, with, perhaps, a particular fancy in the way of a spoon or a jigger added to the equipment to give a sense of security. The spoon is a good substitute for the cleek when the latter proves to be in a peevish mood, and some golfers prefer the jigger to the mashie. The jigger, with its longer blade, strikes them as being the easier to use.

I confess that, on important occasions, I carry eleven clubs, but three of these are spares and are seldom employed. It is a sound argument, too, that the more moderate the player, the better chance will he have of improving by pinning his faith to a few clubs.

Now as to grip. I am told that I have acquired a reputation for laying down a kind of dogma, that nobody can hope to excel at golf unless he adopts the overlapping grip. I really do not deserve such distinction, because, while I am convinced that the grip mentioned is the best, it has never occurred to me to tell anybody that it is the only proper method. Undoubtedly it is to be recommended very strongly to a beginner, who requires only a little patience in order to master it, but when a person has been gripping in another manner for a year or two, it is not always wise to effect a radical change \n principle unless that which he favours is hopelessly incorrect. It is reasonable to consider this matter of the grip with all due regard for human fancies and foibles. But we must not lose sight of the fact that some styles of gripping are so bad as to constitute insurmountable barriers to success.

As a rule, the involuntary way in which a novice takes hold of a club is wrong because he generally holds it deeply in the palms of the two hands, with the knuckles well under the shaft, and has the hands slightly apart. These dispositions are the two arch enemies of correct hitting. It is an inexorable rule that, to make the ball fly straight you must have the back of the left hand facing the way that you are going, so that it shall control the club to the extent of giving it a straight face at the impact, and that the two hands must be touching, if they are not overlapping, in order that they shall not work against one another.

These are all-important, cardinal points on which to base our mode of procedure. I take it, that in every game in which a ball has to be struck with a club, or bat, or stick, there are right and wrong ways of holding that instrument. Certainly such is the case in connection with cricket, billiards, and other pastimes which I have had opportunities of studying. But in no game is it as important as in golf, because, whereas you may conceivably score if you hit the ball in an unintended direction at cricket and the like, you cannot do the right thing by getting off the line at golf. And yet there are thousands of players who say they like to grip in the way that feels most comfortable, and that they are not going to try anything else.

It is a very unprofitable attitude to adopt. In point of fact, the way that feels most comfortable is wrong in four cases out of every five. If I were going to try to master billiards (a game of which I am very fond, but which I have few chances of playing) , I would learn first to hold the cue properly. The impulse of the average player seems to be to grip it as he might seize a bludgeon with which to attack somebody; but it is noticeable that the good billiards player holds the cue lightly in his fingers. It is just this kind of difference that calls for consideration in connection with the golf grip.

Some of the absolute beginners who ask for lessons are alarming in their ideas of grip. The strangest I ever encountered was a lady who wanted to be instructed in the rudiments of the game in my garden school at Totteridge. This lady confessed that she had never played before, and she arrived with a brand new set of clubs of impressive appearance. Following my custom, I asked her to execute a few swings in the way that came naturally to her, so that I might estimate the style that suited her. I noticed that she was gripping curiously, but said nothing at the moment.

Something possessed me to stand in front of her.. As a rule, I stand well to the right of a player tosee the swing. She fixed her eye on the ball, and then, like a flash of lightning, pushed the club straight out in front of her. How she proposed to hit the ball in that manner I do not know ; what I do know is that she very nearly hit me on the point of the jaw. If I had not jumped back, I should have caught it beautifully. That pupil had her first lesson after her first swing.

There are three golf grips which are more or less correct. One is the old-fashioned palm grip, in which the player holds the club well in the palm of the right hand, with the knuckles under the shaft, but has the back of the left hand facing the direction of play. Mr. John Ball and Alexander Herd are the most illustrious golfers I know who adopt this method, and certainly they do very well with it.

I would not dissuade any player from favouring it if he felt that it was the only way in which he could hit the ball, but it is disadvantageous in a heavy lie, because, as the club meets the turf, it is likely to turn in the right hand. There is no check on it to prevent it turning unless you hold very tightly with the right hand, and an intensely hard grip is bad for the reason that it tends to render taut all the muscles of the arm, whereas they should be flexible. However, it is possible to play some good shots with this grip, especially when the lies are clean and the ball can be picked up without the club having greater contact with the turf than to clip through the closely cropped grass. If you must adopt such a method, I would say only, "Be sure that the hands are touching."

It is a mistake to suppose that by putting the back of the right hand under the shaft, and holding the club deeply in the palm, you get more power. Or perhaps I should say that it is an error to suppose that you profit by getting more power in this manner, supposing that you do obtain it. As a matter of fact, you ought not to be conscious that the hands in particular are doing a lot of hard work. Their function is to put the club-head into the proper position for hitting the ball; not to do the hitting. They are to all intents and purposes a connecting link between the arms and the club — nothing more. It is the swing — the swing of the club, the hands, and the arms acting as one piece of mechanism — ^that produces the power and makes the ball travel.

If you try to hit with the hands, you are almost sure to spoil the effort by holding too tightly with the right. The player who falls into this error generally slices. The hands in their desperation arrive opposite the ball before the club-head reaches it, and the latter is therefore drawn across the ball. You will notice that a good golfer usually finishes with most of his weight on the right leg. That is because, having depended upon the swing to secure the distance, he drops on to the right leg to check the club. If he were to hit with his hands, his body would go forward with the follow-through, and the bulk of his weight would be on the left leg at the finish.

It is because the old-fashioned palm grip encourages — and in bad lies necessitates — a tight grip with the right hand that I think it has a defect. You need to hold a club firmly, especially with the thumbs and forefingers, but not like grim death. There is no earthly reason why so many golfers should have corns on their hands — ^the consequence of very tight gripping. Personally, I never have a com on either of my hands except near the little finger of the left hand, and that is caused solely by the fact that I wear a ring on the finger mentioned. The palm gripper nearly always has a lot of corns.

So much for the ancient method of gripping, which is still very extensively practised, especially among amateurs. The second acceptable principle represents the stage before the overlapping grip. Very little change is necessary to alter it to the latter. The club is held so that the two thumbs rest on the shaft, and, with the fore-fingers, form Vs. The right hand, instead of being under the shatt, is brought round, and the back of that hand faces away from the line of play. The back of the left hand looks towards the line of play.

Here, then, we have the hands nicely balanced — the backs of the hands facing in opposite directions, and the thumbs and forefingers formed into y's with their apex uppermost. This is a sound grip so long as you remember to make the hands meet on the shaft. They must not be apart, even to the extent of the tiniest fraction of an inch.

To proceed from the grip described to that known as "overlapping," all that you have to do is to bring the right hand a little higher up so that the ball of the thumb rests on the back of the left thumb and the little finger of the right hand deposits itself on the forefinger of the left. In this way you make the grip more compact and render the union of the hands complete. Some people like to bring the right hand so far up that they overlap with two or three fingers of it. There is nothing to be said against the scheme if the golfer prospers on it, but personally I think that the ideal feeling of freedom is obtained when one overlaps only with that little finger of the right hand.

These, then, are the three grips suited to the game, and it is not too much to say that all others have their pronounced faults. The last feature that I like to alter in a player's methods is the way in which he disposes his hands, but sometimes it is unavoidable. When the backs of both hands are looking down to the ground (a frequent condition in the novice) it is impossible to swing the club.

There once came to me a man who gripped, with the back of the right hand looking upwards. He had to turn it in order to get the club up. In these cases it is often necessary to put a golfer completely off what he calls his game so as to enable him ultimately to play a better one. It is a point worth remembering that when the early effects of changes advised by a teacher are to make the shots seem more difficult than ever, it is often a prelude to success. When the only way to put a player right is to undo at the outset all that he has done wrong, he generally suffers a period of purgatory.

It is a rather curious circumstance that people with short fingers generally choose clubs with thick handles, while players with long fingers exhibit a preference for thin handles. Where the grip is concerned, the nature of that part of the club which you are going to hold is important, and I would advise the short-fingered section of the community to select thin grips, because they generally mean better balanced clubs than thick grips. The latter are sometimes necessary in the case of a person with long fingers. Unless the handle were fairly substantial, it would be more or less lost in his hands.

Having gone into the questions of our clubs and the way we grip them, let us now diagnose the swing with the wooden club. It is the basis of successful golf.

All the good shots in the game (all, at any rate, except the putt, which is a thing apart) are founded on the principle of the body turning on a pivot instead of swaying back and then lunging forward at the ball. That pivot is the waist. No doubt everybody who has made the slightest study of golf appreciates this piece of orthodoxy, but the number of people who disregard it, even though they realise its importance, constitute about half the golfing world. Why do they fail to observe the first law of the true swing?

Presumably the reason is that in the days of their novitiate they fall into a bad habit which becomes ingrained in their constitutions. They perpetrate it without being conscious that they are practising it. That is the way with habits. There is many a person who will declare till he is black in the face that he is not swaying, when you know all the while that he is.

It is a fallacy to suppose that any particular part of the body, such as the arms or wrists, has to be very specially applied to the task of hitting the ball. The whole anatomy should work as one piece of mechanism, with the club as part and parcel of the human frame. The club-head should be started first by means of a gentle half-turn of the left wrist towards the body, and the arms should follow, thus causing the body to screw round at the hips until the arms will go no farther. To all intents and purposes you wind up the body with the arms and unwind it with the same agents, your whole frame turning in such a manner that it never moves outside the space which you have allotted to it in taking up your position.

It is as though you had a neck made of indiarubber, so that it would allow the shoulders to turn without the head moving. If at this moment you stand comfortably with your hands on your hips, toes pointing outwards, and heels about fifteen inches apart, and keeping the head absolutely still, screw the body round at the hips and unscrew it again, you will have a very fair idea of the proper action for the golf swing. Only, of course, you screw it round much farther when playing, because the freedom of the arms gives it greater liberty to turn, and you raise the left heel — without, however, allowing it to turn outwards — so as to ease the strain on the leg as the hips screw round.

Many golfers try to hit with the arms. That is a mistake. The arms should be in effect simply a continuation of the shaft. During my first tour in the United States, when the game was young in America, there were many theories among the spectators as to how the shots were accomplished, and I remember particularly being cornered by a man who, just after I had made a rather good shot, jumped the ropes and asked excitedly of a friend beside me: "Which arm did he do that with?'' My companion put the question to me, and I had to look for a moment to make sure that one arm had not become shorter or longer than the other. I do not believe there is such a thing as a master arm in the real golf swing. The two arms work as one, and as part of the entire mechanism of the body.

A common cause of swaying is a tendency to take the club up too quickly. Once a person has become an accomplished player, the rapidity of his up-swing is not necessarily a matter of great importance, because instinctively he works his body properly, but for the beginner or mediocre golfer, a fast up-swing is usually fatal. It results in most cases in a hasty snatch of the club-head from the top of the swing, and it is an invariable rule that if you start the arms first — either at the beginning or at the top of the swing — the result is bad. The club-head must lead in each place. The wrists must give it the lead. Then the arms will follow it and do what is needed of them.

I would recommend the average golfer to practise a steady up-swing, not exactly a creeping operation, but slow rather than fast. If, when experimenting without a ball, he will raise the club very slowly so as to watch just what happens and bring it down just as slowly, he will see that it comes down precisely as it goes up. It has one track. Well, now, even if he starts it properly when playing and subsequently develops such pace in the up-swing that in his spirit of impetuosity he snatches the club from the top, he can be sure that it will come down on a different track from that which it followed when being raised. The arms will throw the club-head forward and the body will begin to unwind at the hips a fraction of a second too soon, and the consequence will be disaster. Here we have the cause of more than half the foozling in the world. Once the club-head has led from the top of the swing, its pace can be accelerated with all the vim that the player possesses. But not before.

The first thing to do is to select a comfortable stance on the teeing ground. You have a choice within prescribed limits; it is the one place where you enjoy such a privilege; and you may as well take advantage of it. All teeing grounds are not perfectly level, and it is a help to possess a feeling of even balance as you address the ball. Stand, easily with a distinct sense of relaxation in the joints and muscles; if you tighten them during the up-swing through a determination to make a tremendously powerful shot, you are nearly sure to ruin the swing. You have nothing to hit till you come down.

Fix your eye on the back of the ball and see that the sole of the club is completely grounded behind the object — not merely the heel of the club resting on the turf and the toe cocked up in the air. The feet can be either in line with one another or the right foot can be a few inches in advance of the left. The latter, I think, is an advantage, because it makes the finish easier. It is fatal to have the left in front of the right, since you could never finish properly in such circumstances. The ball should not be midway between the feet; it should be decidedly nearer to the left.

If you are standing properly, the procedure which produces a satisfactory shot is simply this: The club-head starts first, the arms follow, and the body screws round at the hips with the head kept still until the instrument is in position behind the head. Coming down, the club-head again starts first, the arms follow, and the hips unscrew until the ball is struck, and the pace which the club has been gathering on its downward journey produces what we call the follow-through.

There are a few points of detail in connection with this operation which call for consideration. I have said earlier that you start the club-head first by giving the left wrist a gentle half-turn towards the body. This is important, because it will put that wrist at the top of the swing into the only position in which it is capable of doing its work properly — that is, arched inwards under the shaft instead of arched outwards. If you turn the hips correctly, the right leg will straighten as you take the club up. You could do with a wooden leg at the top of the swing.

As something must give way to accommodate the turn of the body, the left knee bends. Consequently, the heel is raised from the ground, and as the body-turn continues the pressure on the left is supported by the inside of the foot — to be precise, on that part which stretches from the big joint to the end of the big toe. Give the club-head a start coming down before you begin to bring the arms round and then hit. The all-important matter is to get to the top properly and start down properly; after that the swing will take care of itself so long as you let it go, keep your head down, and avoid wondering whether you are likely to miss the globe.

Chapter II: HOW TO USE THE CLEEK WITH SOME ADVICE ON ALTERNATIVE CLUBS

Chapter II HOW TO USE THE CLEEK

WITH SOME ADVICE ON" ALTERNATIVE CLUBS

THERE is no shot in golf which gives greater joy — I am not sure that there is any which affords such complete satisfaction — as a well-hit ball with a cleek. It is not an easy club to use. Many players, after trying it more or less exhaustively and patiently, give it up in despair and turn to an alternative club, such as the spoon or the baffy, to solve their difficulty of reaching the green from a distance rather greater than can be compassed with a mid-iron.

As a rule, they continue to carry the cleek for appearance' sake, since it is so essentially part of the equipment of a complete golfer, and sometimes they are tempted to put it to the test again for one or two shots during the round. With almost monotonous regularity, however, does one hear them say at the finish, "It's no good ; I can't use the cleek. I must stick to the baffy."

I am all for the golfer making the game as easy as he can for himself by the judicious selection of clubs. To suggest that he ought to persist with a 31 cleek with which he hardly ever hits a good shot would be absurd. Its use may be the indication of a golfer who is determined to master the game in the approved way, but it is not compulsory.

All the same, the troubles that are experienced with it are frequently the result of disregard of small matters which can easily be set right. And it is worth while attempting to remedy them, and starting afresh on a course of endeavour with the cleek, because once you obtain with it a reasonable measure of confidence and certainty, there are shots at your command which give supreme joy in the playing as well as splendid results.

You can control the ball with the cleek more effectively than with the alternative clubs. When you hit it well, you know at once just where it is going to pitch. With the spoon or the baffy, there is not quite the same sense of definiteness — the same certainty of a purpose achieved — from the instant you strike the ball. Sometimes it flies a little farther than you had expected; at other times, not quite so far.

One important point with the cleek is to have a club with just a little loft on it. To be sure, you do not want much loft if it is to be really a cleek, but the virtually straight-faced clubs which one sees so often only accentuate the difficulties without producing any compensating advantage when the ball is hit perfectly.