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Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:01 PM
The Soul of Golf

Percy Adolphus Vaile

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Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:03 PM
PREFACE


It is frequently and emphatically asserted by reviewers of golf books
that golf cannot be learned from a book. If they would add 'in a room'
they would be very near the truth--but not quite. It would be quite
possible for an intelligent man with a special faculty for games, a
good book on golf, and a properly equipped practising-room to start
his golfing career with a game equal to a single figure handicap.

As a matter of fact the most important things concerning golf may be
more easily and better learned in an arm-chair than on the links. As a
matter of good and scientific tuition the arm-chair is the place for
them. In both golf and lawn tennis countless players ruin their game
by thinking too much about how they are playing the stroke while they
are doing it. That is not the time to study first principles. Those
should have been digested in the arm-chair, where indeed, as I have
already said and now repeat with emphasis, the highest, the most
scientific, and the most important knowledge of golf must be
obtained. There is no time for it on the links, and the true golfer
has no time for the man who tries to get it there, for he is
generally a dreary bore.

Moreover, the man who tries to get it on the links is in trouble from
the outset, for in golf he is faced with a mass of false doctrine
associated with the greatest names in the history of golf, which is
calculated, an he follow it, to put him back for years, until indeed
he shall find the truth, the soul of golf.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:03 PM
This book is in many ways different from any book concerning golf
which has ever been published. It assumes on the part of the reader a
certain amount of knowledge, and it essays to bring back to the truth
those who have been led astray by the false teaching of the most
eminent men associated with the game, teaching which they do not
themselves practise. At the same time it seeks to impart the great
fundamental principles, without which even the beginner must be
seriously handicapped.

It does not concern itself with showing how the golfer must play
certain strokes. That certainly may be done better on the links than
in the smoking-room; but it concerns itself deeply with those things
which every golfer who wishes really to know golf, should have stowed
away in his mind with such certainty and familiarity that he ceases
almost to regard them as knowledge, and comes to use them _by habit_.

When the golfer gets into this frame of mind, and not until then, will
he be able to understand and truly appreciate the meaning and value of
"the soul of golf."

This he will never do by following the predominant mass of false
teaching. This book is a challenge, but it is not a question of Vaile
against Vardon, Braid, Taylor, Professor Thomson, and others. The
issue is above that. It is a question of truth or untruth. Nothing
matters but the truth. It rests with the golfing world to find out for
itself which is the truth. This it can do with comfort in its
arm-chair, and afterwards it can with much enhanced comfort, almost
insensibly, weave that truth into the fabric of its game, and so
through sheer practice, born of the purest and highest theory--for
there is no other way--come to the soul of golf.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:06 PM
CHAPTER I

THE SOUL OF GOLF

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Nearly every one who writes about a game essays to prove that it is
similar to "the great game, the game of life." Golf has not escaped;
and numberless scribes in endeavouring to account for the fascination
of golf have used the old threadbare tale. As a matter of fact, golf
is about as unlike the game of life as any game could well be. As
played now it has come to be almost an exact science, and everybody
knows exactly what one is trying to do. This would not be mistaken for
a description of the game of life. In that game a man may be
hopelessly "off the line," buried "in the rough," or badly "bunkered,"
and nobody be the wiser. It is not so in golf. There is no double life
here. All is open, and every one knows what the player is striving
for. The least deflection from his line, and the onlooker knows he did
not mean it. It is seen instantly. In that other game it may remain
unseen for years, for ever.

Explaining the fascination of anything seems to be a thankless kind of
task, and in any case to be a work of supererogation. The fascination
should be sufficient. Explaining it seems almost like tearing a violet
to pieces to admire its structure; but many have tried, and many have
failed, and there are many who do not feel the fascination as they
should, because they do not know the soul of golf. One cannot
appreciate the beauty of golf unless one knows it thoroughly.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:07 PM
Curiously enough, many of our best players are extremely mechanical in
their play. They play beautiful and accurate shots, but they have no
idea how or why they produce them; and the strange thing about it is
that although golf is perhaps as mechanical a game as there is, those
who play it mechanically only get the husk of it. They miss the soul
of the game.

Golf is really one of the simplest of outdoor games, if not indeed the
simplest, and it does not require much intelligence; yet it is quite
one of the most difficult to play well, for it demands the greatest
amount of mechanical accuracy. This, on consideration, is apparent.
The ball is the smallest ball we use, the striking face of the club is
the smallest thing used in field sports for hitting a ball, and, most
important, perhaps, of all, it is farther away from the eye than any
other ball-striking implement, except, perhaps, the polo stick, in
which game we, of course, have a much larger ball and striking
surface.

In all games of skill, and in all sports where the object is
propelling anything to a given point, one always tries, almost
instinctively, to get the eye as much in a line with the ball or
missile and the objective point as possible. This is seen in throwing
a stone, aiming a catapult, a gun, or an arrow, in cueing at a
billiard ball, and in many other ways, but in golf it is
impracticable. The player must make his stroke with his eye anywhere
from four to six feet away from his little club face. One may say that
this is so in hockey, cricket, and lawn-tennis. So, in a modified
degree, it is, but the great difference is that in all these games
there is an infinitely larger margin of error than there is in golf.
At these games a player may be yards off his intended line and yet
play a fine stroke, to the applause of the onlookers; while he alone
knew that it was accident and not design.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:08 PM
The charm of golf is in part that its demand is inexorable. It lays
down the one path--the straight one. It must be followed every step,
or there is trouble.

Then there is in golf the sheer beauty of the flight of the ball, and
the almost sensuous delight which comes to the man who created that
beauty, and knows how and why he did it. There is at any time beauty
in the flight of a golf ball well and plainly driven; but for grace
and the poetry of flight stands alone the wind-cheater that skims away
from one's club across the smooth green sward, almost clipping the
daisies in its flight ere it soars aloft with a swallow-like buoyancy,
and, curving gracefully, pitches dead on the green.

Many a man can play that stroke. Many a man does. Not one in fifty
knows how he puts the beauty into his stroke. Not one in fifty would
be interested if you were to start telling him the scientific reason
for that ball's beautiful flight. "The mechanics of golf" sounds hard
and unromantic, yet the man who does not understand them suffers in
his game and in his enjoyment of it. That wind-cheater was to him,
during its flight through the air, merely a golf ball; a golf ball
'twas and nothing more. To the other man it is a faithful little
friend sent out to do a certain thing in a certain way, and all the
time it is flying and running it is sending its message back to the
man who can take it--but how few can? They do not know what the soul
of golf means. So, when our golfer pulls or slices his ball badly, and
then--does the usual thing, he cannot take the message that comes back
to him. He only knows the half of golf, and he does not care about
the other, because he does not know what he is missing. He is like a
man who is fond of music but is tune-deaf. There are many such. He may
sit and drink in sweet sounds and enjoy them, but he misses the linked
sweetness and the message which comes to his more fortunate brother
who has the ear--and the knowledge.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:08 PM
There is in England a curious idea that directly one acquires a
scientific knowledge of a game one must cease to have an interest in
it so full as he who merely plays it by guesswork. There can be no
greater mistake than this. If a game is worth playing well, it is
worth knowing well, and knowing it well cannot mean loving it less. It
is this peculiar idea which has put England so much in the background
of the world's athletic field of late years. We have here much of the
best brawn and bone in the world, but we must give the brain its
place. Then will England come to her own again.

England is in many ways paying now for her lack of thoroughness in
athletic sports. Time was when it was a stock gibe at John Bull's
expense that he spent most of his time making muscle and washing it.
Then it was, I am afraid, sour grapes. England had all the
championships. The joke is "off" now. The grapes are no longer sour.
The championships are well distributed throughout the world--anywhere
but in England; and we say it does not matter; that the chief end of
games is not winning them. Nor is it; but we did not talk like that
when we _were_ winning them, and the trouble is not so much that we
are losing, as the manner in which we are losing. The fact is that we
are losing because our players do not, in many sports, know the soul
of the game. The ideal is lost in the prosaic grappling for cups or
medals, in the merely vulgar idea of success. Thus it comes to pass
that many will not be content to get to the soul of a game in the
natural way, by long and loving familiarity with it.

Hordes of people are joining the ranks of the golfers, and their
constant cry is, "Teach me the swing," and after a lesson or two at
the wrong end of golf, for a beginner, they go forth and cut the
county into strips and think they are playing golf. Is it any wonder,
when our links are cumbered with such as these, that those who have
the soul of golf are in imminent daily peril of losing their own?

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:09 PM
One who would know the soul of golf must begin even as would one who
will know the soul of music. There is no more chance for one to gather
up the soul of golf in a hurry than there is for that same one to
understand Wagner in a week.

It is this vulgar rushing impatience to be out and doing while one is
still merely a nuisance to one's fellows, which causes so much
irritation and unpleasantness on many links; that prevents many from
starting properly, and becoming in due course quite good players; for
it is manifest that the "rusher" is starting to learn his game upside
down, as, indeed, most professionals and books teach it. There can be
no doubt that the right way to teach anything is to give the beginner
the easiest task at first. About the easiest stroke in golf is a
six-inch put. That is where one should start a learner. The drive is
the stroke in golf that offers the greatest possibility of error, so
he is always started with it. It is his own fault. "Teach me the
swing" is the insistent cry of the beginner, who does not know that he
is losing the best part of golf by turning it upside down. He will
never enjoy it so much, or play so good and confident a game as he
would were he to work his way gradually and naturally from his putter
to his mashie, to his niblick, his iron, his cleek, his brassy, and
his driver. Such a one may come to an intimate knowledge and love of
the game. The rusher may play golf, but it will be a long time before
he gets to the soul of the game.

A very good golfer in reviewing a golf book some time ago stated that
he did not care in the least what happened while the ball was in the
air, that all he cared about was getting it there. He has played golf
since he was five years old, but he has clearly missed the soul of the
game.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:09 PM
It is not necessary to dilate upon the wonderful spread of golf
throughout the world. An industrious journalist some time ago marked a
map of England wherever there was a golf club. It looked as though it
had been sprinkled with black pepper. It is not hard to understand
this marvellous increase in the popularity of the great game, for golf
is undoubtedly a great game. The motor has, unquestionably, played a
great part in its development. Many of the courses, particularly in
the United Kingdom, are most beautifully situated. Many of the
club-houses are models of comfort, and some of them are castles. The
game itself is suitable for the octogenarian dodderer who merely wants
to infuse a little interest into his morning walk, or it may be turned
into a severe test of endurance for the young athlete; so no wonder it
prospers.

There is a wonderful freemasonry among golfers. This is not the least
of the many charms of the game, and to him who really knows it and
loves it as it deserves to be loved, the sign of the club is a
passport round the world.

Many a time and oft I see golfing journalists, when writing about the
game, stating that something "is obvious." It has always seemed to me
that it is impossible to say what is obvious to anyone in a game of
golf. Writing of George Duncan, the famous young professional golfer,
during the first half of the big foursome at Burhill, a great sporting
paper said that a certain mashie shot was a "crude stroke." The man
who wrote that article did not know the soul of golf. He saw the
mashie flash in the air, some turf cut away, and a ball dropping on to
the green. Just that and nothing more, and it was "obvious" to him
that it was a crude stroke.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:10 PM
One who knew the soul of golf saw it and described it. It was a tricky
green, with a drop of twenty feet behind it. To have overrun it would
have been fatal. There was a stiff head-wind. The player would not
risk running up. He cut well in under the ball to get all the
back-spin he could. He pitched the ball well up against the wind,
which caught it and, on account of the spin, threw it up and up until
it soared almost over the hole, then it dropped like a shot bird about
a yard from the hole, and the back-spin gripped the turf and held the
ball within a foot of where it fell. It was obvious to one man that it
was a crude shot. It was equally obvious to another, who knew the
inner secrets of the game, that it was a brilliantly conceived and
beautifully executed stroke. One man saw nothing of the soul of the
stroke. He got the husk, and the other took the kernel.

Much has been made of the assumption that golf is the greatest
possible test of a man's temperament. This has to a great extent, I am
afraid, been exaggerated. It is one of those things in connection with
the game that has been handed down to us, and which we have been
afraid to interfere with. I cannot see why this claim should be
quietly granted. In golf a man is treated with tragic solemnity while
he is making his stroke. A caddie may not sigh, and if a cricket
chirped he would be considered a bounder. How would our golfer feel if
he had to play his drive with another fellow waving his club at him
twenty or thirty feet away, and standing ready to spoil his shot?--yet
that is what the lawn-tennis player has to put up with. There is a
good deal of exaggeration about this aspect of golf, even as there is
a good deal of nonsense about the interference of onlookers. What can
be done by one when one is accustomed to a crowd may be seen when one
of the great golfers is playing out of a great V formed by the
gallery, and, needless to say, playing from the narrow end of it. Golf
is a good test of a man's disposition without doubt, but as a game it
lacks one important feature which is characteristic of every other
field sport, I think, except golf. In these the medium of conflict is
the same ball, and the skill of the opposing side has much to do with
the chances of the other player or players. In golf each man plays his
own game with his own ball, and the only effect of his opponent's play
on his is moral, or the luck of a stymie. Many people consider this a
defect; but golf is a game unto itself, and we must take it as it is.
Certainly it is hard enough to achieve distinction in it to satisfy
the most exacting.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:11 PM
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When one writes of the soul of golf it sounds almost as though one
were guilty of a little sentimentality. As a matter of fact, it is the
most thorough practice which leads one to the soul of golf. Many a
good professional can produce beautiful shots, such as the
wind-cheater and the pull at will, but he cannot explain them to you;
and no professional ever has explained clearly in book or elsewhere
what produces these beautiful shots.

A famous professional once asked me quite simply, "How do I play my
push-shot, Mr. Vaile?" I explained the stroke to him. He is as good a
sportsman as he is a golfer, and would be ashamed to pretend to a
knowledge which he has not. When I had told him, he said, "Thank you.
Of course, I can play it all right, but I never could understand why
it went like that. Now I shall be able to explain it better to my
pupils."

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:12 PM
Now it may in some measure sound incongruous, but I repeat that unless
one knows the mechanics of golf one has missed the soul of the game.
It is simply an impossibility for the blind ball-smiter to get such
joy and gratification from his game as does the man who from his
superior knowledge has produced results which are in themselves worth
losing the game for. Many a golfer, or one who would like to be a
golfer, will wonder at this. Many a game at billiards has been lost
for the poetry of a fascinating cannon when the win was not the main
object of the game; but in this respect billiards and golf are not
alike. One is not, in golf, penalised for putting the soul and the
poetry of the game into his shots, for they come of practice, and
simply render one's strokes more perfect than they would otherwise be.
So in the end it will be found that he who knows the game most
thoroughly will have an undoubted advantage.

Therefore it behoves every golfer to strive for the soul of golf.

And now, as we must for a little while leave the soul of golf, let us
consider its body, that great solid, visible portion which is the part
that appeals most forcibly to the ordinary golfer. It is this to which
the attention of players and writers has been most assiduously
directed for centuries, yet it is safe to say that no game in the
whole realm of sport has been so miswritten and unwritten as golf.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:12 PM
This is very strange, for probably there is no other game that is so
canvassed and discussed by its followers. The reason may possibly be
found in the fact that golfers are a most conservative class of
people, and that they follow wonderfully the line of thought laid down
for them by others. This at its best is uninteresting; at its worst
most pernicious.

Another contributing cause is the manner in which books on sport are
now produced. A great name, an enterprising publisher, and a
hack-writer are all that are now required. The consequence is that the
market is flooded with books ostensibly by leading exponents of the
different sports, but which are, in many cases, written by men who
know little or nothing of the subject they are dealing with. The
natural result is that the great players suffer severely in
"translation," and their names are frequently associated with quite
stupid statements,--statements so foolish that one, knowing how these
things are done, refrains from criticising them as they deserve, from
sympathy with the unfortunate alleged author, who is probably a very
good fellow, and quite innocent of the fact that the nonsense alleged
to be his knowledge is ruining or retarding the game of many people.
This is a most unscrupulous practice, which should be exposed and
severely condemned, for it must not be thought that it is confined to
any one branch of sport.

While we are dealing with the slavish following of the alleged thought
of the leading golfers of the world, we may with advantage consider a
few of the most pronounced fetiches which have been worshipped almost
from time immemorial, fetiches which are the more remarkable in that
they receive mental and theoretical worship only, and are, in actual
practice, most severely despised and disregarded by the best players;
but unfortunately the neophyte worships these fetiches for many years
until he discovers that they are false gods.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:13 PM
Perhaps one of the silliest, and for beginners most disastrous, is the
ridiculous assertion that putters are born, not made. In the book of a
very famous player I find the following words:--

It happens, unfortunately, that concerning one department of
the game that will cause the golfer some anxiety from time to
time, and often more when he is experienced than when he is
not, neither I nor any other player can offer any words of
instruction such as, if closely acted upon, would give the
same successful results as the advice tendered under other
heads ought to do. This is in regard to putting.

Now this idea is promulgated in many books. It is, in my opinion, the
most absolute and pernicious nonsense. The best answer to it is the
fact that the writer of the words was himself one of the worst
putters, but that by careful study and alteration of his defective
methods, he became a first-class performer on the green. Also it will
be obvious to a very mean intelligence that there is no branch of golf
which is so capable of being reduced to a mechanical certainty as is
putting.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:14 PM
The importance of removing this stupid idea will be more fully
appreciated when one remembers that quite half the game of golf is
played on the green, leaving the other half to be distributed among
all the other clubs. It is well to emphasise this. A good score for
almost any eighteen-hole course is 72. The man who can count on
getting down in an average of 2 is a very good putter. Many
professionals would throw away their putters if they were allowed to
consider it down in 2 every time. This gives us 36 for puts. With this
before us we cannot exaggerate the pernicious effect of the false
doctrine which says that putting cannot be taught, that a man must
just let his own individuality have full play, and similar nonsense;
whereas the truth is that one might safely guarantee to convert into
admirable putters many men who, from their conformation and other
characteristics, would be almost hopeless as golfers. I must emphasise
the fact that there is no department of the game which is so important
as putting; there is no department of the game more capable of being
clearly and easily demonstrated by an intelligent teacher; and there
is no department of the game wherein the player may be so nearly
reduced to that machine-like accuracy which is the constant demand,
and no small portion of the charm, of golf.

Another very widely worshipped fetich, which has been much damaged
recently, is the sweep in driving a ball. Trying "to sweep" his ball
away for two hundred yards has reduced many a promising player to
almost a suicidal frame of mind. Fortunately the fallacy soon
exasperates a beginner, and he "says things" and "lets it have it."
Then the much-worshipped "sweep" becomes a hit, sometimes a very
vicious one, and the ball goes away from the club as it was meant to.
It is becoming more widely recognised every day that the golf-drive is
a hit, and a very fine one--when well played.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:14 PM
Perhaps the most pernicious fetich which has for many years held sway
in golf, until recently somewhat damaged, is that the left arm is the
more important of the two--that it, in fact, finds the power for the
drive. Anything more comical is hard to imagine. There is practically
nothing in the whole realm of muscular exertion, from wood-chopping to
golf, wherein both arms are used, that is not dominated by the right,
yet golfers have for generations quietly accepted this fetich, and it
has ruined many a promising player. The votaries of this fetich must
surely find one thing very hard to explain. If we admit, for the sake
of argument, that the left arm is the more important, and that it
really has more power and more influence on the stroke than the right,
can they explain why the left-handed players, who have been provided
by a benevolent providence with so manifest an advantage, tamely
surrender it and convert their left hand into the right-handed
players' right by giving it the lower position on the shaft? If this
idea of the left hand and arm being the more important is correct,
left-handed players would use right-hand clubs and play like a
right-handed player, with the manifest advantage of being provided by
nature with an arm and hand that fall naturally into the most
important position. I think that this consideration of the subject
will give those who put their faith in the fetich of the left,
something to explain.

Almost from time immemorial it has been laid down by golfing writers
that at the top of the swing the golfer must have his weight on his
right leg. A study of the instantaneous photographs of most of the
famous players will show conclusively that this is not correct. It is
expressly laid down that it is fatal to sway, to draw away from one's
ball during the upward swing; the player is specially enjoined on no
account to move his head. A very simple trial will convince any
golfer, even a beginner, that without swaying, without drawing his
head away from the hole, he cannot possibly, if swinging correctly,
put his weight on his right leg, and that at the top of his swing it
must be mainly on his left--and so another well-worn belief goes by
the board.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:15 PM
So it is with the exaggerated swing which for so many years dominated
the minds of aspiring golfers to such an extent that many of them
thought more of getting the swing than of hitting the ball. It is
slowly but surely going.

The era of new thought in golf has dawned. It will not make the game
less attractive. It will not make it any more exacting, for the higher
knowledge cannot become an obsession. It sinks into a man, and he
scarcely thinks of it as something beyond the ordinary game. It brings
him into closer touch with the best that is in golf. He is able to
obtain more from it than he could before. He is able to do more than
he could formerly, for a man cannot get to the soul of golf except
through the body, and love he not the body with the love of the truest
of true golfers he will never know the soul.

This chapter originally appeared in _The Fortnightly Review_
in the United Kingdom, and in _The North American Review_ in
the United States of America.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:16 PM
CHAPTER II

THE MYSTERY OF GOLF

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There is no such thing as "the mystery of golf." One might reasonably
ask, "If there is no such thing as 'the mystery of golf,' why devote a
chapter to it?" But "the mystery of golf" should really be written
"the mystery of the golfer," for the simple reason that the golfer
himself is responsible for all the mystery in golf--in short, "the
mystery of golf" may briefly be defined as the credulity of the
golfer. Notwithstanding this, at least one enterprising man has
produced a book entirely devoted to elucidating the alleged mystery of
golf, wherein, quite unknown to himself, he proves most clearly and
conclusively the truth of my opening statement in this chapter, that
the mystery of golf is merely the credulity of the golfer; but of that
anon.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:17 PM
There really is no mystery whatever about the game of golf. It is one
of the simplest of games, but unquestionably it is a game which is
very difficult to play well, a game which demands a high degree of
mechanical accuracy in the production of the various strokes. It is
apparent from the nature of the implements used in the game that this
must be so. All the foolishness of nebulous advice, and all the quaint
excuses which have been gathered together under the head of "the
mystery of golf," are simply weak man's weaker excuses for his want
of intelligence and mechanical accuracy. Until the golfer fully
understands and freely acknowledges this, he is suffering from a very
severe handicap. If, when he addresses his ball, he has firmly
implanted in his mind the idea that he is in the presence of some
awesome mystery, there is very little doubt that he will do his level
best to perform his part in the mystery play.

We do not read anywhere of the mystery of lawn-tennis, the mystery of
cricket, the mystery of marbles, squash racquets, or ping-pong. There
are no mysteries in these games any more than there are in golf, and
the plain fact is that the demand of golf is inexorable. It insists
upon the straight line being followed, and the man who forsakes the
straight line is immediately detected. In no game, perhaps, is the
insistent demand for direction so inexorable as in golf. Perhaps also
in no game is that demand so frequently refused, and, naturally, the
erring golfer wishes to excuse himself. It is useful then for him to
be told of the mysteries of golf--the wonderful mysteries, the
psychological difficulties, the marvellous cerebration, the incredibly
rapid nerve "telegraphing," and the wonderful muscular complications
which take place between the time that he addresses the ball and hits
it, or otherwise.

Dark Saint Alaick
25-04-2013, 01:17 PM
Now, as a matter of fact, this is all so much balderdash, so much
falseness, so much artificial and indeed almost criminal nonsense. It
would indeed almost seem as if the people who write this kind of stuff
are in league with the greatest players of the world, who write as
instructions for the unfortunate would-be golfer things which they
themselves never dreamed of doing--things which would quite spoil the
wonderful game they play if they did them.

If there may be said to be any mystery whatever about golf, it is
that in such an ancient and simple game there has grown up around it
such a marvellous mass of false teaching, of confused thought, and of
fantastic notions. No game suffers from this false doctrine and
imaginative nonsense to the same extent as does golf. It is
magnificently played. We have here in England the finest exponents of
the game, both amateur and professional, in the world. If those men
played golf as they tell others by their printed works to play it, I
should have another story to tell about their prowess on the links.

Golf, in itself, is quite sufficiently difficult. It is quite
unnecessary to give the golfer, or the would-be golfer, an additional
handicap by instilling it into his mind that golf is any more
mysterious than any other game which is played. The most mysterious
thing about golf is that those who really ought to know most about it
publish broadcast wrong information about the fundamental principles
of the game. Innocent players follow this advice, and not unnaturally
they find it tremendously difficult to make anything like adequate
progress. Naturally, when some one comes along and explains to them in
lengthy articles, or may be in a book, about the psychological
difficulties and terrific complications of golf, they are pleased to
fasten on this stuff as an excuse for their want of success, whereas
in very truth the real explanation lies simply in the fact that they
are violating some of the commonest and simplest laws of mechanics.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 03:32 AM
Here, indeed, I might almost be forgiven if I went back on what I have
said about the mystery of golf, and produced, on my own account, that
which is to me an outstanding mystery, and labelled it "the mystery of
golf." This really is to me always a mystery, but I should not be
correct in calling it "the mystery of golf," for it is more correctly
described as the simplicity of the golfer. This mystery is that
practically every writer about golf, and nearly every player, seems to
labour under the delusion that there is a special set of mechanical
laws for golf, that the golf ball flying through the air is actuated
by totally different influences and in a totally different manner from
the cricket ball, the ping-pong ball, or the lawn-tennis ball when
engaged in a similar manner. That is bad enough, but the same
delusions exist with regard to the conduct of the ball on the green.

Now it is impossible to speak too plainly about this matter, because I
want at the outset to dispel the illusion of the mystery of golf.
There is no special set of mechanical laws governing golf. Golf has to
take its place with all other games, and the mechanical laws which
govern the driving of a nail, a golf ball, or a cricket ball are fixed
and immutable and well known, so that it is quite useless for any one
to try to explain to intelligent persons that there is any mystery in
golf or the production of the golfing strokes beyond that which may be
found in other games. Some people might think that I labour this
point. It is impossible to be too emphatic at the outset about it, for
the simple reason that it is bad enough for the golfer to have to
think at the moment of making his stroke about the things which
actually do matter. If we are going to provide him with phantoms as
well as solid realities to contend with, he will indeed have a sorry
time. As a matter of fact, about seven-tenths of the bad golf which is
played is due to too much thinking about the stroke _while the stroke
is being played_. The golf stroke in itself may be quite easily
learned; I mean the true golf stroke, and not the imaginary golf
stroke, which has been built up for the unfortunate golfer by those
who never played such a stroke themselves, and by those who write of
the mystery of golf; but it is an absolute certainty that the time for
thinking about the golf stroke, and how it shall be played, is not
when one is playing the stroke.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 03:33 AM
As a matter of fact the golf stroke is in some respects a complicated
stroke. Certain changes of position in the body and arms take place
with extreme rapidity during the execution of the stroke. It is an
utter impossibility for any man to think out and execute in proper
order the component parts of a well-executed drive during his stroke.
When a man addresses his ball he should have in his mind but the one
idea--he has to hit that ball in such a manner as to get it to the
place at which he wants it to arrive; but between the time of his
address and the time that the ball departs on its journey his action
should be, to use a much-hackneyed but still expressive word,
practically sub-conscious; in fact, the way he hit that ball should be
regulated by habit. If the result was satisfactory--well and good. If
otherwise, he may analyse that shot in his armchair later on; but when
once one has addressed the ball it is absolutely fatal to good golf to
indulge in speculation as to how one is going to hit that ball, and if
to that speculation one adds a belief in what is called "the mystery
of golf," one had better get right away back to marbles at once,
because it is a certainty that any one who believes in nonsense of
this sort and practises it can never be a golfer.

The bane of about eighty-five per cent of golfers is a pitiful attempt
to cultivate style. The most contemptible man at any game is the
stylist. The man who cultivates style before the game is not fit to
cumber any links. Every man should strive to produce his stroke in a
mechanically perfect manner. A good style is almost certain to follow
when this is done. Style as the result of a game produced in a
mechanically perfect manner is most desirable, but style without the
game is simply despicable. One sometimes sees misguided golfers, or
would-be golfers, practising their follow-through in a very theatrical
manner. It should be obvious to a very mean intelligence that a
follow-through is of no value whatever, except as the natural result
of a correctly executed stroke. If the stroke has been correct up to
the moment of impact, the follow-through will come almost as naturally
as a good style will be born of correctly executed strokes.
Self-consciousness is the besetting sin of the golfer. It is hardly
too much to say that the ordinary golfer devotes, unfortunately, too
much thought to himself and "the swing," and far too little to the
thing that he is there for--namely, to hit the ball.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 03:33 AM
In golf the player has plenty of time to spare in making his stroke,
and he occupies too much of it in thinking about other things than the
stroke. The essence of success at golf is concentration upon the
stroke. The analysis has no right whatever to intrude itself on a
man's mind until the stroke has been played. The inquest should not be
held until the corpse is there. If this rule is followed, it will be
found that the corpse is frequently wanting.

Golf is a very ancient game. Lawn-tennis is an absolute parvenu by its
side, and there are many other games which, compared with golf, are
practically infants. Golf stands alone as regards false instruction,
nebulous criticism, and utter disregard of the first principles of
mechanics. I have always been at a loss to understand this. It is not
as though golf had not been played and studied by some of the keenest
intellects in the land. We have had, as we shall see later on, men of
the highest scientific attainments devoting their attention to the
game, writing about it, lecturing about it, publishing things about it
which exist solely in their imagination. This truly may be called a
mystery.

I cannot leave the mystery of golf without giving some illustrations
of the things which are published as instruction. For instance, I read
lately that a good style results in good golf. This is the kind of
thing which mystifies a beginner. The good style should be the result
of the good golf, and not the golf of the style. I read elsewhere:

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 03:34 AM
As a matter of fact most of the difficulties in golf are
mental, not physical, are subjective, not objective, are the
created phantasms of the mind, not the veritable realities of
the course.

I find these things in Mr. Haultain's book entitled The Mystery of
Golf.

There is no game where there are fewer mental difficulties than in
golf. The game is so extremely simple that it can practically be
reduced to a matter of physical and mechanical accuracy. The mental
demand in golf--provided always, of course, that the man who is
addressing the ball knows what he wants to do--is extremely small and
extremely simple. "The created phantasms of the mind" are supplied by
fantastic writers who have proved for themselves that these phantasms
are the deadliest enemies of good golf. In another place I read the
following passage:

You may place your ball how or where you like, you may hit it
with any sort of implement you like; all you have to do is to
hit it. Could simpler conditions be devised? Could an easier
task be set? And yet such is the constitution of the human
golfing soul that it not only fails to achieve it, but
invents for itself multiform and manifold ifs and ans for not
achieving it--ifs and ans, the nature and number of which
must assuredly move the laughter of the gods.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 03:34 AM
Probably this is meant to be satirical, but it is merely a libel on
the great body of golfers. It is not the "human golfing soul" which
"invents for itself multiform and manifold ifs and ans for not
achieving it." He who invents these ifs and ans is the author of the
ordinary golf book on golf, written ostensibly by some great player,
and the "ifs and ans" most assuredly, if they do not "move the
laughter of the gods," are sufficient to provoke the derision and
contempt of the golfer who feels that nobody has a right to publish
statements about a game which must act in a detrimental manner upon
those who attempt to follow them.

It is not the "human golfing soul" or the human golfing body which is
so prone to error. Those who make the errors are those who essay to
teach, and the time has now come for them to vindicate themselves or
to stand back, to stand out of the way of the spread of truth; for one
may be able to fool all the golfers some of the time and some of the
golfers all the time, but it is a sheer impossibility to fool all the
golfers all the time; and if the teaching which has obtained credence
in the past were to be left unassailed, the result would be untold
misery and discomfort to millions of golfers.

It is for this reason that I am dealing in an early chapter with the
alleged mystery of golf, for I want to make it particularly clear that
in the vast majority of cases those who attempt to explain the mystery
of golf proceed very much on the lines of the octopus and obscure
themselves behind clouds of inky fluid which are generally as
shapeless in their form and meaning as the matter given off by the
uncanny sea-dweller. In fact, the ordinary attempt to explain the
mystery of golf generally resolves itself into the writer setting up
his own Aunt Sally, and even then exposing how painfully bad his aim
is.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:49 PM
Nearly every one who writes about golf claims for it that above all
games it is the truest test of character, and in a degree unknown in
any other game reveals the nature of the man who is playing it, and
they proceed on this assumption to weave some of the most remarkable
romances in connection with the simple and fundamental principles of
the game. In the book under notice we are asked

... and yet why, _why_ does a badly-played game so upset a
sane and rational man? You may lose at bridge, you may be
defeated in chess, you may recall lost chances in football or
polo; you may remember stupid things you did in tennis or
squash racquets; you may regret undue haste in trying to
secure an extra run or runs in cricket, but the mental
depression caused by these is temporary and evanescent. Why
do foozles in golf affect the whole man? Humph! It is no use
blinking matters--say what the scoffers may--to foozle at
golf, to take your eye off your ball, cuts down to the very
deeps of the human soul. It does; there is no controverting
that.... Perhaps this is why golf is worth writing about.

It certainly is mysterious that any "sane and rational man" can write
such stuff about golf. This is a fair sample of the kind of thing one
gets from those who attempt to treat of golf from the physiological or
psychological standpoint. I can hardly say too often that there is no
such thing as the mystery of golf, any more than there is, in reality,
such a thing as the soul of golf, but the mystery of golf is a
meaningless and misleading term. The soul of golf means, in effect,
the heart of golf--a true and loving understanding of the very core of
the game.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:50 PM
It would be bad enough if the persons essaying to explain the alleged
mystery of golf knew the game thoroughly themselves, but, generally
speaking, they do not--in the case under consideration, the writer
himself admits that he is "a duffer." Now taking him at his own
valuation, it does indeed seem strange that one whose knowledge of the
game is admittedly insufficient, should attempt to explain to players
the super-refinements of a game at which he himself is admittedly
incompetent. It may seem somewhat cruel to press this point, but in a
matter such as this we have to consider the greatest good of the
greatest number, and we must not allow false sentiment to weigh with
us in dealing with the work of anyone who publishes matter which may
prejudicially affect the game of an immense body of people.

The attempts to deal with the psychology and the physiology of golf
are a mass of confused thought and illogical reasoning, but it is when
the author proceeds to deal in any way with the practical side of golf
that he shows clearly that his estimate of himself, at least in so far
as regards his knowledge of the game, is not inaccurate. Let us take,
for instance, the following passage. He says that William Park,
Junior, has informed us that

... pressing, really, is putting in the power at the right
time. You can hit as hard as you like if you hit accurately
and at the right time, but the man who presses is the man who
puts in the power too soon. He is in too great a hurry. He
begins to hit before the club head has come anywhere near the
ball.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:50 PM
This quotation, I may say, is not from William Park's book, but is
taken from the volume I am quoting, and the last sentence--"He begins
to hit before the club head has come anywhere near the ball"--shows
clearly that the author has no idea whatever of even a mechanical
analysis of the golf stroke, for it is impossible to begin the hit too
soon. The main portion of the power of the drive in golf is developed
(as indeed anyone with very little consideration might know) _near the
beginning of the downward swing_. This is so simple, so natural, so
apparent to any one who knows the game of golf that I feel it is
almost unnecessary to support the statement; but there are so many
people who follow the game of golf, and are willing to accept as
gospel any remarkable statement with regard to the game, that I may as
well refer doubters to James Braid's book on _Advanced Golf_ wherein
he shows clearly that anyone desiring to produce a proper drive at
golf must be hard at it from the very beginning of the stroke. The
author continues:

If in the drive the whole weight and strength of the body,
from the nape of the neck to the soles of the feet, are not
transferred from body to ball, through the minute and
momentary contact of club with ball, absolutely surely, yet
swiftly--you top or you pull or you sclaff, or you slice, or
you swear.

It is almost unnecessary to tell any golfer that the whole weight of
his body is not thrown at his golf ball, for this, in effect, would
produce a terrific lunge and utterly destroy the rhythm of his stroke.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:50 PM
Here is another remarkable passage--"and as to that mashie shot where
you loft high over an abominable bunker and fall dead with a back-spin
and a cut to the right on a keen and declivitous green--is there any
stroke in any game quite so delightfully difficult as that?" and my
answer is "Certainly not, for there is no such stroke in golf." When
one puts a cut to the right or to the left, one has no back-spin on
the ball. The back-spin is only got by following through after the
ball in a downward direction, and as to a mashie approach with a cut
to the right--well, the cut on a golf ball in a mashie stroke is in
practical golf _always_ a cut to the left, which produces a run to the
right. The shot as described by Mr. Haultain simply does not exist in
golf. It probably is a portion of the mystery of golf which he has not
yet solved.

Then we are told

... not only is the stroke in golf an extremely difficult
one--it is also an extremely complicated one, more especially
the drive, in which its principles are concentrated. It is,
in fact, a subtile combination of a swing and a hit, the
"hit" portion being deftly incorporated into the "swing" just
as the head of the club reaches the ball, yet without
disturbing the regular rhythm of the motion.

This again is another of the mysteries of golf, and a mystery purely
of the inventive brain of the author. The drive in golf is played with
such extreme rapidity that the duration of impact does not last more
than one ten-thousandth of a second, yet we are asked to believe that
the first portion of the stroke is a swing, but in, say, the
five-thousandth of a second it is to be changed to a hit. Could the
force of folly in alleged tuition go further than this?

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:50 PM
We now come to an absolutely fundamental error in the golf stroke, an
error of a nature so important and far-reaching that if I can
demonstrate it, any attempt on the part of its author to explain
anything in connection with the golf stroke mechanically,
physiologically, psychologically, logically, or otherwise, must
absolutely fall to the ground. We are told "the whole body must turn
on the pivot of the head of the right thigh bone working in the
cotyloidal cavity of the _os innominatum_ or pelvic bone, the head,
right knee and right foot remaining fixed, with the eyes riveted on
the ball."

Now, put into plain English this ridiculous sentence means that the
weight of the body rests upon the right leg. It is such a fundamental
and silly error, but nevertheless an error which is made by the
greatest players in the world in their published works, that I shall
not at the present moment deal with the matter, but shall refer to it
again in my chapter on the distribution of weight, for this matter of
the distribution of weight, which is of absolute "root" importance in
the game of golf, has been most persistently mistaught by those whose
duty it is to teach the game as they play it, so that others may not
be hampered in their efforts to become expert by following false
advice.

Further on we are told, "in the upward swing the vertebral column
rotates upon the head of the right femur, the right knee being fixed,
and as the club head nears the ball the fulcrum is rapidly changed
from the right to the left hip, the spine now rotating on the left
thigh-bone, the left knee being fixed." Of course, I do not know on
what principle the man who writes this is built, but it seems to me
that he must have a spine with an adjustable end. None of the famous
golfers, so far as I am aware, are able to shift their spines from one
thigh bone to another. Moreover, to say that "the vertebral column
rotates upon the head of the right femur" is merely childish
unscientific nonsense, for it is obvious to any one, even to one who
does not profess to explain the mystery of golf, that one's spine
cannot possibly rotate within one, for to secure rotation of the spine
it would be necessary for the body to rotate. This, it need hardly be
pointed out, would be extremely inconvenient between the waggle and
the moment when one strikes the ball.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:53 PM
http://myhindiforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=27221&stc=1&d=1368107591

We are told that in the downward swing "velocity of the club in the
descent must be accelerated by minute but rapid gradations." For one
who is attempting to explain the mystery of golf there could not
possibly be a worse word than "gradations." The author, in this
statement, is simply following an old and utterly obsolete notion.
There is no such thing as accelerating the speed by minute gradations.
Quoting James Braid in _Advanced Golf_, from memory, he says that you
must be "hard at it" from the very moment you start the stroke, and
even if he did not say so, any golfer possessed of common sense would
know that the mere idea of adding to the speed of his golf drive by
"steps," which is what the word "gradations" implies, would be utterly
futile. The futility of the advice is, however, emphasised when we are
told that these gradations come from "orders not issued all at once,
but one after another--also absolutely evenly and smoothly--at
intervals probably of ten-thousandths of a second. If the curves are
not precise, if a single muscle fails to respond, if the timing is in
the minutest degree irregular--the stroke is a failure. No wonder it
is difficult."

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:53 PM
It would indeed be no wonder that the golf drive is difficult if it
really were composed as indicated, but, as a matter of fact, nothing
of the sort takes place in the ordinary drive of a sane golfer. There
is one command issued, which is "Hit the ball." All these other things
which are supposed to be done by an incredible number of efforts of
the mind are practically performed sub-consciously, and more by habit
than by any complex mental directions. The drive in golf is not in any
respect different from numerous other strokes in numerous other games
in so far as regards the mental portion of it.

Now so far as regards the complicated system of mental telegraphy
which is claimed for golf in the production of the stroke, absolutely
the same thing happens in practically every game, with the exception
that in most other games the player is, so far as regards the
production of his stroke, at a greater disadvantage than he is in
golf, for he has nearly always a moving ball to play at and much less
time wherein to decide how to play his stroke. In golf he has plenty
of time to make up his mind as to how he will play his stroke, and the
operation, to the normal golfer, in so far as regards the mental
portion of it, is extremely simple. His trouble is that he has so much
nonsense of this nature to contend with, so much false instruction to
fight. If he were given a correct idea of the stroke he would have no
difficulty whatever with regard to his "gradations."

Braid has explicitly stated that this idea of gradually and
consciously increasing the speed is a mistake, and I have always been
especially severe on it as one of the pronounced fallacies of golf. I
shall deal with it more fully in my chapter on "The Fallacies of
Golf," but I may here quote Braid, who says:

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:54 PM
Nevertheless, when commencing the downward swing, do so in no
gentle, half-hearted manner such as is often associated with
the idea of gaining speed gradually, which is what we are
told the club must do when coming down from the top on to the
ball. It is obvious that speed will be gained gradually,
since the club could not possibly be started off at its
quickest rate. The longer the force applied to the down
swing, the greater do the speed and momentum become. But this
gradual increase is independent of the golfer, and he should,
as far as possible, be unconscious of it. What he has to
concern himself with is not increasing his speed gradually,
but getting as much of it as he possibly can right from the
top. No gentle starts, but hard at it from the top, and the
harder you start the greater will be the momentum of the club
when the ball is reached.

Now this is emphatic enough, but it should not be necessary to quote
James Braid to impress upon any golfer of average intelligence that
this idea of consciously increasing his speed gradually as he comes
down to the ball is the most infantile and injurious tuition which it
is possible to impart. To encumber any player's mind with such utterly
stupid doctrine is most reprehensible.

As an illustration of how little the author of this book understands
the true character of the golf stroke, I may quote him again. In a
letter recently published over his signature he says: "Mind and
muscle--both should act freely and easily _till the moment of impact_;
then, perhaps, the mind should be concentrated, as the muscles must be
contracted, to the utmost." Now this is such utterly fallacious
doctrine that I certainly should not notice it were it not that this
book, on account of its somewhat original treatment of the subject,
has obtained a degree of notice to which I do not consider it
entitled.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:54 PM
This is so far from what really takes place in the drive at golf that
I must quote James Braid from _Advanced Golf_, page 56. It will be
seen from Braid's remarks that the whole idea of the golf drive from
the moment the club starts on its downward course until the ball has
been hit is that of supreme tension and concentration. It seems almost
a work of supererogation to deal with a matter of such apparent
simplicity, but when one sees matter such as that quoted published in
responsible papers, one realises that in the interests of the game it
is necessary to deal with statements which really, in themselves,
ought to carry their own refutation.

Braid says: "Look to it also that the right elbow is kept well in
control and fairly close to the side in order to promote tension at
the top." Again at page 57 he says: "Now for the return journey. Here
at the top the arms, wrists, body--all are in their highest state of
tension. Every muscle and joint in the human golfing machinery is
wound up to the highest point, and there is a feeling that something
must be let go at once." On page 58 we read again: "No gentle starts,
but hard at it from the very top, and the harder you start the greater
will be the momentum of the club when the ball is reached." At page 60
again: "Keep the body and wrist under tension a little longer." At
page 61 we read:

Then comes the moment of impact. Crack! Everything is let
loose, and round comes the body immediately the ball is
struck, and goes slightly forward until the player is facing
the line of flight.

If the tension has been properly held, all this will come
quite easily and naturally. The time for the tension is over
and it is allowed its sudden and complete expansion and quick
collapse. That is the whole secret of the thing--the bursting
of the tension at the proper moment--and really there is very
little to be said in enlargement of the idea.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:54 PM
Now here it will be seen that Braid's idea, which is undoubtedly the
correct one, is that the golfer's muscles, and it follows naturally
also his mind, are in a state of supreme tension until the moment of
impact, _when that tension is released_. On the other hand, we are
told by our psychologist that the moment which Braid says is the
moment of the collapse of the tension is the moment for introducing
tension and concentration. The statement is, of course, an extremely
ridiculous one, especially coming, as it does, from one who presumes
to deal with the psychology and physiology of golf, because nothing
could be further from the truth than the statement made by him. It
proves at the very outset that he has not a correct idea of the golf
stroke, and therefore any attempt by him to explain the psychology of
golf, if golf may be said to have such a thing as a psychology, is
worthless.

Our author has also explained how, in the downward swing, the speed of
the club is increased by extremely minute gradations. I have elsewhere
referred to this fallacy, but the matter is so important that I shall
quote James Braid again here. At page 57 Braid says:

Nevertheless, when commencing the downward swing, do so in no
gentle, half-hearted manner, such as is often associated with
the idea of gaining speed gradually, which is what we are
told the club must do when coming down from the top on to the
ball. It is obvious that speed will be gained gradually,
since the club could not possibly be started off at the
quickest rate. The longer the force applied to the down swing
the greater does the speed of the momentum become, but this
gradual increase is independent of the golfer, and he should,
as far as possible, be unconscious of it. What he has to
concern himself with is not increasing his speed gradually,
but getting as much of it as he possibly can right from the
top.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:54 PM
I am very glad indeed to be able to quote Braid to this effect, for if
we may accept his statement on this matter as authoritative, it
completely refutes one of the greatest and stupidest fallacies in
golf, which is this particular notion of gradually increasing one's
speed by any conscious effort of muscular regulation. Now if Braid's
statement with regard to the muscular work in the downward portion of
the drive is correct, it follows naturally that the explanation of the
"mystery of golf" offered by the author is merely an explanation of a
mystery which he has evolved from the innermost recesses of his
fertile imagination; but it is needless for me to say that unless such
an idea as this is absolutely killed, it would have a most pernicious
effect upon the game of anyone who came within its influence.

It may seem, perhaps, that I attach too much importance to the writing
of a gentleman who describes himself as "a duffer." It is not so. No
one knows better than I do the influence of printed matter. I have
lived amongst print and printers and newspapers for very many years,
and needless to say I know as well as any man that not everything
which one sees in print is true, but the remarkable thing about the
printed word is that even with one who is absolutely hardened and
inured to the vagaries and extravagances and inaccuracies of those who
handle type, the printed word carries a certain amount of weight.

We can easily understand, then, that to those who are not so educated
the printed word is much more authoritative. Therefore, even if the
circulation of a book or a paper may be very little, it is always
worth the while of one who has the interests of the game at heart to
do his best not only to scotch, but absolutely to kill false and
pernicious teaching of this nature, for the simple reason that even if
a book circulates but a hundred copies, or a newspaper two hundred and
fifty, which is giving them both a remarkably small circulation, it is
impossible, or at least extremely improbable, that any man will be
able, by his influence, _to follow each copy of that book or that
newspaper_. There is a great fundamental truth underlying this
statement. If one gives a lie a day's start, it takes a terrible lot
of catching. This is particularly so in connection with printed
matter, and I have had some very remarkable illustrations of the fact.
So strongly, indeed, do I realise this fact, that although I believe
that I am as impervious to adverse criticism as any one, I will never,
if I can prevent it, allow criticism of that nature which I consider
inimical to the interests of any subject with which I am dealing, to
get the slightest possible start. Indeed, I have, on occasions,
carried this principle still further, and when I have known that
matter was to appear which I considered of a nature calculated to
produce wrong thought in connection with a certain subject I have
taken means to see that it did not appear.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:55 PM
It will be readily understood that I am not now referring to matters
of personal criticism. I refer particularly to matters of doctrine
published and circulated, even in the smallest way. If, for the sake
of argument, the paper which spreads that false doctrine circulates
only twenty copies, _one cannot follow every copy_, and to do one's
work thoroughly and effectively it would be necessary to follow every
copy of that paper in order to counteract the pernicious influence
which it might otherwise exercise. Taking this view of the effect of
printed matter, it should be apparent that I consider the time devoted
to refuting injurious and false teaching well spent.

In the attempted explanation of the mystery of golf there are some
amazing statements which tend to show clearly that the author of that
work has not that intimate knowledge of sport generally which is
absolutely essential to any man who would even essay satisfactorily to
do what the author is trying to do. Let us examine, for instance, such
a statement as this: "Indeed, the difficulties of golf are innumerable
and incalculable. Take, for example, that simple rule 'Keep your eye
on the ball.' It is unheard of in tennis; it is needless in cricket;
in golf it is iterated and reiterated times without number, and
infringed as often as repeated." Can anyone imagine a more wonderful
statement than this? In tennis, by which from subsequent remarks it is
clear that the author means lawn-tennis, and also indeed in tennis, it
is, of course, a fundamental rule that one must keep one's eye on the
ball. It is repeatedly drilled into every player, and even the most
experienced players by neglecting it sacrifice points.

Lifting one's eye is one of the most prolific causes of missed smashes
and ordinary volleys, while the half volleys which are missed through
not attempting to follow out this universal rule are innumerable. We
are told that it is "unheard of in cricket." This indeed is a
marvellous statement. No coach who knows his duty in tennis,
lawn-tennis, cricket, racquets, or in fact any game where one plays at
a moving ball, could possibly have gone more than about half a dozen
lessons, if so many, without impressing upon his pupil the extreme
importance of endeavouring to watch the ball until the moment of
impact. This, of course, is a counsel of perfection, and is not often
perfectly carried out, for various reasons which I shall deal with in
my chapter on "The Function of the Eyes."

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:55 PM
For one who has attempted a critical analysis of the psychology of
golf the author makes some wonderful statements. Speaking about
"looking" _versus_ "thinking," and keeping one's eye on the ball, the
author says: "As a matter of fact, instead of _looking_, you are
_thinking_, and to _think_, when you ought to _play_, is the madness
of mania." It should be fairly obvious to anyone who does not even
profess to be capable of analysing the emotions of a golfer that to
look it is necessary to be thinking--to be thinking about looking, in
fact; that it would be impossible to look without thinking; that
indeed the looking is dependent upon the thinking, or, as our author
would probably put it, he must will to look--not only must he will to
look, but he must will to hit. Those are the two important things for
him to will--to look and to hit. Now those things cannot be done
without thinking, and yet we are told that to _think_ when you ought
to _play_ is "the madness of mania."

The author goes on to give what he calls a very "simple and anatomical
reason" for this inability to see one's ball when one is thinking
instead of looking. He says:

Everybody has heard the phrase "a vacant stare." Well, there
actually is such a thing as a vacant stare. When one's
thoughts are absorbed in something other than the object
looked at, the eyes lose their convergence--that is to say,
instead of the two eyeballs being turned inwards and focussed
on the thing, they look straight outwards into space, with
the result, of course, that the thing looked at is seen
indistinctly. I am convinced that this happens to many a
grown-up golfer. He thinks he is looking at his ball, but as
a matter of fact he is thinking about looking at his ball (a
very different affair), or about how he is going to hit it,
or any one of a hundred other things; and, his mind being
taken off that supreme duty of doing nothing but _look_, the
muscles of the eye are relaxed, the eyeballs resume their
natural position and stare vacantly into space.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:55 PM
It will probably not be news to most of us that there is such a thing
as "a vacant stare." We probably remember many occasions when, "lost
in thought," our eyes have lost their convergence, but it will indeed
be news to most of us that it is the supreme duty of the eyes to do
nothing but _look_.

We are now face to face with this fact according to this analysis. The
author quotes the great psychologist, Höffding, as saying, "We must
will to see, in order to see aright." We now, by a natural and
logical process of reasoning, have the golfer settled at his ball, his
address duly taken, his eye fixed on the ball, and he is in the act of
"willing" to see as hard as he can. So far so good. Let us presume
that he _is_ seeing. Now we are told that to think when he ought to
play is the madness of mania. We must presume that it will now be
impossible to proceed with his stroke unless he "wills" to move. How
will he "will to move" without thinking? If anybody can explain to me
how a golfer can play a stroke without willing to hit as well as to
look, I shall indeed consider that he has explained at least one
mystery in golf.

We are told that

... if during that minute interval of time which elapses
between the commencement of the upward swing of the club and
its impact with the ball, the golfer allows any one single
sensation, or idea to divert his attention--consciously or
unconsciously--from the little round image on his retina, he
does not properly "perceive" that ball; and of course, by
consequence, does not properly hit it.

Dark Saint Alaick
09-05-2013, 06:56 PM
Notwithstanding this statement, we see that the author tries to
implant in the mind of the golfer the idea that during his downward
stroke arms and hands are receiving innumerable orders "at intervals
probably of tens of thousandths of a second," and that at the moment
of impact with the ball the mind has to become suddenly concentrated
and the muscles suddenly contracted. He surely will allow that in this
advice he is trying to impart at least one single sensation or idea
which is sufficient to ensure that he will "not properly perceive that
ball, and of course, by consequence, that he will not properly hit
it."

Here is another paragraph worthy of consideration: "But if one tautens
any of the muscles necessary for the stroke, the stroke is spoiled."
I think I have already quoted James Braid on the subject of tension in
the drive, to show that this statement is utterly fallacious, and that
without very considerable tautening of the muscles it would be
impossible to produce a golf drive worthy of the name.

The strangest portions of this alleged explanation of the mystery of
golf are always when it comes to the question of practical golf. Let
us consider briefly such a statement as the following:--

Both sets of stimuli must be intimately and intricately
combined throughout the whole course of the swing; the wrists
must ease off at the top and tauten at the end. The left knee
must be loose at the beginning, and firm at the finish, and
the change from one to the other must be as deftly and
gently, yet swiftly wrought, as a crescendo passage from
pianissimo to fortissimo on a fiddle.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:05 AM
http://myhindiforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=27304&stc=1&d=1368302702

We have already seen what James Braid says about the golf stroke--that
from the top of it right to the impact the muscles must be in a state
of the fullest tension; while it is of course well known now that the
left knee is never at any time in the stroke what is described as
loose, for from the moment that a properly executed golf drive begins,
the weight proceeds towards the left foot and leg, and therefore it
would be impossible to play a proper drive with the left knee "loose."
I deal fully with this subject in my chapter on "The Distribution of
Weight."

As we proceed with the consideration of this work we find that golf is
indeed a mystery to the author. We are informed that "the golf stroke
is a highly complex one, and one necessitating the innervation of
innumerable cerebrospinal centres; not only hand and eye, but arms,
wrist, shoulders, back, loins, and legs must be stimulated to action.
No wonder that the associative memory has to be most carefully
cultivated in golf. To be able, without thinking about it, to take
your stance, do your waggle, swing back, pause, come forward, hit
hard, and follow-through well over the left shoulder, always
self-confidently--ah! this requires a first-class brain, a first-class
spinal cord, and first-class muscles"; and--if I might be pardoned for
adding it--a first-class idiot. Nobody but a first-class idiot could
possibly do all these things without thinking of them, except probably
that brilliant follow-through "well over the left shoulder!"

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:05 AM
I have heard many things enunciated by people who considered
themselves possessed of first-class brains, but this is absolutely the
first time that I have ever heard of a good follow-through "well over
the left shoulder." A good follow-through "well over the left
shoulder" generally means a most pernicious slice. Any follow-through
at any game goes after the ball. What happens when that is finished is
merely a matter of individual style and the particular nature of the
stroke which has been played. The club, in some cases, may come back
over the left shoulder; in other cases it may point right down the
course after the ball; in another it may swing practically round the
body. It is little touches such as these which show the lack of
practical acquaintance with the higher science of the game. No one
acquainted with the inner secrets of golf could possibly refer to that
portion of a stroke which is coming back from the hole as "the
follow-through."

As an instance of absolutely ridiculous nonsense I may quote the
following:

What the anatomists say is this, that, if the proper orders
are issued from the cortex, and gathered up and distributed
by the corpora striata and the cerebellum, are then
transferred through the crus cerebri, the pons varolii, the
anterior pyramid and the medulla oblongata, down the lateral
columns of the spinal cord into the anterior cornua of grey
matter in the cervical, the dorsal and the lumbar region,
they will then "traverse the motor nerves at the rate of
about 111 feet a second, and speedily excite definite groups
of muscles in definite ways, with the effect of producing the
desired movements."

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:05 AM
Of course this to the ordinary golfer is absolute nonsense, but to the
skilled anatomist and student of psychology, who may also be a golfer,
it is worse than nonsense, for the simple reason that assuming that
the measurement of the speed at which these orders travel has been
even approximately measured as proceeding at the rate of "about 111
feet a second," it is obvious that such a rate of progression would
be, by comparison with the speed at which the golf stroke is
delivered, merely a gentle crawl.

One might be excused if one thought that this book was merely a
practical joke perpetrated by a very ingenious person at the expense
of golfers, but I do not think we should be justified in assuming
that, for then we should have to speak in a very much severer manner
than we are doing; for when one reads about such things as "the twirl
of the wrists, the accelerated velocity, and the hit at the impact,"
one is justified in assuming that even if the psychology of the author
were sound, his knowledge of the mechanical production of the golf
drive is extremely limited. He says:

Psychologists are, I believe, agreed that there is in the
mind a faculty called the Imagination. Indeed, there has been
a whole essay written and printed on "The Creative
Imagination."

Even if psychologists are not agreed on this subject we could, I
think, take as irrefutable evidence of the existence of the "creative
imagination" the work under notice.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:06 AM
It is curious to find one who is endeavouring to analyse matters which
are psychologically abstruse exhibiting the greatest confusion of
thought. Let us take an illustration. He says: "We misuse words; we
construct an artificial and needless barrier between mind and matter.
By 'matter' we simply mean something perceptible by our five senses."
Let us consider this statement. It would be impossible to imagine a
more sloppy definition of matter. According to this definition of
matter, glass is not matter, for it is not perceptible by our sense of
hearing, smelling, or tasting. It is evident that the author
means--which in itself is erroneous--to define matter as something
which is perceptible by one of the five senses, but in an analytical
psychologist so overwhelming an error is inexcusable. It is manifest
that he is not equal to the task which he has set himself in any way
whatever. He says that "The golfer, strive as he may, is the slave of
himself." Here again we have a gross libel on the poor golfer. The
ordinary golfer is not the slave of himself. He is the slave of
thoughtless persons who write about things which they do not
understand, and, in some cases, the bond-servant of those who write
without understanding of the things which they do very well.

Elaborating this idea, the author proceeds: "It is not a matter of
want of strength or want of skill, for every now and again one proves
to oneself by a superlative stroke that the strength and the skill are
there if only the mind could be prevailed upon to use them." This
truly is a marvellous statement from one who essays a critical
analysis of anything. It is undoubtedly possible that a player might
be set at a tee blindfolded, and provided his caddie put down
sufficient balls for him to drive at and he continued driving long
enough, he would unquestionably hit "a superlative stroke." Would this
prove that the strength and the skill are there? I wonder if our
author has ever heard of such a thing as "a ghastly fluke"?

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:06 AM
A little later on we read: "Time and time again you have been taught
exactly how to stand, exactly how to swing," and he then proceeds to
wonder how it is that the unfortunate golfer is so prone to error. The
reason is not far to seek. It is found in the work of such men as our
author, and others who should know much better than he; it is found in
the work of men who teach the unfortunate golfer to stand wrongly, to
swing wrongly. These, in company with our author, will be duly
arraigned in our chapter on "The Distribution of Weight." That is the
plain answer why golfers do not get the results which they should get
from the amount of work and thought which they put into their game,
for golfers are, unquestionably, as a class, the most thoughtful of
sportsmen. If they were not, a book such as I am dealing with could
not possibly have secured a publisher. Continuing his argument on this
subject he says:

... and yet how often it has taken three, four, and even five
strokes to cover those hundred yards! It would be laughable
were it not so humiliating--in fact, the impudent spectator
does laugh until he tries it himself; then, ah! then he, too,
gets a glimpse into that mystery of mysteries--the human
mind--which at one and the same time wills to do a thing and
fails to do it, which knows precisely and could repeat by
rote the exact means by which it is to be accomplished, yet
is impotent to put them in force. And the means are so
simple. So insanely simple.

To which I say, "And the means are indeed so simple, so sanely
simple." It is writers who do not understand the game at all who make
them insanely complex. As a definite illustration of what I mean let
me ask the man who writes that the golfer who desires to drive
perfectly "could repeat by rote the exact means by which it is to be
accomplished" where, in any book by one of the greatest golfers, or in
his own book, the golfer is definitely instructed that his weight must
not at any time be on his right leg. In fact the author himself, in
common with everybody who has ever written a golf book, _deliberately
misinforms the golfer in this fundamental principle_.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:07 AM
How, then, can a man who claims to be possessed of an analytical mind
say that the ordinary golfer could repeat by rote the exact means by
which anything is to be accomplished when it is now a matter of
notoriety that practically the whole of the published teaching of golf
is fundamentally unsound?

Speaking of the golfer's difficulties in the drive the author says,
"The secret of this extraordinary and baffling conflict of mind and
matter is a problem beyond the reach of physiology and psychology
combined." Yes, there is no doubt that it is; but it is a matter which
is well within the reach of the most elementary mechanics and common
sense.

It will probably seem that I am dealing with this attempt to explain
the mystery of golf very severely, but I do not feel that I am
treating the matter too strictly. Golf is enveloped and encompassed
round about with a wordy mass of verbiage. All kinds of men and some
women, who have no clearly defined or scientific ideas, have presumed
to put before the unfortunate golfer directions for playing the game
which have landed him in a greater maze of bewilderment than exists in
any other game which I know. It is obvious that if a man is both "a
duffer" and a slow thinker it will be unsafe for him, until he has
improved both his game and his mental processes, to attempt to explain
the higher science of golf for anyone. It should be sufficient for him
to study the mechanical processes whereby he may improve his own game
until at least he has been able to take himself out of the class which
he characterises himself as the duffers. To explain golf
scientifically in the face of the mass of false doctrine which
encumbers it, it is necessary that one should be, if not at least a
quick thinker, an exact thinker, and that one should know the game to
the core.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:07 AM
It seems to me that there is possibly a clue to the remarkable
statements which we get in this book in the following quotation, which
I take from the chapter on "Attention":

When I first rode a bicycle, if four or five obstacles
suddenly presented themselves, these to the right, those to
the left, I found I could not transfer my attention from one
to the other sufficiently quickly to give the muscles the
requisite orders--and I came a cropper ... and so with the
golf stroke.

It seems to me that here we have the key of the author's difficulty.
His mind was fixed on the obstacles--some to the right and some to the
left. In similar circumstances most budding cyclists, and I have
taught many, confine their attention to the clear path right ahead,
and consequently the obstacles "these to the right, those to the left"
do not trouble them. This, psychologically speaking, is a curious
confession of the power of outside influences to affect the main
issue. It seems to me that right through the consideration of this
subject the author, like many other golfers, has been devoting his
mind far too much to the things which he imagines about golf, instead
of to the things which are, and they are the things which matter. No
wonder, then, that he has "come a cropper."

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:07 AM
There is a chapter called "The One Thing Necessary," which starts as
follows: "But, since I stated that my own belief is that only one
thing can be 'attended' to at a time, you will probably be inclined to
ask me what is the most important thing? what precisely ought we to
attend to at the moment of impact of club with ball? Well, if you ask
me, I say _the image of the ball_." This is really an astonishing
statement. "At the moment of impact of club with ball" the image of
the ball does not really matter in the slightest degree. As I shall
show later on, the eye has fulfilled its functions long before the
impact takes place. Also, of course, to the non-analytical mind it
will be perfectly obvious that _the image of the ball_ could be just
as well preserved if the golfer had lifted his head three to six
inches, but his stroke would have been irretrievably ruined.

Now, as a matter of fact, by the time the club has arrived at the ball
it is altogether too late to attend to anything. All the attention has
already been devoted to the stroke, and it has been made or marred. As
we have clearly seen from what James Braid says about the stroke the
moment of impact is the time when the attention and the tension is
released, so it will obviously be of no service to us to endeavour
forcibly to impress upon our minds in any way the image of the ball.
If there is any one thing to think of at the moment of impact, the
outstanding point of importance must be that the eyes should be in
exactly the same place and position as they were at the moment of
address.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:08 AM
Here is a most remarkable sentence:--

It is a pity that so many literary elucidators and
explicators of the game devote so many pages to the
subsidiary circumstances.... I wonder if they would pardon
me if I said that, as a matter of simple fact, if one
_attended to the game_ (with all that that means), almost one
could stand and strike as one chose, and almost with any kind
of club.

There is a large amount of truth in this; but it comes most peculiarly
from the author of this book, for of all the literary obfuscators whom
I have ever come across I have never met his equal in attention to the
"subsidiary circumstances" and neglect of the real game. Much time is
wasted in an analysis of the nature of attention. Now, attention,
psychologically, is somewhat difficult to define from the golfing
point of view, but as a matter of simple and practical golf there is
no difficulty whatever in explaining it. Attention in golf is merely
habit acquired by practice and by starting golf in a proper and
scientific manner. I shall have to deal with that more fully in my
next chapter, so I shall not go into the matter here. Suffice it to
say that lifting the eye at golf is no more a lack of attention than
is lifting the little finger in the club-house. It is merely a vice in
each case--a bad habit, born probably of the fact that in neither case
did the man learn the rudiments of the game thoroughly.

We are told that "the arms do not judge distance (save when we are
actually touching something), nor does the body, nor does the head.
The judging is done by the eyes"; but we must not forget that the arms
accurately measure the distance.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:08 AM
CHAPTER III

PUTTING


The great mystery to me, not about golf, but about the work of the
greatest golfers, is the attitude which they all adopt with regard to
putting. Now, putting may quite properly be said to be the foundation
of golf. It really is the first thing which should be taught, but, as
a matter of fact, it is generally left until the last. Practically all
instructors start the player with the drive. It is beyond question
that the drive is the most complex stroke in golf, and it is equally
beyond question that the put is the simplest. There can be no shadow
of doubt whatever that the only scientific method of instructing a
person in the art of playing golf is one which is diametrically
opposed to that adopted by practically all the leading players of the
world. Instead of starting the beginner at the tee and taking him
through his clubs in rotation to the putting-green, the proper order
for sound tuition would be to start him six inches from the hole and
to back him through his clubs to the tee.

This is so absolutely beyond argument that I need not labour the point
here, except in so far as with it is bound up the important question
of attention--that is, of riveting one's eye and one's mind on the
ball for the whole period employed in making the stroke. As I said in
the preceding chapter, attention is habit. Attention includes the
habit of keeping the eye on the ball and the head still until the
stroke has been played. The best way of inculcating the vices of
lifting the head and the eye during the stroke is to teach the player
the drive first. It stands to reason that if a player is started, say,
with a six-inch put, that he has at the moment of making his stroke
both the ball and the hole well within the focus of his eyes, so that
it is absolutely unnecessary for him to lift his eye in order to
follow the ball. It therefore follows that he is not tempted to lift
his eye.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:10 AM
http://myhindiforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=27306&stc=1&d=1368303043

Now, no player should be allowed to go more than two or three feet
from the hole until he has learned to hole out puts at that distance
with accuracy and confidence. By the time he is allowed to leave the
putting-green, he will have acquired the habit of attention.

It will be clearly seen that, starting now from the edge of the green
with his chip shot, he is much more certain of striking the ball and
getting it away than he would be were he put on to the more uncertain
stroke in the drive; so by a gradual process of education the player
would come in time to the drive, and by the time he arrives at the
most complicated stroke in the game--the stroke wherein is the
smallest margin of error--he has cultivated the habit of attention,
which includes keeping one's head still.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:11 AM
Of course, this is a counsel of perfection which one does not expect
to find carried out, although a similar course is followed by all good
teachers in every trade, profession, science, or game, but as I have
said before, in golf there is a tremendous amount of false teaching
which is generally followed. It is, however, a certainty that any
beginner who has the patience, perseverance, and moral courage to
educate himself on these lines, will find golf much easier to play
than it would be if he had started, as nearly everybody wants to
start, with "the swing." It is bad enough that putting should be
relegated to the position it is, but the attitude of the great
writers, or perhaps I should say the great golfers who have written
books about golf, aggravates the offence, and forms what is to me the
greatest mystery in connection with golf literature.

I shall give here what Braid, Vardon, and Taylor have to say about
putting. Let me take Vardon first. At page 143 of _The Complete
Golfer_ he says:

For the proper playing of the other strokes in golf, I have
told my readers to the best of my ability how they should
stand and where they should put their feet. But except for
the playing of particular strokes, which come within the
category of those called "fancy," I have no similar
instruction to offer in the matter of putting. There is no
rule and there is no best way.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:11 AM
The fact is that there is more individuality in putting than
in any other department of golf, and it is absolutely
imperative that this individuality should be allowed to have
its way.

And now comes a very wonderful statement:

I believe seriously that every man has had a particular kind
of putting method awarded to him by Nature, and when he putts
exactly in this way he will do well, and when he departs from
his natural system he will miss the long ones and the short
ones too. First of all, he has to find out this particular
method which Nature has assigned for his use.

Again on page 144 we read that when a player is off his putting

... it is all because he is just that inch or two removed
from the stance which Nature allotted to him for putting
purposes, but he does not know that, and consequently
everything in the world except the true cause is blamed for
the extraordinary things he does.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:12 AM
Let us now repeat what James Braid has to say on the important matter
of putting. On page 119 of _How to Play Golf_ he says:

It happens, unfortunately, that concerning one department of
the game that will cause the golfer some anxiety from time to
time, and often more when he is experienced than when he is
not, neither I nor any other player can offer any words of
instruction such as, if closely acted upon, would give the
same successful results as the advice tendered under other
heads ought to do. This is in regard to putting.

Further on we are informed that "really great putters are probably
born and not made."

So far we must admit that this is extremely discouraging, but there is
worse to follow.

Let us now see what Taylor has to say about putting. At page 83 in his
book, _Taylor on Golf_, and in the chapter, "Hints on Learning the
Game," he says:

Coming back to the subject of actual instruction. After a
fair amount of proficiency has been acquired in the use of
the cleek, iron, and mashie, we have the difficulty of the
putting to surmount. And here I may say at once it is an
absolute impossibility to teach a man how to putt.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:12 AM
Even many of the leading professionals are weak in this
department of the game. Do you think they would not improve
themselves in this particular stroke were such a thing within
the range of possibility? Certainly they would. The fact is
that in putting, more than in aught else, a very special
aptitude is necessary. A good eye and a faculty for gauging
distances correctly is a great help, indeed, quite a
necessity, as also is judgment with regard to the requisite
power to put behind the ball. Unfortunately, these are things
that cannot be taught, they must come naturally, or not at
all.

All that is possible for the instructor to do is to discover
what kind of a putting style his pupil is possessed of,
offer him useful hints, and his ultimate measure of success
is then solely in his own hands.

It is easy to tell a pupil how he must needs hold his clubs
in driving or playing an iron shot, but in putting there is
hardly such a necessity. The diversity of styles accounts for
this, and in this particular kind of stroke a man must be
content to rely upon his own adaptability alone.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:13 AM
Now in the same book on page 240, in the chapter on "The Art of
Putting," we read:

The drive may be taught, the pupil may be instructed in the
use of the cleek, the iron, or the brassie, but in putting he
must rely upon his own powers of reducing the game to an
actual science. The other strokes are of a more or less
mechanical character; they may be explained and demonstrated,
but with the ball but a few feet distant from the hole there
are many other things to be considered, and hints are the
only things that can be offered. The pupil may be advised
over the holding and grip of the putter, but as far as the
success of the shot is concerned it remains in his own hands.

In passing, I may remark that it seems to me that in this latter
respect the put is not vastly different from any other stroke in golf,
or indeed, for the matter of that, in any other game.

Continuing, Taylor says:

Putting, in short, is so different to any other branch of the
game that the good putter may be said to be born, not made.

That this is really the case is proved by the fact that many
of the leading players of the day, professionals and amateurs
alike, are very frequently weaker when playing with the
putter than when performing with any other of their clubs.
Speaking solely of professionals, is it at all probable that
this would be so were they capable of improving themselves in
this particular department? Certainly not.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:13 AM
Now it will be admitted that this is a very gloomy outlook for him who
desires to learn how to put. He is thrown entirely on his own
resources. I must quote Taylor once again with regard to putting. He
says:

And yet it is none the less true that to putt perfectly
should be the acme of one's ambition. Putting is the most
important factor of success, for it happens very frequently
that a man may meet a stronger driver, or a better performer
with the iron clubs, and yet wrest the leadership from him
when near the hole.

There can be no doubt whatever of the truth of what Taylor says in
this last paragraph--"Putting is the most important factor of
success"; yet we are confronted with the amazing statement made by the
three greatest masters of the game, men who between them have
accounted for fourteen open championships, men whose living depends
upon playing golf and teaching it, that "the most important factor of
success" cannot be taught. There is no possible doubt about their
ideas on this subject. They deliberately tell the unfortunate golfer,
or would-be golfer, that good putters are born and not made, that
putting cannot be taught, and that each person must be left to work
out his own salvation.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:18 AM
It is admitted that putting is practically half the game. It has been
well illustrated in the following way:--Seventy-two strokes is a good
score for almost any course. The man who gets down in two every time
is not a bad putter. This allows him thirty-six strokes on the green,
which is exactly one-half of his score. Now what does this statement
which is made by Braid, Vardon, and Taylor amount to? It is an
assertion by them that they are unable to teach half of the game of
golf, and _that_ the most important half, for, as we have seen, Taylor
says that it is "the most important factor of success." Now surely
there is something wrong here. As a matter of fact it is the most
absolute nonsense which it is possible to imagine. Putters are not
born. They are made and shaped and polished to just as great an extent
as any metal putter that ever was forged. Putting is the simplest and
easiest thing in golf to learn and to teach, and it is positively
wrong for men of the eminence in their profession which these players
enjoy to append their names to statements which cannot but have a
deleterious effect on the game generally, and particularly on the play
of those who are affected by reading such absolutely false doctrine.

There are certain fundamental principles in connection with putting
which cannot be disregarded. It is quite wrong to say that the first
thing to consider is some particular idiosyncrasy which a man may have
picked up by chance. The idea of Nature having troubled herself to
allot any particular man or men, or, for the matter of that, women or
children, any particular styles for putting is too ridiculous to
require any comment. Needless to say, very many people have
peculiarities which they exhibit in putting, as well as in other
matters, but in many cases it is the duty of the capable instructor
not to attempt to add the scientific principles of putting to a
totally wrong and ugly foundation. The first duty of one who knows the
game and how to teach it is to implant in the mind of his pupil the
correct mechanical methods of obtaining the result desired. If, after
he has done this, it be found that his natural bent or idiosyncrasy
fits in with the proper mechanical production of the stroke, there is
no harm in allowing him to retain his natural style; but if, for the
sake of argument, it should be found that his natural method is
unsuitable for the true production of the stroke, there is only one
thing to do, which is to cut out his natural method, and make him put
on the lines most generally adopted.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:18 AM
Nor is this difficult to do, for it stands to reason that anyone who
is a beginner at golf has not already cultivated a style of his own.

The statements of these three great golfers are absolutely without
foundation--in fact, they are indeed so far from the truth that I have
no hesitation whatever in saying that in at least ninety per cent of
the cases which come before a professional for tuition, if the subject
is properly dealt with by an intelligent teacher, putting is, without
any shadow of doubt, the easiest portion of golf to teach and to
learn. In the face of the mischievous statements which have been so
widely circulated in connection with the difficulty of learning the
art of putting, one cannot possibly be too emphatic in stating the
truth. In doing this, let it be understood that I am not stating any
theory or publishing any idea which I am not prepared fully to
demonstrate by practical teaching. It is a curious thing, but one to
which I do not wholly object, that those who read my books seem to
consider that they have a personal claim on my services as well, and
it is no uncommon thing for me to receive visits from men who are in
trouble about their putting, their drive, or their approach, and I
have not, as a rule, any very great trouble in locating the seat of
the difficulty.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:18 AM
The pernicious influence of such teaching as that which I have just
quoted repeatedly comes before me. I know men who seem to consider
that the chief art of putting in golf is bound up in another art,
namely, the art of the contortionist, whereas, of course, nothing
could be further from the truth. Putting, as I shall show later on, is
an extremely simple operation. In fact its simplicity is so pronounced
that little children, almost without instruction, do it remarkably
well, because they do it naturally. It is only when people come to the
game possibly rather late in life, and perhaps with habits acquired
from other games, and in addition to this are told that they must
evolve their own particular style, that we find the difficulty, for
the style which is evolved is, in the vast majority of cases, no style
at all, and the stroke is played unnaturally.

That is what I have to say with regard to the "difficulty" of putting.
I shall, later on, deal with the principles involved in putting. It
will, in the meantime, be sufficient for me to consider and criticise
these statements generally. If this were my own uncorroborated
opinion, it is possible that the definite statements of three men like
Braid, Taylor, and Vardon might outweigh what I have said, although I
do not believe that even in that case they would; for what I have
quoted is such obvious nonsense that it would indeed be to me a
mystery if any golfer possessed of ordinary common sense could accept
any view of the matter other than that which I put forward.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:19 AM
http://myhindiforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=27307&stc=1&d=1368303564

However, when dealing with names like these, it is worth while to
reinforce oneself. Let us see what James Braid has to say about the
matter in _Advanced Golf_. At page 144, chapter x., dealing with
"Putting Strokes," Braid says: "Thus practically any man has it in his
power to become a reasonably good putter, and to effect a considerable
improvement in his game as the result." Here is the message of hope to
the putter. It will be remembered that Taylor states that the good
putter may be said to be born, not made, and that Braid practically
said the same thing. This, of course, is nonsense, and if any
refutation were necessary, James Braid himself is the refutation. The
first time I saw Braid putting, he was trying a Vaile putter for me
at Walton-on-Heath. He came down on the ball before he had come to the
bottom of his swing, and finished on the green quite two inches in
front of the spot where the ball had been. Before I had reflected in
the slightest degree, I came out quite naturally with the question,
"Do you always put like that?" "Yes," said Braid in his slow, quiet
way, "and it is the best way." By this time I had remembered who Braid
was, and I did not pursue the subject any further, but I thought a
good deal. I thought that Braid would, in due course, find out that it
was not the best way, and I fully understood why he was such a bad
putter.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:19 AM
Since then Braid has found out that his method was wrong. He has
altered it, and now plays his puts in the only proper way, which I
shall refer to later on. As everybody knows, Braid is now a very fine
putter--_but he was not born so_. If ever there was an illustration of
a fine putter made out of a bad putter, James Braid is the outstanding
example, and James Braid is the answer to Taylor's question as to
whether a professional can improve his putting or not. Any
professional whose putting is bad can improve it by using his brains,
because when a professional puts badly it is rarely a question of his
hands, his eye, or his wrist being wrong. The seat of the deficiency
is much deeper than that.

Let us now see what James Braid has to say about putting. At page 146
of _Advanced Golf_ he practically eats his own words. This is what he
says:

Of course, they say that good putters are born and not made,
and it is certainly true that some of the finest putters we
know seem to come by their wonderful skill as a gift, and
nowadays constantly putt with an ease and a confidence that
suggest some kind of inspiration. But it is also the fact
that a man who was not a born putter, and whose putting all
through his golfing youth was of the most moderate quality,
may by study and practice make himself a putter who need fear
nobody on any putting green. I may suggest that I have proved
this in my own case. Until comparatively recently there is no
doubt that I was really a poor putter. Long after I was a
scratch player I lost more matches through bad putting than
anything else. I realised that putting was the thing that
stood in the way of further improvement, and I did my best to
improve it, so that to-day my critics are kind enough to say
that there is not very much wanting in my play on the putting
green, while I know that it was an important factor in
gaining for me my recent championship.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:20 AM
So I may be allowed the privilege of indicating the path
along which improvement in this department of the game may
best be effected; and what I have to say at the beginning is,
that putting is essentially a thing for the closest
mathematical and other reckoning. It is a game of
calculations pure and simple, a matter for the most careful
analysis and thought.

Now here at least we have common sense with regard to putting. Braid
holds himself out as an example of the bad putter turned into the good
putter. He does not, it is true, tell us why he was a bad putter and
how he changed his bad methods to his present excellent method, but I
have already given the key to that. I shall, however, deal with it
more fully when I come to the question of the practice of putting.
Braid says on page 147 of _Advanced Golf_, still speaking of putting,
that "the mechanical part is comparatively simple." He continues:
"Putts most generally go wrong because the strength or the line, or
both, were misjudged, and they were so misjudged because the different
factors were not valued properly, and because one or two of them were
very likely overlooked altogether."

I think very few golfers will be inclined to dispute the opening
statement that "Putts most generally go wrong because the strength or
the line, or both, were misjudged." I may say that I never heard of a
put which went wrong for any other reason. If the strength and the
line are both right, one always has an excellent chance of ending in
the tin! Braid tells us again on page 148

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:20 AM
... that what I call the mechanical part of putting--the
hitting of the ball--is simple and sure in comparison with
the other difficulties that are presented when a long putt
has to be made; yet it is hardly necessary to say to any
experienced golfer that there are absolutely thousands of
players who fail in their putting, not because of any lack of
powers of calculation or a good eye, steady hand, and
delicacy of touch, but simply because they have fallen into a
careless way of performing this mechanical part, and of
almost feeling that any way of hitting the ball will do so
long as it is hit in the right direction and the proper
degree of strength is applied.

Again Braid says on page 149:

Absolutely everything depends on hitting the ball truly, and
the man who always does so has mastered one of the greatest
difficulties of the art of putting. A long putt can never be
run down except by a fluke when the ball has not been hit
truly, however exactly all the calculations of line and
strength have been made.

Now the point which I am making, and I hope making in such a manner
that no one will ever dare even to attempt to refute it, is the fact
that the mechanical operation of putting is one of extreme simplicity,
entirely devoid of mystery, and capable of acquirement by persons even
of a very low order of intelligence. I want to make it plain beyond
the possibility of doubt that putting is the foundation of golf and
that it can be very easily learned, provided always that the
instructor has a proper idea of the mechanics of the put. Generally
speaking, when one uses the word "mechanics" a golfer is afraid that
he is about to receive some abstruse lecture illustrated by diagrams
and mathematical formulæ, but it is not so. It is essential to a
thorough knowledge and enjoyment of the game of golf that the golfer
should understand the mechanics of putting.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:21 AM
James Braid says that it is a matter of mathematics and calculation,
and he is not far wrong; but the mechanics of the put are of such
extreme simplicity that no golfer or would-be golfer need be
discouraged because one refers to the elementary science which is
involved in the making of the perfect put. Rather let him be thankful
that he has James Braid's corroboration of the fact, which I have for
many years past tried to impress upon golfers, that the main thing to
strive at in connection with improving their game is a proper
understanding of the mechanical principles involved in producing the
strokes. Until the ordinary golfer has this he will not progress so
rapidly as he may desire.

I think that we may now consider that it _is_ possible to teach people
how to put; so, having disposed of this fable, let us consider the
most important features of putting. I do not propose here to
illustrate the manner in which the stroke is to be played. I have done
that fully in _Modern Golf_ and in other places. I am here concerning
myself mainly with the fundamental principles. When these are properly
grasped, and these I may say are practically all arm-chair golf, any
person of ordinary intelligence should be able to go on to a putting
green, and by carrying them out become quite a good putter.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:21 AM
Let us first consider the manner of propulsion of the ball. Provided,
for the sake of argument, that the putting-green were an enlarged
billiard table with a hole in the middle of it, and one were given a
penny to put into that hole from the edge of the table, how would one
endeavour to do it? There can be but little doubt one would try to
_roll_ the coin into the hole. Now that is the way one must try to
put. The ball must be rolled up to the hole. At first sight this seems
an entirely superfluous direction. The reader may say: "In what other
way may puts be sent into the hole than by rolling?" Practically,
there is no other way. It was the idea that there was another and a
better way of holing puts than by rolling them into the hole which
made James Braid in the old days such a bad putter, for in those days
James Braid putted with what is commonly called "drag." It is no
uncommon thing to hear men who play a very fine game of golf advise
players to "slide" their long puts up. Put in another way this simply
means--advice to play a long put with what is known as "drag."

It is well known that at billiards one can hit very hard and direct
one's ball very well by playing with a large amount of drag, and
golfers have carried this notion on to the putting-green, but, it must
be admitted, in a very thoughtless manner. In billiards the ball is
very heavy in proportion to its size. It moves on a perfectly level
and practically smooth surface, the tip of the cue is soft and covered
with chalk, which gives a splendid grip on the ball, and the blow is
delivered very far below the centre of the ball's mass, and is
concentrated on a particular point. In golf it is impracticable in
putting to get very much below the centre of the ball. It can be done,
of course, with a club which is sufficiently lofted, but the moment
this is done there is a tendency to make the ball leave the green,
which is not calculated to make for accuracy. Moreover, be it
remembered that the contact here is between two substances which
are not well calculated to enter into communion, namely, the
comparatively hard and shiny surface of a golf ball, and the hard and
frequently unmarked face of a putter. Moreover, the golf ball is
frequently marked with excrescences called brambles or pimples.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:21 AM
It is obvious that in many cases the first impact will be on one of
these pimples, and also in many cases certainly not in a line dead
down the centre of that bramble and in a line coinciding with the
intended line of run of the ball. When the impact takes place in this
manner it is obvious that, according to the simplest laws of
mechanics, the put must be started wrongly. It is also obvious that if
there is this tendency to go crookedly off the face of the club the
ball will have more opportunity of getting out of the track, which it
makes for itself in the turf, if it is lifted in any degree from the
turf by a lofted club.

It is apparent that a golf ball on a putting green sinks into the
turf. It is equally apparent that it will, on its way to the hole,
make for itself a track or furrow of approximately the same depth as
the depression in which it was resting when stationary. That furrow,
to a very great extent, holds the ball to its course and minimises
very much the faulty marking of a great many of the golf balls of
to-day, so that it will be seen that the object of the player should
be not in any way whatever to lift his ball from the green in the put,
which is the invariable and inevitable tendency of attempting to put
with drag by means of a lofted club. It is an extremely common error
to suppose that a put played with drag hugs the green more than one
played in the ordinary way, or with top. As a matter of
incontrovertible fact, no put hugs the green more than a topped put.
It would be easy enough to demonstrate this were it necessary to do
so, but it is a matter which comes in more in the dynamics of golf,
and possibly I shall have the space to treat of it further there. We
may, for our immediate purpose, content ourselves with the fact that
James Braid has abandoned putting with drag, and now rolls his ball up
to the hole with, if anything, a little top, although, be it clearly
understood, there is no apparent intention on his part to obtain this
top, nor does he in _Advanced Golf_ advocate that any attempt should
be made to obtain top; but there can be no doubt whatever that the
manner in which he plays his put tends to impart a certain amount of
top to the ball, and this, of course, causes it to run very freely.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:21 AM
Now with regard to putting drag on a long put, it should be obvious to
any one that, considering the roughness of the green, the extreme
roughness of the ball and its comparatively light weight in proportion
to its size, it would be impossible to make that ball retain any
considerable measure of back-spin over any appreciable distance of the
green. The idea is so repugnant to common sense and practical golf
that it has always been a matter of astonishment to me to think that
it could have prevailed so much as it has. However, there can be no
doubt that putting under this utterly wrong impression has done a very
great amount of harm to the game of players who might otherwise have
been many strokes better. Let our golfer understand that there is one
way, and one way only, in practical golf to put the ball, and that is
to roll it up to the hole.

There is generally an exception to prove the rule, and if I can find
an exception to this rule, it must be when one is trying to bolt short
puts. Practically every one has experienced the difficulty of holing
short puts, especially when the green is extremely keen. It is here
that the delicacy of the stroke allows the ball and the inequalities
thereof and any obstructions on the turf to exercise their fullest
power to deflect the ball from the line to the hole. James Braid, in
these circumstances, advises bolting one's puts. Needless to say, he
explains that one should put dead for the middle of the hole, and by
bolting, of course, is meant that one should put firmly so as to give
the ball sufficient strength of run to overcome its inequalities or
those of the turf.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:22 AM
This, unquestionably, is good advice; but if one puts at the hole in
this manner and does not get it cleanly enough to sink into the tin at
once, the ball with top will run round the edge of the tin and remain
on the green. This is the only case in golf that I can call to mind
where there is any use in putting drag on a put, and the reason for
this is that the distance from the ball to the hole and the nature of
the green is such that the ball is able to retain a very considerable
portion of its backward spin, and upon contact with the rim of the
hole, instead of having a forward run on it which enables it to hold
up and so get away from the hole, the back-spin gets a grip on the
edge of the hole and the ball falls in.

So far as I can remember, this is absolutely the only case in which
drag of any sort may be considered useful in a put. When I say drag of
any sort I am not, of course, referring to cutting round a put, or
negotiating a stymie with back-spin, for neither of these strokes
comes within the scope of my remark.

Having arrived at a decision as to the best method of sending the ball
on its journey to the hole, we have now to consider a point of supreme
importance in golf, and one which is not sufficiently insisted upon
by instructors. This is, that at the moment of impact the face of the
putter shall form a true right angle with the line of run to the hole.
That is the fundamental point in connection with putting; but it is of
almost equal importance that the right angle shall be preserved for as
long a time as possible in the swing back, and also in the
follow-through--in other words, the head of the putter should be in
the line of run to the hole as long as possible both before and after
the stroke. With this extremely simple rule, and it will be apparent
that this can be just as well learned in an arm-chair as anywhere
else, almost anyone could put well.

Dark Saint Alaick
12-05-2013, 01:22 AM
There is another point of outstanding importance. I have said that the
head of the putter should form a right angle to the line of run to the
hole. I shall be more emphatic still. Let us consider the line of run
to the hole as the upright portion of a very long letter T laid on the
ground. The top of the letter T will then be formed by the front edge
of the sole of the putter, so that it will be seen that not only does
the putter face form a dead right angle to the line of run to the
hole, but that the line of run to the hole hits the putter face dead
in the centre. For all ordinary putting, that is the one and only way
to proceed. One reads in various books about putting off the heel,
putting off the toe, and putting with drag. This is, comparatively
speaking, all imbecility and theory. There is no way to put in golf
comparable with the put that goes off the centre of the club's face.
If we may treat the face of the putter as a rectangle, bisect it by a
vertical line and also by a horizontal line, the point where these two
lines cross each other will be the portion of the putter which should
come into contact with the ball.

These are extremely elementary matters; but it is impossible,
although they are so elementary, to exaggerate their importance, and
it is amazing, considering their simplicity, how much neglected they
are in all books of instruction, and, generally speaking, by all
instructors. For instance, James Braid, at page 149, tells us:

Hitting the ball truly is simply a question of bringing the
putter on to it when making the stroke to exactly the same
point as when the final address was made, and of swinging the
putter through from the back swing to the finish in a
straight line.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:02 AM
http://myhindiforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=27354&stc=1&d=1368388944

This statement would be correct if the address had been made correctly
in the first instance, but unless one has it in one's mind to make
one's putter the top of the T--that is, the completion of the right
angle to the line of run to the hole--the chances are that one's
original address was wrong. Then it will be clearly seen that it is
not "simply a question of bringing the putter on to it when making the
stroke to exactly the same point as when the final address was made."
The important point is to see that the final address is correctly
made; but in no book which I have read--and I have read practically
every book on golf which deserves to be read--do I find any simple and
explicit directions for the mechanical portion of the put, which, as
James Braid truly observes, is extremely simple.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:07 AM
Now for the idea of the stroke: The player will, of course, have
learned his grip from some of the books on golf, or from a
professional. He will in all probability have adopted the overlapping
grip, for that grip tends, more than any other, to bring both wrists
into action together; and there can, I think, be little doubt that for
most people it is the better grip. Having obtained a good general idea
of the simple mechanical operations involved in the contact of the
club with the ball, the player now has to consider how that club
moves where it is, if we may so express it, bound to him. Well, if he
has even a rudimentary idea of mechanics, he will know that if he
wishes to swing that club so that it may hit the ball in an exactly
similar manner every time, he should suspend it on a single bearing,
so that it would swing in a similar manner to the pendulum of a clock.

The perfect put, from a mechanical point of view, is made by a motion
which is equivalent to the swinging of a pendulum. If, instead of
allowing the weight of the pendulum to be, as it generally is, in the
plane of the swing, it were turned round so that the flat side faced
towards the sides of the clock, we should have a rough mechanical
presentment of the golf club in the act of making a put. This is, of
course, a counsel of absolute perfection. It is an impossibility to
the golfer, both on account of his physical and physiological
imperfections, and on account of the fact that the golfer practically
never puts with an upright putter.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:08 AM
We are frequently told that a put is the only true wrist stroke in
golf. As a matter of fact there is no true wrist stroke in golf, for
it is evident that if one played the put as a true wrist stroke with a
club whose lie is at a considerable angle to the horizontal, the
centre of the circle formed by the club head will be away from the
ball to such an extent that the instant the club head leaves the ball
it must leave the line of run to the hole, and equally as certainly
will it leave the line of run to the hole immediately after it has
struck the ball.

Now this is not what we require, so it has come to pass that the put
at golf is to a very great extent a compromise. It must, above
everything, be a deliberate stroke with a clean follow-through. There
must be no suggestion of reducing the put to a muscular effort. The
idea of the pendulum must be preserved as much as possible, and the
strength of the put regulated to a very great extent by the length of
one's backward swing.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:08 AM
It is of the first importance that the body should be kept still
during the process of putting, and it stands to reason that the wrists
must also be kept as much as possible in the same place. If one finds
that one has a marked tendency to sway or to move the body about,
standing with one's feet close together will frequently correct this.

I have referred to the fact that the put is not a wrist stroke. As a
matter of fact, the wrists must in all good putting "go out after the
ball." By this is meant that at the moment of impact the wrists must
in the follow-through travel in a line parallel with the line of run
to the hole, and they must finish so that the club head is able, at
the finish, to stay over the line of run to the hole. To do this, it
is obvious that the wrists, after impact, must move forward. No true
follow-through in the put can be obtained from stationary wrists. This
may sound a little complicated. As a matter of fact it is nothing of
the sort, and the action is very simple, very natural, and when
properly played the ball goes very sweetly off the club and with
splendid direction.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:08 AM
There is one good general rule for regulating the distance which one
should stand from the ball in putting. When one addresses one's ball,
one should be in such a position that the ball is right underneath
one's eyes. To put it so that there can be no possible mistake as to
what I mean, I may say that in most cases the eyes, the ball, and the
hole should form a triangle in a plane at a right angle to the
horizon. Now I know how hard it is for some people to follow a remark
which refers to planes and right angles and horizons, so as this is a
matter of extreme importance, and a matter where many beginners go
absolutely wrong, I shall make it so plain that there is no
possibility of misunderstanding what I mean.

Let us imagine a large, irregularly shaped triangle with the apex at
the hole. We shall suppose, for the sake of argument, that this
triangle is composed of cardboard, that it is a right-angled triangle,
and that its base is 4' 6" wide. This triangle, then, is laid on the
green so that its base is vertical, and the corner which is remote
from the hole represents the ball, the upper corner of the base being,
of course, the player's eyes.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:08 AM
I believe this to be a matter of very great importance, for here it
will be seen that we have the eyes, the ball, and the hole all in the
same plane. Some people like putting with very upright putters. For
the purpose of experiment I had a perfectly upright putter made, but
upright putters are, I think, open to this objection--one's body hangs
too far over them, so that at the moment of striking the ball one is
looking inwards towards the ball, for one's head projects beyond the
line of run to the hole for a considerable distance. It will thus be
seen that one is looking down one line to the hole, and putting over
another. Needless to say, this cannot be good for direction. The eye,
the ball, and the hole should undoubtedly be in the same plane, and
that plane at right angles to the horizon.

As regards the position of the ball in relation to the feet there is
some slight difference of opinion, but generally it may be said that
about midway between the feet is the best position. If anything, the
ball should perhaps be a little nearer to the left foot than to the
right, but this is a matter upon which we cannot lay down any hard and
fast rule. The main point for the player to consider will be how he
can best secure the mechanical results which I have stated as being
the fundamental requisites of good putting. The matter of an inch or
two in his stance, nearer the hole or farther from it, is not of very
great importance compared with this. Some players have an idea that
they can secure a better run on their ball when putting by turning
over their wrists at the moment of impact. This is one of the most
dangerous fallacies which it is possible to conceive. The idea is
absolutely and fundamentally erroneous.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:09 AM
If one desires to put any run on one's ball more than is obtained by
the method of striking it which I have stated, it is always open to
one to play the put a little after the club has reached the lowest
point in its swing,--that is to say, as the putter is ascending, but
this is practically unnecessary. If one requires a little more run on
the ball it is best obtained by making the stroke a little stronger.
Any attempt whatever to do anything by altering the angle of the face
of the club during impact is utterly beyond the realm of practical
golf.

There are many refinements in the art of putting which go somewhat
beyond the fundamental principles laid down in this chapter, in that
they call for cut of a particular kind; but for about ninety-five per
cent of the puts which one has to play, practically nothing more need
be known by the golfer than is here set out.

I am not here going to describe the method in which one cuts round a
stymie, for I have done that very fully elsewhere; and, moreover, this
does not so completely come within the scope of this work, for it
enters much more into the region of practical stroke play than do the
matters which I have treated of and which I intend to treat of in this
book.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:09 AM
There is, however, one stroke which is played on the putting-green,
yet is not truly, of course, a put. It is a stroke which I myself
introduced into the game several years ago. This is the stroke which
is now known as the Vaile Stymie Stroke. It is unique among golf
strokes in that it is not an arc. Every known golf stroke before I
introduced this stroke into the game was an arc of a more or less
irregular shape, but it was an arc. The essence of my stroke is that
it is produced in practically a straight line. For all ordinary
stymies it is without doubt the most delicate and accurate stroke
which can possibly be played, and the manner of playing it, after a
golfer has once conquered the force of habit which tends to make him
raise his club from the earth immediately he leaves his ball, is very
simple. The mashie is drawn back from the ball in a perfectly straight
line, and with the sole of it practically brushing, or no more than
just clearing the green. It is then moved sharply forward, but instead
of coming up with the ball after it has hit it, it passes clean
forward down the intended line of flight in a perfectly horizontal
line, provided always, of course, that the green is level, so that it
finishes some inches down the line to the hole and practically
touching the green. No attempt must be made to strike the ball or to
take turf. The idea in one's mind should be to divide the ball from
the green with the front edge of the sole.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:09 AM
Many mashies are not suitable for this shot, because the sole is not
cut away enough on the back edge, as indeed the sole of every mashie
should be; so it will frequently be found that the best club for
negotiating stymies is the niblick, for its sole being cut away so
much enables the front edge of the club to get well in underneath the
ball. This is a matter of the very greatest importance in playing
stymies, for the simple reason that it enables the player to put so
much more of his force into elevation than is possible when the front
edge of his mashie is cocked up, as it frequently is, by the breadth
of the sole of the mashie; for in many cases when one is trying to
play a stymie the rear edge of the sole of the club makes contact with
the green first and tilts up the front edge, so that it is at least a
quarter of an inch higher than it should be, and instead of striking
the ball almost at the point where it is resting on the turf, it gets
it fully a quarter of an inch to half an inch higher up. The
consequence of this is that too much of the force of the blow goes
into propulsion instead of elevation.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:09 AM
This means that if the stymie is close to the hole and there is only a
very short run after the ball has got over the obstacle, the player
invariably finds that with his imperfectly constructed mashie he
cannot put enough stop on the ball, nor play the shot delicately
enough to give it a chance to get into the hole, because the run is in
many cases far too strong. Every golfer who desires to play a stymie
well should see to it that he has a mashie with a very fine front
edge, and that the sole is not flat in any part, but begins to curve
away immediately it leaves the front edge. With the mashie constructed
on these lines all ordinary stymies absolutely lose their terror if
the shot is played as described.

The delicacy and accuracy of this stroke are remarkable. The direction
is an astonishing illustration of the importance of the rule for
putting which I have laid down, of keeping the front edge of the
putter at a right angle to the line of run to the hole, both before
and after impact. As the whole essence of playing this stymie stroke
correctly consists of the straight movement of the face of the club
sharply down the intended line of flight and run to the hole, the
wrists have naturally to follow the head of the club in a line
parallel with that made by the head of the club, and so accurate is
the result that in any ordinary stymie if a wire were stuck on the top
of the intervening ball, I would guarantee to hit the wire every time.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:12 AM
http://myhindiforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=27355&stc=1&d=1368389523

This stroke was a revelation to me of the importance of the principles
which I am now enunciating, although, of course, I was well aware of
their soundness before I discovered this stroke.

The usefulness of this stroke is not confined merely to playing
stymies, but it makes a magnificent and accurate chip shot; or if one
has a bad portion of green to put over one can, with this stroke, rely
upon going as straight through the air as one can in the ordinary
course over the green.

Lest anyone should think that this is merely a theoretical stroke, let
me tell how I came to introduce it into the game of golf. I had used
the stroke myself for some time. One afternoon I was in the shop of
George Duncan, the famous young Hanger Hill professional. It was
raining heavily, and to pass the time I was knocking a ball about on
the mat. Presently I set up a stymie and said to Duncan:

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:12 AM
"Show me how you play your stymie, George."

"Oh, just in the usual way," said Duncan.

"Well, show me," I said.

Duncan took his mashie and played the stymie shot perfectly, "just in
the usual way."


"There is a much better way of playing a stymie than that," I said,
and I set up the shot and showed Duncan how I played it by my method.
Very few people can give George Duncan any points with the mashie. He
got hold of the stroke at once, and he would hardly wait for the rain
to stop before he went out on to the green to try it there. He plays
the shot perfectly now, and maintains, as indeed I show in _Modern
Golf_, that there is no stymie stroke to compare with it, and of that
I have myself absolutely no doubt. In fact, so accurate is the stroke
that if I found myself badly off my game with my putter, I should take
my mashie and play this stroke, for as regards the fundamental
principle of putting it is a wealth of instruction in itself.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:13 AM
Cutting round a stymie is nearly always included in the chapter on
putting, but it is practically always a mashie stroke, and in the
majority of cases is a very short pitch with a large amount of cut. On
account of the loft of the mashie the club gets well in underneath the
ball, and as the head of the club at the moment of impact is
travelling in a line which runs at a fairly sharp angle across the
intended line of flight and run of the ball it imparts a strong _side
roll_ to the ball. The cut on a golf ball in such a stroke as I am now
describing resembles almost exactly the off-break spin in cricket.
This means that the ball has a strong side-spin, so that the moment it
hits the earth it endeavours to roll sideways, but the force of
propulsion fights this tendency, and the resulting compromise is a
curve which enables the ball to get round the intervening obstacle,
and, if the stroke is well executed, to find the hole.

Almost all golf books instruct the player wrongly about this stroke.
He is told to draw his hands in towards him at the moment of impact,
and in some cases, even where the author calls his book _Practical
Golf_, he is told to draw his hands in after impact. Both of these
instructions are utterly wrong. There must be no conscious drawing in
of the hands at the moment when one is trying to cut a put. All the
cut must be done by the natural swing of the club across the intended
line of run of the ball: in other words, the cut is a continuous
process from the time that the club begins its swing until the time
that it ends it. The fact that the ball is in the way of the face of
the club as it crosses the intended line of run to the hole may be
said to be merely an incident in the passage of the club head. Any
attempt whatever to interfere with the natural swing of the club or to
juggle with the ball during impact, or, more futile still, after
impact, must result in irretrievably ruining the stroke.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:14 AM
The stymie shot which I have described will also be found of use a
little farther from the green, and by means of it an excellent run-up
shot, with most accurate direction, can be played. There is another
way of negotiating a stymie which I have never seen described. It is
pulling round a stymie. It will be obvious to any one acquainted with
the game that cutting round a stymie is merely another form of slice;
although of course the run of the ball is obtained in a different
manner from the curve of the slice in the air, yet the method of
production of the stroke is practically similar. So is it with pulling
a put. There is no doubt that this can be done; but I think there is
also no doubt that it is the most difficult method of negotiating a
stymie which there is. The stroke is played, to all intents and
purposes, as is the pulled drive. Some people imagine that it may be
obtained by turning over the wrist at the moment of impact. This is
quite an error, and is absolutely destructive of accuracy. As, in the
cut put, the head of the club is travelling from outside the line
across it, towards the player's side of the line at the moment of
impact, so, in the pull, the head of the club must be travelling from
the player's side of the line across and away to the far side of the
line at the moment of impact. That is the secret of the pull either in
the drive or the put.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:14 AM
I cannot refrain from quoting Vardon again. He says on page 148:

There should be no sharp hit and no jerk in the swing, which
should have the even gentle motion of a pendulum. In the
backward swing, the length of which, as in all other strokes
in golf, is regulated by the distance it is desired to make
the ball travel, the head of the putter should be kept
exactly in the line of the putt. Accuracy will be impossible
if it is brought round at all. There should be a short
follow-through after impact, varying, of course, according to
the length of the putt. In the case of a long one, the club
will go through much further, and then the arms would
naturally be more extended.

This is wisdom as regards the put. There can be no doubt whatever
about this being practical golf of the highest order, but Vardon
rather spoils it by the following sentence in which he says, "In the
follow-through the putter should be kept well down, the bottom edge
scraping the edge of the grass for some inches."

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:14 AM
Now, if that means anything at all, it means that although Vardon's
conception of the put and its execution in many ways is excellent, yet
he has been making for years the error which made James Braid a bad
putter--in other words, he has been putting with drag. It is well
known that for a very long time Vardon's weakness was his putting; and
I firmly believe that the secret of his bad putting was this low
follow-through with his put. I think that Vardon's follow-through in
his put is now not so low as it was, and the consequence is that his
putting has improved.

Vardon continues:

It is easy to understand how much more this course of
procedure will tend towards the accuracy and delicacy of the
stroke than the reverse method, in which the blade of the
putter would be cocked up as soon as the ball had left it.

What is more natural, then, than that the blade of the putter should
be cocked up immediately after the ball has left it? That is exactly
what should happen in the perfectly played put. Vardon has already
told us that the put is to be played with the "even gentle motion of a
pendulum." Let us suppose for a moment that it was the weight of the
pendulum turned side-wise which had struck the golf ball. It stands to
reason that immediately the weight, which in this case answers to the
face of the golf club, has struck the ball and sent it on its way to
the hole, the face begins to "be cocked up."

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:14 AM
Vardon here makes a totally erroneous claim. He claims greater
delicacy and accuracy for the put played with drag as against that
played as Braid now plays his puts. There can be no shadow of doubt
that the put played with drag, or with a low follow-through "scraping
the top of the grass for some inches," partakes much more of the
nature of a tap than does the put which is played with top or a
perfectly horizontal blow. If Vardon has not completely realised this,
as I think he has, he will, ere long, do so, as James Braid already
has done.

I need not here deal with complicated puts; that is to say, puts of
such a nature that one has to traverse one, two, or more slopes on
the way to the hole. These puts do not, in themselves, contain any of
the fundamental principles of golf. Each one stands entirely by
itself, and these are absolutely matters in which nothing but practice
on the green can be of any use. It will be obvious to any schoolboy
that if he has to run across five little hills on his way to the hole,
and that three of these slant one way and two the other; and if we say
for the sake of example that they are all practically equal in their
width and slope, that it will be a case of four of them cancelling out
on the good old plus and minus system of our schoolboy days, and we
shall then be left practically to calculate how much we will have to
allow for putting across the incline of one slope. This is not a case
which I should think of giving myself. I merely give it because I came
across such an illustration given in a book which is supposed to cater
for those who desire the higher knowledge of golf, but as a matter of
practical golf these situations but seldom occur.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:15 AM
Allowing for the drop in a green when one is putting across the slope,
requires a lot of practice, and is most absolutely and emphatically
not a thing that can be learned in an arm-chair, or in any golf
school. It must be learned on the green itself.

Although James Braid has remodelled his putting with such success, he
still, to a certain extent, clings to his own idea of putting with
drag. On page 154 of _Advanced Golf_ he says:

For general use I am a strong believer in a putter having
just a little loft. I know that some players like one with a
perfectly straight face which does not impart the slightest
drag to the ball, their theory being that such putters are
capable of more delicate work than others, and that the ball
answers more readily to the most delicate tap from them.
There may be considerable truth in this, though, obviously,
great skill and confidence on the part of the player are
taken for granted.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:16 AM
And again he says:

The strength of long putts can generally be more accurately
regulated with a lofted putter than with a straight-faced
one.

He continues:

This is the kind of putter that I might recommend for what
might be called a medium or average green, if there can be
said to be such a thing; but I wish to point out that the
putter that is the best suited to such a green is not so well
suited to either a very fast green or a very slow one, and
that in each of the latter cases the club best adapted to the
circumstances is one with considerably more loft on it.

On page 56 he says:

Now in both these cases, when the greens are very slow and
when they are extremely fast, the best putter for them is one
with very considerable loft on the face, and it will often be
found that there is nothing better than a fairly
straight-faced iron, or an ordinary cleek, if it is big
enough in the face to suit the player. With this club and its
great dragging power, the effect seems to be practically to
reduce the distance between the ball and the hole. Such is
the drag that the ball is simply pushed over a considerable
part of the way, and it is only when it is quite near to the
hole that it begins, as it were, to run in the usual way. The
fact is that for the first part of the journey the ball does
not revolve regularly upon its axis, as it does when
approaching the hole, but simply skates over the turf, and it
will be found that with a little practice the point at which
it will stop skating can be determined with very considerable
exactness. When it does so stop there is still so much drag
on it that it is very quickly brought to a standstill. Thus
in both cases, of the very fast and the very slow green, the
ball can be played without fear right up to the hole when the
putter is so well lofted as I have recommended.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:16 AM
Here we are told that the ball "simply skates over the turf." As I
have shown before, this is one of the greatest fallacies in golf. It
is impossible to obtain any results by drag in a long put, which are
not better obtained by simply rolling the ball up. Braid says that
"with a little practice the point at which it will stop skating can be
determined with very considerable exactness," and he goes on to say
that "when it does so stop there is still so much drag on it that it
is very quickly brought to a standstill."

This is obviously nonsense. It is the drag on the ball which makes it
do any skating which may take place. It is obvious that when the
skating has ceased the drag has stopped exerting its influence. How,
then, is it going to stop the ball from rolling in a natural manner?

We see here the mistake of importing into golf the well-known
phenomena of billiards, but one would have thought that the experience
of the billiard-table would have been sufficient to show the fallacy
of this statement. The billiard player uses drag to enable him to play
his ball fast and accurately, and there is no doubt that by means of
this drag he does obtain very considerable accuracy, but directly the
ball has ceased to "skate" he knows that that is the time when the
drag has entirely departed from it, and that the momentum has
conquered the friction caused by the back-spin; in other words, the
drag having accomplished its work has gone out of business, and all
the run that is on the ball is derived from the remains of the
momentum imparted to it.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:18 AM
http://myhindiforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=27356&stc=1&d=1368389870

I cannot say too emphatically that in my opinion this idea of putting
with drag, or with any club having a loft more than that which barely
enables one to see the face of it when it is properly soled, is
dangerous and calculated to produce bad putting on the part of anyone
who attempts it, even as it did in the case of James Braid himself.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:24 AM
There is one remark which James Braid makes about stymies which I
should like to refer to here. Braid says: "Given complete confidence,
the successful negotiation of a stymie is a much less difficult matter
than it is imagined to be, though in the nature of things it can never
be very easy." I must say that I differ entirely from Braid in this
respect. I maintain that in the nature of things most ordinary
stymies, when played in the manner which I advocate, are very easy.
The difficulty of the stymie, provided one's club is properly
built--and later on I shall refer to the construction of the
mashie--is much exaggerated. Eight of ten stymies should present no
more difficulty than an ordinary put. The only time a stymie should
present a difficulty to the golfer is when the intervening ball is
much nearer to the hole than to the ball which is stymied, so that the
force required to get over the obstacle is so much that the player,
after landing on the far side of the stymie, has too much power in his
ball to give it a chance to settle in the hole, but even such a stymie
as this may, if the ground be suitable, be overcome by lofting one's
ball so as to drop on the hither side of the stymie, bound over it on
its first bound, and continue on its way to the hole. This, probably,
is one of the most difficult ways of negotiating a stymie; but as
showing that it is eminently a matter of practical golf, I may say
that I was illustrating the shot one day to a man who had practically
just started golf. I showed him how to obtain the shot, and he did it
at his first attempt. I advised him not to try again that day.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:24 AM
Braid continues:

I need not say that the pitching method is only
practicable--and then it is generally the only shot that is
practicable--when both balls are near the hole, and are so
situated in relation to each other and to the hole that the
ball can reach the latter as the result of such a stroke as
enabled it to clear the opponent's ball.

Braid is, I think, referring to a clean pitch into the hole, although
the photograph leaves this open to doubt. The pitching method is
practicable when one is stymied in almost any position on the green,
provided always, as I have said, that one has any chance whatever of
pulling up in time to get into the hole after having got over the
stymie. Let me give an example:--Supposing my ball were fifteen yards
from the hole, that the green was absolutely level, and that I had a
stymie ten inches or ten feet in front of me. I should not hesitate
for a moment to use the shot which I have described as the best stymie
stroke in the game. The ball in front of me, so far from being an
obstruction, or in any way whatever putting me off, would, if
anything, serve as a good line to the hole. I am aware that to many
golfers who do not know this stroke, and comparatively few do, this
will sound like exaggeration. I am prepared at any time to demonstrate
the practical nature of what I am writing to any one of my readers who
cannot obtain the results which I get with this stroke.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:25 AM
At the time that I introduced this stroke there was much controversy
about it, and it was claimed that it was not a new stroke, but that it
was exactly the same as the stroke played by all golfers when stymied.
This, however, is quite an error. Speaking of the stymie shot, James
Braid says

... it is just an ordinary chip up, with a clean and quick
rise, the fact being remembered that the green must not be
damaged. To spare the latter the swing back should be low
down and near to the surface, which will check the tendency
to dig. The thing that will ensure the success of the shot,
so far as the quick and clean rise is concerned--and often
enough success depends entirely upon that--is the
follow-through. Generally, if the club is taken through
easily and cleanly, all will be well.

It is obvious from this description that the stroke in Braid's mind is
totally different from my stymie stroke. With the stroke as I play it,
it is an absolute impossibility to "dig" into the green. One has no
need to have any anxiety whatever about the green, for as the club
travels parallel with the surface of the green all the time, it is
obvious that no damage can ensue. If there is any deflection whatever
from the straight line, it would be at the moment of impact, but even
here it stands to reason that there is practically no deflection
whatever; for even in a stroke played, relatively speaking, so slowly
as is this shot, any alteration of the line of the stroke after it has
once been decided upon, is quite improbable, but the dominant idea in
the player's mind must be to insert the front edge of his mashie
between the ball and the grass, and above everything to keep his
follow-through as straight and as low along the surface of the green
as was his swing back. It is this straight and low follow-through
which gives the ball its "quick and clean rise," as Braid calls it.
Curiously enough, the follow-through which Braid shows for his stymie
shot, wherein the head of the club is raised from the green, will not
give anything like so quick a rise or such delicacy of touch as will
the stroke played in the manner which I have described, and, above
everything, with the very low follow-through insisted upon by me.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:25 AM
I may mention that George Duncan never uses any other stroke than this
when playing a short stymie. Indeed, he went so far as to say, when I
was having him photographed for my illustrations in _Modern Golf_,
that it was useless to take any exposures of the ordinary stymie shot,
for the stroke introduced and described by me had practically put it
out of the game.

Speaking of cutting round a stymie, James Braid says: "Whichever way I
wish to make the ball curl, either round the other ball from the
left-hand side, or from the right, I hit my own with the toe of the
club, drawing the club towards me in the former case so as to make a
slice, and holding the face of it at an angle--toe nearer the hole
than the heel--in the latter, in order to produce a hook." And he
adds: "You cannot do anything by hitting the ball with the heel of
your putter," to which I would rejoin, nor can you do anything by
hitting the ball with the toe of your putter, that you cannot do
better by hitting it absolutely in the middle, which is the only
proper part wherewith to hit a golf ball.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:25 AM
In the illustrations Braid is shown cutting the put with an aluminium
club. One has no more chance of cutting round a stymie with a club of
this nature than one would have with a bar of soap, for the simple
reason that on account of the breadth of its sole--for if it be not an
aluminium club, it is at least shaped on the same lines--it is
impossible to get the face of the club sufficiently underneath the
ball for the loft to get to work so as to impart that side roll which
is of the essence of cutting round. Braid says at page 171: "But
remember that you can never get any work on the ball if the green is
stiff." Now if this is so, I should like to know what use there is in
attempting to put with drag?

I quite agree with Braid that it is practically impossible to get any
work whatever on the ball with the club he is shown using. With such a
club it would be still more difficult, if not absolutely impossible,
to obtain any appreciable drag, but if, as Braid says, "you can never
get any work on the ball when the green is stiff," how can he advise
one to attempt to put with drag on a stiff green? To my mind this is
absolutely bad and misleading advice.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:26 AM
In my chapter on the "Construction of Clubs" it will be seen that I
advocate a short putter for short puts. In _Advanced Golf_ James Braid
has some interesting things to say about gripping low down. He says:

Many golfers grip very low down, even half-way between the
leather and the head. If their putting when done this way is
first class, nobody can say anything to them, but if it is
not first class it may be pointed out to them that the system
is absolutely bad. It may be allowed to pass for holing-out
purposes; but for a putt of any length it cannot be good, for
the club is not swung in the ordinary easy manner by which
distance can be so accurately gauged. The ball is more or
less poked along. When a man putts in this way he is putting
largely by instinct, and even though he may generally putt
well, his work on the greens cannot be thoroughly reliable.
No putting is so good and consistently effective as is that
which is done with a gentle even swing, which can be
regulated to a nicety, and such putting is only possible when
there is enough shaft left below the grip to swing with.

I am quite in accord with what James Braid says about this method of
putting, and I do not for one moment think that the short grip should
be used for approach puts, but I am sure the nearer one gets to the
hole the closer one should get down to the ball. Braid deals further
on with the question of shortening one's putter. He says:

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:26 AM
As to the length of the shaft, many players, because they
find that they always grip their putters a foot or so from
the end of it, proceed in due course to have the best part of
that foot cut off, or in purchasing a new putter they have
the shaft cut very short. Are they quite satisfied that it is
not better to have a fair amount of shaft projecting up above
the place where they grip when that place is very low down?

The answer to this is that in many cases the wood which projects above
the grip is very much in the way of true putting. Any golfer who is
foolish enough to cut anything like a foot off any club without any
compensation to the head in the way of balance must be expected to pay
the penalty for his ignorance, and anyone having a club constructed
for him on such a principle, or, rather, want of principle, will
inevitably pay for it. Braid goes on to say:

Often enough no consideration is given to this point; it is
not imagined that the shaft above the grip can serve any
useful purpose. Yet it is constantly found that a putter cut
down is not the same putter as it was before, not so good,
and has not the same balance; and, again, many players must
have been surprised sometimes, when doing some half-serious
putting practice with a cleek, iron, or driving mashie, each
club with its long shaft, to find out what wonderfully
accurate work could be done in this way. The inference from
all experience, having theoretical principle to back it, is
that the top or spare part of the shaft acts as a kind of
balance when the putter is gripped low down, and tends
materially to a more delicate touch and to true hitting of
the ball. A very little reflection will lead the reader to
believe that this is so, and in some cases it may lead him
towards a revision of his present methods.

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:26 AM
Personally, I should not think that even "a very little reflection"
would be necessary to induce anyone to believe that the top part of
the shaft acts "as a kind of balance" when the putter is gripped low
down, but it is quite obvious that it is possible to build a putter,
let us say, for the sake of example, two-thirds of the length of an
ordinary putter, which is just as perfectly balanced as the long
club. This is not any question of theory--it is a matter of absolutely
proved and tried practice in golf. One may have a perfect putter which
will be ruined by taking a few inches off the shaft. The balance of
that putter is probably irrevocably destroyed, unless, perchance, the
owner is lucky in adding weight to the head in some way, but dealing
with a putter like this is tricky work for one who does not understand
it. The main point in connection with this matter of Braid's, which I
have quoted, is that he gives a kind of qualified approval to the idea
of the short putter for short puts. Personally, I think it is the
soundest of sound golf, and I am inclined to think that before many
years we shall see the shorter clubs used in their proper place when
their value is more clearly understood.

Vardon has some very interesting things to say in his book, _The
Complete Golfer_, on "Complicated Putts," while dealing with what he
calls "one of the most difficult of all putts--that in which there is
a more or less pronounced slope from one side or the other, or a
mixture of the two." As he truly says, "In this case it would
obviously be fatal to putt straight at the hole." He continues: "I
have found that most beginners err in being afraid of allowing
sufficiently for the slope"; and I have found that nine champions of
ten make exactly the same error. It is as bad a fault at golf as it is
at bowls to be "narrow," by which, in golf, is meant not to allow
enough for the slope of the green, for it is obvious that if one is
narrow one does not give the hole a chance any more than one does when
one is short; so we may add to the stock maxim in putting "Never up,
never in," another one, which is just as sound, "Never be narrow."

Dark Saint Alaick
13-05-2013, 01:26 AM
Vardon goes fully into the general principles underlying these
complicated puts, but as I have already indicated, this is
unquestionably a matter which can only be settled by practice on the
green; but he also goes into the question of the manner in which the
stroke should be played, and here we have a subject which legitimately
comes within the scope of this work. He continues:

But there are times when a little artifice may be resorted
to, particularly in the matter of applying a little cut to
the ball. There is a good deal of billiards in putting, and
the cut stroke on the green is essentially one which the
billiard player will delight to practise, but I warn all
those who are not already expert at cutting with the putter
to make themselves masters of the stroke in private practice
before they attempt it in a match, because it is by no means
easy to acquire. The chief difficulty which the golf student
will encounter in attempting it will be to put the cut on as
he desires, and at the same time to play the ball with the
proper strength and keep on the proper line. It is easy
enough to cut the ball, but it is most difficult, at first at
all events, to cut it and putt it properly at the same time.
For the application of cut, turn the toe of the putter
slightly outwards and away from the hole, and see that the
face of the club is kept to this angle all the way through
the stroke. Swing just a trifle away from the straight line
outwards, and the moment you come back on to the ball draw
the club sharply across it. It is evident that this movement,
when properly executed, will give to the ball a rotary
motion, which on a perfectly level green would tend to make
it run slightly off to the right of the straight line along
which it was aimed.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:36 AM
There are one or two points in this statement which are of very great
importance. Vardon says: "For the application of cut turn the toe
slightly outwards and away from the hole, and see that the face of the
club is kept to this angle all the way through the stroke." This is
absolutely unsound golf, for Vardon is advising his reader to play the
put with the toe of the putter slightly outwards and away from the
hole. It stands to reason that following this advice will put the face
of the club in such a position that at the moment of impact it will be
impossible for it to be at a right angle to the intended line of run
to the hole, and this rule is, for all purposes of practical golf,
invariable. It is obvious that coming on to the ball in the manner
suggested must tend to push it away to the right--that is to say, it
would have a strong tendency to go away to the right from the very
moment of impact, which is not what is generally wanted in a good put;
also playing the put in this manner tends quite naturally to decrease
the amount of cut put on it. The idea that cut mashie shots and cut
puts are played in this manner has arisen from the fact that very
frequently the golfer addresses the ball with the toe of his club laid
back a little, but by the time he has come on to the ball again he has
corrected this. In many cases, if it were not for laying the toe of
the club back a little in this manner, golfers would be inclined,
although as a matter of strict and accurate golf they should not be,
to drag the ball across towards the left of the hole.

Vardon says: "Swing just a trifle away from the straight line
outwards, and the moment you come back on to the ball draw the club
sharply across it." Now here again we see this outstanding error of
practically every man who ever put pen to paper to write about golf,
which is that in producing the cut, whether it be in a put or a sliced
drive, something is done intentionally to the ball during the period
in which the ball and the club are in contact. This is absolutely
wrong. I have explained before that the cut put, and indeed all cut
strokes at golf, are produced by the club swinging across the intended
line of flight or run at the moment of impact, and the amount of cut
depends entirely upon the angle and the speed at which the club head
is travelling across the intended line of flight or run. It is obvious
that the amount of cut must also, to a certain extent, depend on the
amount of loft of the club, for the greater the loft of the club the
greater assistance will the golfer who is applying the cut obtain from
the weight of the ball.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:36 AM
Vardon goes on to say: "It is evident that this movement, when
properly executed, will give to the ball a rotary motion, which on a
perfectly level green would tend to make it run slightly off to the
right of the straight line along which it was aimed"; but as I have
already shown, the unfortunate part of it is that a put so played
would not go down the straight line which every golfer desires that
his put shall go on; nor indeed on anything like it.

Also it is a delusion that it is possible with any of the ordinary
putters to obtain a cut of a sufficiently pronounced degree to remain
on the ball, especially on the bramble balls, for any appreciable
distance. Vardon supposes a case of a steep but even slope all the way
from the ball to the hole, and he gives instructions as to how to put
across this slope with cut so as to hold the ball up against the
slope. He says:

But we may borrow from the slope in another way than by
running straight up it and straight down again. If we put cut
on the ball, it will of itself be fighting against the hill
the whole way, and though if the angle is at all pronounced
it may not be able to contend against it without any extra
borrow, much less will be required than in the case of the
simple putt up the hill and down again.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:37 AM
In the first place, I may remark that we do not generally borrow from
a slope "by running straight up it and straight down again." The path
of the ball is generally, almost from the time it is hit, a curve, and
a gradual curve, in which one sees to it that the ball is at its
farthest from the straight line to the hole somewhere about midway to
the hole. But this idea of putting cut on the ball with a putter,
which is sufficient to hold the ball up against the hill for any
appreciable distance, is practically a delusion. I can easily
understand that if Vardon plays the cut put as he himself directs it
to be played, that he thinks that cut administered to a ball by an
ordinary putter may have a very great effect in holding the ball up
against the side of a hill for a considerable distance, but this
really is not so. Putting, however, as Vardon instructs one to put for
obtaining cut, would in itself punch the ball up against the slope of
the hill, and I can easily believe that anybody who plays the put like
this, thinking that he is obtaining cut by so doing, will be under the
impression that cut is a very useful thing for holding the ball up
against the slope in this manner, whereas he is in effect simply
punching the ball up against the slope--in other words, he is playing
a put, which if the green were perfectly level, would be yards off his
line to the hole and to the right of it.

Vardon goes on to say:

Now it must be borne in mind that it is a purely artificial
force, as it were, that keeps the ball from running down the
slope, and as soon as the run on the ball is being exhausted
and the spin at the same time, the tendency will be, not for
the ball to run gradually down the slope--as it did in the
case of the simple putt without cut--but to surrender to it
completely and run almost straight down.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:38 AM
There is a fundamental error here, for Vardon states that practically
the spin on the put and the run on the ball will be exhausted at the
same time, but it is an utter impossibility to calculate with any
exactness whatever as to what happens in such a case. Vardon knows no
more about it than any other golfer, and all that any golfer knows
about this is extremely little, so that to advise anyone to attempt to
hold his ball up against a slope by the application of cut with any
ordinary putter, particularly a broad-soled putter, is to invite him
to play his shot blindfolded.

Vardon does not mention the length of the put which he considers it
possible to play with this cut, but in his diagram he shows a put
which would conceivably be quite a long put, let us say for the sake
of argument fifteen or sixteen feet, but the theory would be just as
bad if it were much less. He says:

Our plan of campaign is now indicated. Instead of going a
long way up the hill out of our straight line and having a
very vague idea of what is going to be the end of it all, we
will neutralise the end of the slope as far as possible by
using the cut and aim to a point much lower down the
hill--how much lower can only be determined with knowledge of
the particular circumstances, and after the golfer has
thoroughly practised the stroke and knows what he can do with
it. And instead of settling on a point half-way along the
line of the putt as the highest that the ball shall reach,
this summit of the ascent will now be very much nearer the
hole, quite close to it in fact. We putt up to this point
with all the spin we can get on the ball, and when it reaches
it, the forward motion and the rotation die away at the same
time, and the ball drops away down the hill, and, as we hope,
into the hole that is waiting for it close by.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:39 AM
Vardon may well say "as we hope," for the put described by him has no
more chance of being brought off on a putting-green than Vardon has of
winning another open championship from an aeroplane. To speak of
putting a ball in this manner, and treating it with such magic that
when it gets up by the hole the forward motion and the rotation die
away at the same time, is not practical golf, but absolute moonshine,
for it would be an utter impossibility to persuade any golf ball which
has ever been made to receive from any known form of golf club
sufficient cut to make it behave in the manner described. The theory
of the thing on paper is to a very great extent right, with the
exception that the cut described would require to be obtained by a
club with a much greater loft than any ordinary putter; but it is
evident that putting with putters such as those which Braid or Vardon
use, it would be an utter impossibility to get cut on the ball which
would stay with the ball during a long put and exert much influence in
holding the ball up against any appreciable slope, for with these
putters, which have not much loft, it is evident that any spin
whatever which is imparted to them by drawing the putter across the
line of run at the moment of impact will be mainly about a vertical
axis which is, in effect, the spin of a top. It is evident that as the
ball progresses across the green there will be a very strong effort
indeed on the part of the ball, following its friction on the green,
to wear down this vertical motion and convert it into the ordinary
roll of a naturally hit put.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:39 AM
Even when one is putting with a highly lofted club and with a
tremendous amount of drag on a perfectly flat green, the drag goes off
the ball in a wonderfully short space of time, and here, of course,
one is using a spin which is analogous to the drag of the billiard
player, for it is pure back-spin which is fighting in the same plane
the forward roll of the golf ball. Therefore it is reasonable to
suppose, and indeed it is undoubted that the ball would be more likely
to retain this pure back-spin for a much longer time than would the
ball with the side-spin imparted by the putter, for the spin which is
imparted by the putter does not directly fight the forward progress of
the ball as it is spinning across the plane of the roll which the ball
desires to take, whereas, as I have before pointed out, the ball
played with drag is absolutely fighting the forward roll of the golf
ball. It therefore would for a very short distance skid over the
putting-green, but those who only theorise about these matters have a
ridiculously exaggerated idea of the influence of drag on the golf
ball.

I have made it very plain, and I cannot emphasise the matter too
strongly, that any attempt whatever in long puts to use drag or cut of
any kind is to be deprecated.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:40 AM
There is another matter which Vardon refers to that I should like to
notice here. He says:

One of the problems which strike most fear into the heart of
the golfer is when his line from the ball to the hole runs
straight down a steep slope and there is some considerable
distance for the ball to travel along a fast green. The
difficulty in such a case is to preserve any control over the
ball after it has left the club, and to make it stop anywhere
near the hole if the green is really so fast and steep as
almost to impart motion of itself. In a case of this sort I
think it generally pays best to hit the ball very nearly upon
the toe of the putter, at the same time making a short, quick
twitch or draw of the club across the ball towards the feet.
Little forward motion will be imparted in this manner, but
there will be a tendency to half lift the ball from the green
at the beginning of its journey, and it will continue its way
to the hole with a lot of drag upon it. It is obvious that
this stroke, to be played properly, will need much practice
in the first place, and judgment afterwards, and I can do
little more than state the principle upon which it should be
made.

I need hardly do more here than repeat what I have said in the case of
the other puts. Any attempt to jump a ball at the beginning of the
put on a steep, fast green is about as bad a method of starting it as
one could possibly imagine. There is nothing for it but the smooth,
steady roll. Few greens, of course, are so steep that the ball will
run off them unless it has been very violently played, so the ordinary
principles of putting still hold good here--there is one way to play
that put, and that is not from the toe, but from the centre, of the
club, and as straight as may be for the hole, having due regard to the
slope or slopes of the green. Of course, as I have before indicated,
if one is very near to the hole, certainly not more than two to three
feet at the utmost, one may be excused for putting straight at the
hole with drag, because a ball can be made to carry its drag for about
this distance.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:42 AM
CHAPTER IV

THE FALLACIES OF GOLF


The fallacies of golf, as it has been written, are so numerous and so
grave that it would be impossible to deal with them fully in a
chapter, so I must here content myself with dealing generally with
them, and specifically with a few of the minor mistakes which are so
assiduously circulated by authors of works on golf. I shall take them
as they come, in their natural order. We shall thus have to deal with
them as follows: slow back, the distribution of weight, the sweep, the
power of the left hand and arm, the gradually increasing pace of the
sweep, the action of the wrists, and the follow-through.

We have then to consider, in the first place, the oft-repeated and
much-abused instruction to go "slow back." The rhythm of many a swing
is utterly spoilt by this advice, for the simple reason that,
generally speaking, it is tremendously overdone. Anyone who has ever
seen George Duncan's swing could surely be excused for thinking that
slow back must be a delusion. It is not, however, given to everybody
to be able to swing with the rapidity and accuracy which characterise
Duncan's wonderful drive. In fact, the most that can be said in favour
of going slowly back is that all that is necessary in the way of
slowness is that the player shall not take his club up to the top of
his swing at such a rate that in his recovery at the top of the swing
he will have any unnecessary force to overcome before he begins his
downward stroke.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:43 AM
It stands to reason that there must be at the top of the swing a
moment wherein the club is absolutely stationary. The whole object of
slow back is to ensure that at this moment, which is undoubtedly a
critical portion of the swing, there shall be no undue conflict of the
force which brought the club head up to the top of the swing and that
force which the golfer then exerts to start the club on its downward
journey. When this has been said, practically all that need be said
about slow back has been said.

It is almost a certainty that slow back, as one of what Vardon calls
the parrot cries of the links, has done more to unsettle the drives of
those who follow it, and the tempers of those who follow them, than
any other of the blindly followed fetiches of golf. Let it be
understood then, once and for all, that undue slowness is almost as
great a vice as undue quickness. What the player must, in every case,
strive after is the happy medium. It is an absolute impossibility to
preserve the rhythm of a swing that goes up with the painful slowness
and studied deliberation which we so frequently see as the precursor
of a tremendous foozle.

Incorporated in this overdone injunction, "slow back," we have the
idea of swinging the club away from the ball. In various places we are
told plainly that the club is not to be lifted away from the ball, but
that it must be swung back, whereas, of course, there can be no doubt
whatever that the club is lifted back, and is started on its journey
by the wrists.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:44 AM
It is obvious that no swing can be started from the lowest point in an
arc. If, for example, we take the pendulum of a clock which is
hanging motionless, it will be impossible to swing it one way or the
other without lifting it. Equally obvious is it that the golf club
must be lifted away from the ball.

"As you go up, so you come down" is another revered fallacy. We are
clearly, and probably rightly, instructed, when driving, to take the
club away from the ball in the line to the hole produced through the
ball.

We do this going back comparatively slowly until we are compelled to
leave the line, or rather the plane, of the ball's flight. So at the
moment of making our first divergence from the straight swing back, we
import into our arc a sudden and pronounced curve. On the return
journey, the downward swing, we travel all the way at express speed.
He would indeed be credulous and unanalytical who could believe that
the arc of the downward swing coincides with that of the upward, when
the upward swing is carried out according to the generally published
theory, which, of course, it generally is not. The theory is only good
in so far as it goes to inculcate the idea of remaining in the line to
the hole both before and after impact as long as possible.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:47 AM
The next fallacy which we have to deal with is the matter of the
distribution of weight in the drive. Practically every book that has
been published misinforms the golfer on this point, which is a matter
of fundamental importance in the game; in fact, it is of such great
importance that I shall not deal with it fully here, but shall reserve
it for my next chapter wherein I shall give the views of the leading
exponents of the game on this all-important subject, and shall then
show wherein I differ from them.

Let us consider that we have now arrived at the top of the swing.
Every author of a golf book insists upon the fact that the drive at
golf is a sweep and not a hit. James Braid, in chapter viii. of _How
to Play Golf_, writing of "The Downward Swing," says:

The chief thing to bear in mind is that there must be, in the
case of play with the driver and the brassie, no attempt to
_hit_ the ball, which must be simply swept from the tee and
carried forward in the even and rapid swing of the club. The
drive in golf differs from almost every other stroke in every
game in which the propulsion of a ball is the object. In the
ordinary sense of the word, implying a sudden and sharp
impact, it is not a "hit" when it is properly done.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:48 AM
The impact in the golf drive has been measured by one of our most
eminent physicists to occupy one ten-thousandth of a second. I think
we may take this as "implying a sudden and sharp impact." Braid goes
on to say, "when the ball is so 'hit' and the club stops very soon
afterwards, the result is that very little length, comparatively, will
be obtained, and that, moreover, there will be a very small amount of
control over the direction of the ball."

This might be right, but it seems almost unnecessary to point out that
when a ball has been struck at the amazing speed which such a brief
contact indicates, there is extremely little probability that the club
will stop "very soon afterwards"--in fact, it would be almost a matter
of impossibility to induce a club which had been used for delivering a
blow at the rate which this brief time indicates, to stop very shortly
afterwards. The head of a golf club at the moment of impact with the
golf ball is travelling so rapidly that a camera timed to take
photographs at the rate of one twelve-hundred-and-fiftieth of a
second's exposure, gets for the club head and shaft merely a vague
swish of light, while the ball itself, if it is caught at all, appears
merely to be a section of a sperm candle, so rapid is its motion. I
am speaking now of a photograph taken at this extremely rapid rate
when the photographer is facing the golfer who is making the stroke,
but so rapid is the departure of the ball from the club that even when
the photographer is standing in a straight line directly behind the
player, the ball still presents the appearance of a white bar.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:49 AM
It should then be sufficiently obvious to anyone that so far as
regards the stroke "implying a sudden and sharp impact," the golf
stroke, probably of all strokes played in athletics, is, at the moment
of impact, incomparably the most rapid. It has, therefore, always
seemed to me a matter for wonder to read that this stroke is a sweep
and not a hit.

Braid here says one thing which is of outstanding importance as
exploding another well-known fallacy. It is as follows:

While it is, of course, in the highest degree necessary that
the ball should be taken in exactly the right place on the
club and in the right manner, this will have to be done by
the proper regulation of all the other parts of the swing,
and any effort to direct the club on to it in a particular
manner just as the ball is being reached, cannot be attended
by success.

This is so important that I must pause here to emphasise it, because
we are frequently told, and even Braid himself, as I shall show later
on, has made the same mistake, that certain things are done during
impact, by the intention of the player during that brief period, in
order to influence the flight of the ball. There can be no greater
fallacy in golf than this. No human being is capable of thinking of
anything which he can do in this minute fraction of time, nor even if
he could think of what he wished to do, would it be possible for his
muscles to respond to the command issued by his mind.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:50 AM
To emphasise this, I must quote from the same book and the same page
again. Braid says:

If the ball is taken by the toe or heel of the club, or is
topped, or if the club gets too much under it, the remedy for
these faults is not to be found in a more deliberate
directing of the club on to the ball just as the two are
about to come into contact, but in the better and more exact
regulation of the swing the whole way through up to this
point.

That is the important part in connection with this statement of
Braid's. Many a person ruins a stroke, as, for instance, in
endeavouring to turn over the face of the putter during the moment of
impact, through following, in complete ignorance, the teaching of
those who should know better, and they then blame themselves for their
want of timing in trying to execute an impossibility, whereas the
remedy is, as Braid says, not in trying to do anything during the
moment of impact "but in the better and more exact regulation of the
swing the whole way through up to this point."

Braid is here speaking of the drive, but what applies to the drive
applies to every stroke in the game, with practically equal force. He
continues:

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:50 AM
The object of these remarks is merely to emphasise again, in
the best place, that the despatching of the ball from the tee
by the driver, in the downward swing, is merely an incident
of the whole business.

"Merely an incident of the whole business." It is impossible to
emphasise this point too much. The speed of the drive at golf is so
great that the path of the club's head has been predetermined long
before it reaches the ball, so that, as I have frequently pointed out
in the same words which Braid uses in this book, the contact between
the head of the club and the ball may be looked upon as merely an
incident in the travel of the club in that arc which it describes.

The outstanding truth of this statement will be more apparent when we
come to deal with the master strokes of the game. Braid's remarks here
are so interesting that I must quote him again:

The player, in making the down movement, must not be so
particular to see while doing it that he hits the ball
properly, as that he makes the swing properly and finishes it
well, for--and this signifies the truth of what I have been
saying--the success of the drive is not only made by what has
gone before, but it is also due largely to the course taken
by the club after the ball has been hit.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:50 AM
In this paragraph Braid is making a fallacious statement. It will be
quite obvious to a very mean understanding that nothing which the club
does after it has hit the ball and sent it on its way, can have any
possible effect upon the ball, and, therefore, that the success of the
drive cannot possibly in any way be "due largely to the course taken
by the club after the ball has been hit." The success of the stroke
must, of course, be due entirely to the course taken by the club head
prior to and at the moment of impact. What Braid would mean to
express, no doubt, is that if the stroke has been perfectly played, it
is practically a certainty that what takes place after the ball has
gone, will be executed in good form.

I have frequently seen misguided players practising their
follow-through without swinging properly, whereas it is, of course,
obvious that a follow-through is of no earthly importance whatever
except as the natural result of a well-played stroke; and provided
that the first half of the stroke was properly produced, it is as
certain as anything can be that the second half will be almost
equally good, but it is certain that nothing which the club does after
contact with the ball has ceased can possibly influence the flight or
run of the ball. It is, for instance, obvious that if a man has played
a good straight drive clean down the middle of the fair-way, his
follow-through cannot be the follow-through of a slice, because the
pace at which he struck that ball must make his club head go out down
the line after the ball. Similarly, if a man has played a sliced
stroke, it stands to reason that after the ball had left his club, his
club head could not, by any possible stretch of imagination, follow
down a straight line to the hole.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:54 AM
These things are so obvious to anyone who is acquainted with the
simplest principles of mechanics that it is strange to see them stated
in the fallacious manner in which Braid puts them forth. Braid here
says:

The initiative in bringing down the club is taken by the left
wrist, and the club is then brought forward rapidly and with
an even acceleration of pace until the club head is about a
couple of feet from the ball.

Now here we see that Braid subscribes to the idea of "the even
acceleration of pace," but it will be remembered that in a previous
chapter I quoted him as saying that there must be no idea of gaining
speed gradually; that one must be "hard at it from the very top, and
the harder you start the greater will be the momentum of the club when
the ball is reached." Here there is no notion whatever of even
acceleration of pace. It is to get the most one can from the absolute
instant of starting, but notwithstanding this, Braid tells us on page
57 of _How to Play Golf_: "When the ball has been swept from the tee,
the arms should, to a certain extent, be flung out after it."

We observe here that Braid speaks of the ball as having been "swept
from the tee," notwithstanding that in _Advanced Golf_ at page 58 we
read: "But when he has got all his movements right, when his timing is
correct, and when he has absolute confidence that all is well, the
harder he _hits_, the better." I have italicised the word "hits."

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:54 AM
Now here we have the practical golf of the drive, and I cannot do
better, in disposing of the fetich of the sweep, than re-echo Braid's
words that for a golfer who wants to get a good drive, when he has
everything else right, "the harder he hits the better."

As a matter of simple practical golf, provided always that a golfer
executes his stroke in good form, it is impossible for him to hit too
hard. This amazing fallacy of the sweep ruins innumerable drives, and
renders many a golfer, who would possibly otherwise play a decent
game, merely an object of ridicule to his more fortunate
fellow-players who know that the golf drive is a hit--a very palpable
hit--and not in any sense of the word a sweep.

Taylor also subscribes to the fetich of the sweep. At page 186 of
_Taylor on Golf_ he says:

In making a stroke in golf the beginner must feel sure that
the correct method of playing is not the making of a hit--as
such a performance is understood--but the effort of making a
sweep. This is an all-important thing, and unless a player
thoroughly understands that he must play in this style I
cannot say I think the chance of his ultimate success is a
very great one; it is an absolute necessity this sweep, and I
cannot lay too much stress upon it.

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:55 AM
He continues:

As a more practical illustration of my meaning, I will
suppose that the player is preparing to drive. His position
is correct, he is at the exact distance from the ball. All
that is then necessary is that with a swinging stroke he
should sweep the ball off the tee. But, if in place of
accomplishing this sweep, the ball is _hit_ off the
tee--well, that may be a game, but it certainly does not come
under the heading of golf.

Now we have already seen that James Braid in _Advanced Golf_, which
was published after _How to Play Golf_, has abandoned the idea that
the golf drive is a sweep. Taylor is wonderfully emphatic about the
sweep, but I think it will not require much to convert any golfer, who
is in doubt about the matter, to my views, for the comparative results
obtained will speak for themselves. Moreover, if there is any one man
more than another who is a living refutation of the sweep notion that
man is J. H. Taylor. It is impossible to watch him driving, and to
know the power which he gets from his magnificent forearm _hit_,
without being absolutely convinced that the true nature of the golf
drive is a hit and not a sweep.

I do not find that Vardon subscribes to this idea of the sweep so
definitely as does Taylor, and as did Braid in _How to Play Golf_, but
he does unquestionably subscribe to the notion of the club gradually
gathering speed in its downward course, for he says at page 69 of The
Complete Golfer:

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:55 AM
The club should gradually gain in speed from the moment of
the turn until it is in contact with the ball, so that at the
moment of impact its head is travelling at its fastest pace.

This, of course, in itself is correct, but there should be no
conscious effort of gradually increasing the pace. As Braid says, "one
must be 'hard at it' right from the beginning." The gradual and even
acceleration of pace must unquestionably be left to take care of
itself, and it has no more right to cumber the golfer's mind than has
the idea when he is throwing a stone that his hand should be moving at
its fastest when the stone leaves it.

One of the most pronounced and harmful golfing fallacies is what I
call "the fetich of the left." All of the leading writers and players
do their best to instil into the minds of their pupils the idea that
the left hand is the more important. This is a fallacy of the most
pronounced and harmful nature, but it is of such great importance to
the game that I shall not deal with it particularly here, but shall
reserve it for a future chapter.

We now have to deal with the question of gradually increasing the pace
in the drive. I have already, to a certain extent, dealt with this
matter. Nearly all writers make a strong point of this fallacy. James
Braid at page 54 of _How to Play Golf_ says:

Dark Saint Alaick
21-05-2013, 07:56 AM
The initiative in bringing down the club is taken by the left
wrist, and the club is then brought forward rapidly, and with
an even acceleration of pace until the club head is about a
couple of feet from the ball.

Here it will be seen clearly that Braid gives the idea that the player
is, during the course of the downward swing, to exercise some
conscious regulation of the increase of the speed of the head of the
club.

Braid then goes on to say:

So far, the movement will largely have been an arm movement,
but at this point there should be some tightening-up of the
wrists, and the club will be gripped a little more tightly.

Anyone attempting to follow this advice is merely courting disaster.
To dream of altering the grip, or of consciously attempting in any way
to alter the character of the swing, or to introduce into the swing
any new element of grip, touch, control, or anything else whatever,
must be fatal to accuracy. Braid is much sounder on this matter in
_Advanced Golf_ where he makes no assertion of this nature, but tells
the golfer that he must not bother himself with any idea of gradually
increasing his pace.

Dark Saint Alaick
23-05-2013, 11:59 PM
This is what Braid says. It is worth repeating:

Nevertheless, when commencing the downward swing, do so in no
gentle, half-hearted manner, such as is often associated with
the idea of gaining speed gradually, which is what we are
told the club must do when coming down from the top on to the
ball. It is obvious that speed will be gained gradually since
the club could not possibly be started off on its quickest
rate. The longer the force applied to the down swing, the
greater do the speed and the momentum become, but this
gradual increase is independent of the golfer, and he should,
as far as possible, be unconscious of it. What he has to
concern himself with is not getting his speed gradually, but
getting as much of it as he possibly can right from the top.
No gentle starts, but hard at it from the very top, and the
harder you start the greater will be the momentum of the club
when the ball is reached.

That, I take it, is absolutely sound advice, for herein there is no
stupid restriction whatever, nor should there be, for the golfer, from
the time his club leaves the ball till it gets back to it, should have
nothing whatever wherewith to cumber his mind but the one idea, and
that is to _hit_ the ball. Braid is surely wide of the mark when he
says "but this gradual increase is independent of the golfer, and he
should, as far as possible, be unconscious of it."

Dark Saint Alaick
23-05-2013, 11:59 PM
Firstly, it seems to me that this gradual increase is entirely
dependent on the golfer, and secondly, that he should be extremely
conscious of it, and the necessity for the production of it; but this
is one of the many things in golf which, when once it is thoroughly
learned, becomes so much a matter of second nature that the golfer
does it instinctively. He knows perfectly well that he _will_
gradually increase his pace until he hits the ball, but he will not
have it in his mind that he _has_ to do so. All this is bound to be
in the hit. The man who drives the nail does not worry himself about
gradually increasing the pace of the hammer head until it encounters
the head of the nail. He knows he is doing it, but he does not worry
himself about it as the golfer does about his similar operation. If
the golfer would remember that nothing matters much except to hit the
ball hard and truly, and would disregard a lot of the absolute
nonsense about the domination of either one hand or the other, the
gradual acceleration of speed, and many other items of a similar
nature, he would find that his game would be infinitely improved.

I could quote pages from leading authors dwelling upon this matter of
the gradual increase of speed, but I shall content myself with the
passage which I have here quoted from James Braid, together with the
remarks that I have made in former portions of this book, and may make
in later chapters. Braid, in _Advanced Golf_, is sufficiently emphatic
about this matter, and I think we may take it that in _Advanced Golf_
he has given up the idea expressed in his smaller and less important
work _How to Play Golf_, that one should trouble oneself with the even
acceleration of speed. Whether he has or not, it is an absolute
certainty that any idea of consciously regulating the speed of the
club's head in the drive, will result in a very serious loss of
distance, for it will be found an utter impossibility for anyone so to
regulate the speed of the club without seriously detracting from the
rate at which the head is moving through the air, and as every golfer
knows, or should know, the essence of the golf stroke is, that the
club shall be travelling at the highest possible speed when it strikes
the ball. I am, of course, now speaking with regard to the drive, and
obtaining the greatest distance possible, for that is generally the
object of the drive.

Dark Saint Alaick
23-05-2013, 11:59 PM
The point which must be impressed upon the golfer is, that from the
moment he starts his downward swing until he hits the ball, he has
nothing whatever to think of except hitting that ball. Everything which
takes place from the top of the swing to the moment of impact should
practically be done naturally, instinctively, sub-consciously--any way
you like, except by the exercise of thought during that process as
especially applied to any particular portion of the action, for it is
proved beyond doubt that the human mind is not capable of thinking out
in rotation each portion of the golf drive as it should be played,
during the time in which it is being played.

Probably there is more ignorance about the action of the wrists in
golf than about any other portion of the golf stroke, yet this is a
matter of the utmost importance, a matter of such grave importance
that I must in due course deal with it more fully and examine the
statements of the leading writers on the subject.

It is laid down clearly and distinctly by nearly all golf writers and
teachers that the golfing swing must be rhythmical, that there must be
no jerking, no interruption of the even nature of the swing--in fact,
we have seen that according to many of them the stroke is a sweep and
not a hit, yet we are told distinctly that at the moment of impact a
snap of the wrists is introduced. This must tend, of course, to
introduce a tremendous amount of inaccuracy in the stroke at a most
critical time, and it is therefore a matter worthy of the closest
investigation.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:00 AM
We have already dealt with the fallacy of the sweep. It is a curious
thing that although the leading golfers and authors pin their faith to
the sweep as being the correct explanation of the drive in golf, yet
nearly all of them, when it comes to a question of the stroke with the
iron clubs, say that it is a hit. Now the stroke with the iron clubs
is identical with the stroke with the wooden clubs, with the
exception, of course, in many cases, that it has not gone back so far;
but the action of the wrists is, or should be, the same. The club head
travels, stroke for stroke, relatively in exactly the same arc; the
beginning of the stroke and finish of the stroke is the same, and all
the other laws, _mutatis mutandis_, apply. It would, indeed, be hardly
too much to say that there is at golf only one stroke, and that every
other stroke is a portion of that stroke, that stroke being, of
course, the drive. If we take the drive as the supreme stroke in golf,
and examine the nature of the stroke, we shall find that in that
stroke is included practically every stroke in the game. That being
so, it seems to me extremely hard to differentiate between a cleek
shot and a drive--in fact, in so far as regards the production of the
shot it is impossible to differentiate between them. If the one is a
hit, the other is, and as a matter of fact, every stroke in golf, with
the possible exception of the put, is a hit.

While we are speaking of hits and fallacies, it will not be out of
place to devote a little attention to a point of extreme importance,
and at the same time one which is very much neglected in most books
dealing with the game. It is the ambition of many a golfer to get what
he imagines to be "the true St. Andrews swing." They try this in
numberless cases, where, from the stiffness of their joints and their
build generally, it is impossible in the nature of things that they
can obtain a very full swing. It is bad enough in these cases, for I
speak now of people who have taken to the game when their frames have
become so set that it is practically an impossibility for them to
obtain anything in the nature of a full swing, but the attempt to
obtain a long swing is not, however, confined to those who have taken
to the game late in life, although it is with them naturally a greater
error than it is with those who started the game when their limbs were
more supple and their frames more easily adapted to the stroke.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:01 AM
If I allow myself to take my natural swing, I can nearly always see
the head of the club at the top of my swing, and at the finish it is
hanging nearly as far over the right shoulder as it was at the top of
the swing over the left shoulder. There can be no doubt that with a
swing like this, when one can control it sufficiently, one gets a very
long ball, and there is a very delightful feeling in getting a perfect
drive with such a swing, but from the very nature of the stroke it
stands to reason that it must be less accurate than a much shorter and
less showy effort.

Harry Vardon, in _The Complete Golfer_, asks: "Why is it that they
like to swing so much and waste so much power, unmindful of the fact
that the shorter the swing the greater the accuracy?" There can be no
doubt whatever that in the very full swing, such as I have described,
there is a waste of power and a sacrifice of accuracy. The rule which
is true of the put, "Keep the head of the club in the line to the hole
as long as you can, both before and after impact," is, _mutatis
mutandis_, just as applicable to the drive.

Vardon continues:

Many people are inclined to ask why, instead of playing a
half shot with the cleek, the iron is not taken and a full
stroke made with it, which is the way that a large proportion
of good golfers would employ for reaching the green from the
same distance. For some reason, which I cannot explain,
there seems to be an enormous number of players who prefer a
full shot with any club to a half shot with another, the
result being the same or practically so.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:01 AM
This is a curious remark to come from a golfer of the ability of Harry
Vardon. I should have thought that the reason is sufficiently obvious.
In playing a full shot the ordinary golfer feels that he has simply to
get the most that his club is capable of. He therefore has no
necessity to exercise any conscious muscular restraint. He plays the
shot and trusts the club for his regulation of distance, but on the
other hand, in playing a half shot he knows that he must exercise a
good deal of judgment in applying his strength. It seems to me that
there can be very little doubt that this is the reason why most
golfers prefer the full shot. However that may be, it is beyond doubt
that the desire, as Vardon puts it, "to swing so much" is the root
cause of a vast amount of very bad golf.

"The shorter the swing, the greater the accuracy." This statement is
as true of one's wooden clubs as it is of the iron. It should be
printed as a text and hung in every golf club-house in the world, for
there can be very little doubt that if the value of this advice were
thoroughly realised, it would make golf pleasanter and better for
every one. The blind worship of the full swing has been carried to a
lamentable extent, and golfers who devote any thought to their game
are beginning to understand that beyond a reasonable swing back, the
surplus is so much waste energy, and, which is more important still,
simply imports into the stroke a very much greater risk of error.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:01 AM
Many years ago I had a very remarkable illustration of the value of
the short swing. A club mate of mine who was an adept at most games,
and a champion at lawn-tennis and billiards, took it into his head to
play golf. He was in the habit of thinking for himself. Of course,
directly he started to learn golf, every one wished to make him tie
himself into the usual knots, but he refused to be influenced by other
people's ideas. He was content to work out his own salvation. He had
watched many of the unfortunate would-be golfers contorting themselves
in their efforts to reproduce what they took to be "a true St. Andrews
swing," but determined that he would not follow their example.

He had conceived the idea that a drive was only an exaggerated put,
and he made up his mind that he would proceed to exaggerate his put by
degrees until he had reached the limit of his drive, and had found
that no further swinging back would give him extra distance. He found
that he got no farther with his drive when he carried his club right
round to what is known as the full swing, than he did when his club
head came from about the same height as his lawn-tennis racket did in
playing the game which he knew so well.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:02 AM
When he had ascertained this he resolutely refused to increase the
length of his swing. His club mates laughed at him and told him that
it was not golf, that he was playing cricket, and many other pleasant
little things like this. It had no effect whatever on him, for he knew
that he was producing the stroke, in so far as he played it, exactly
according to the best-known methods of the leading golfers of the
world. He was content, in this respect, to follow known and accepted
methods, but he would not in any way adopt the prevalent idea of a
long swing.

Of course, he was laughed at and told that it was extremely bad form,
but before long he "had the scalps" of his detractors. Then they were
unable to say much about his golf, and he had very much the best of
the argument when within a remarkably short space of time he won the
championship of his Province. He proved quite conclusively to his own
satisfaction, and to the great chagrin of many of the other players,
the truth of Vardon's statement, "The shorter the swing the greater
the accuracy."

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:02 AM
There can be very little doubt that for those who take to golf late in
life, especially if they have not played other games, the orthodox
swing is a trap. A very great number of them get the swing, but not
the ball. Many of them are, I am afraid, under the impression that the
swing is of more importance than getting the ball away. Needless to
say, they do not improve very much.

For those who take to golf late in life, I am sure that the great
principle which makes for length and direction in any ball game that
is, or ever was played, namely, keep in the line of your shot as long
as you can both before and after impact, will be found as sound to-day
as it always has been. Probably it will be found, and before very long
too, that what is true for the late beginner is equally true for the
greatest experts. As a matter of fact, some of our leading
professionals are beginning to realise this already, particularly with
regard to their iron play.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:02 AM
There are several very important points in connection with the short
swing--points which, I believe, are of very great advantage to the
golfer when once he has thoroughly grasped them. It is obvious that
the shorter the swing is, the less necessity will there be for
disturbing the position of one's feet. This naturally means that there
is less likelihood of any undue swaying. Secondly, the shorter swing
is naturally much more upright than the orthodox swing, and it comes
more natural to a player to hit downwards at his ball when using it.

The first point which we have made is that the shorter swing produces
less disturbance of the feet, because it is generally more upright
than a corresponding length of the orthodox swing. In the flat swing
there is less need to move the feet than there is in the upright
swing. It is in the latter that one feels _soonest_ the necessity for
lifting the heel of the left foot, but in the short swing there is not
the same necessity for balancing and pivoting on the toes as there is
in the orthodox drive, for the swing back is not extended enough to
require it. It should be apparent then that with the short swing much
of the complexity of the golf drive is taken away.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:02 AM
I must make this a little clearer: practically all the golf books tell
us that the left heel must come away from the earth when the arms seem
to draw it. Anyone who follows this out in practice will find that it
is impossible to preserve the rhythm of his swing. As a matter of
practical golf the left heel must come away from the earth as soon as
the head of the club leaves the ball. The motions are practically
simultaneous. This matter of the management of the feet is probably
the greatest contributing cause to the complexity of the golf drive,
and the many erroneous descriptions of it which are given by our
leading players. The principal reason for this is that it is the
latitude given to the body by this shifting of the heels which
accounts for the wrong transference of the weight to the right foot,
and the equally wrong _lurching_ on the left foot.

One would not, of course, for a moment advocate that the golfer's
heels should be immovable, although James Braid does maintain, quite
wrongly, I think, that the position of the feet at the moment of
impact should be exactly the same as at the moment of address--that
is, that the heels should be firmly planted on the ground. Although he
says this, the instantaneous photographs of him in the act of driving
show conclusively that he does not carry his theory into practice.
Many of our greatest golfers are beginning now to see that the firmer
the foundation, the more fixed and immovable the base, the steadier
must be the superstructure--to wit, the chest and shoulders--and
therefore the more constant will be the centre, if I may use the word
in a general sense, of the swing.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:02 AM
The importance of preserving this "centre" cannot be overestimated,
for golf is a game which demands a wonderful degree of mechanical
accuracy, and it is only by observing the best mechanical principles
that the best results can be obtained.

In the ordinary drive of the ordinary golfer there is usually an
excessive amount of foot and ankle work, and, generally speaking, this
foot and ankle work is not carried out in the best possible manner.
There is, as a matter of fact, imported into the drive far too great
an opportunity for the player to move his weight about. He takes full
advantage of this, and the usual result is that he transfers his
weight, when driving, to his right leg, which, as we shall see later
on, is a very bad fault for the golfer to acquire. In the shorter
swing there is much less temptation for the golfer to make the errors
which are usually attendant on faulty footwork.

The other point of importance which I have mentioned in connection
with the short swing, is that it comes much more naturally to the
player to hit downwards. Probably not one golfer in a hundred
realises that the vast majority of his strokes are made in a manner
wholly opposed to the best science of golf. They are, generally
speaking, _hit upwards_, whereas the most perfect golf drive should be
hit downwards, and this statement is, in perhaps a less degree, true
of nearly all golf strokes which are not played on the green.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:03 AM
The best way to get any ordinary ball into the air is to hit it
upwards, but this general rule does not apply to the golf ball, for it
is always stationary and is generally lying on turf. However, few
players will trust the loft of the club to perform its natural
function. They seem to forget that each club has been made with a loft
of such a nature that, given the ball is struck fairly and properly,
the loft may be relied on to do its share of the work. Consequently,
as they will not trust the club to get the ball up, they hit upwards,
and so, to a very great extent, minimise the amount of back-spin which
might come from the loft, were the club travelling in a horizontal
line at the moment of impact.

It is very much harder, however, to hit upwards with a short swing, or
perhaps it would be more correct to say that there is a much greater
tendency to hit the ball before the club head has got to the lowest
point in its swing. We must emphasise this point, for it is of great
importance, as back-spin is of the essence of the modern game, and
particularly of the modern drive. If, therefore, we can show that the
short swing tends more naturally to produce back-spin than does the
full St. Andrews swing, and at the same time to give greater accuracy
as regards direction, it need hardly be stated that it will not be
long before we have the scientific players giving the stroke the place
to which it is undoubtedly entitled in the game of golf.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:05 AM
CHAPTER V

THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEIGHT

http://myhindiforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=27748&stc=1&d=1369335896

The distribution of weight is of fundamental importance in the game of
golf. If one has not a perfectly clear and correct conception of the
manner in which one should manage one's weight, it is an absolute
certainty that there can be no rhythm in the swing. One often sees
references to the centre of the circle described by the head of the
club in the golf swing. It will be perfectly apparent on giving the
matter but little thought that the head of the golf club does not
describe a circle, but it is convenient to use the term "centre of the
circle" when referring to the arc which is described by the head of
the club.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:05 AM
The all-important matter of the distribution of weight has been dealt
with by the greatest players in the world. Let us see what Taylor,
Braid, and Vardon have to say about this subject, for it is no
exaggeration to say that this is a matter which goes to the very root
of golf. If one teaches the distribution of weight incorrectly, it
does not matter what else one teaches correctly, for the person who is
reared on a wrong conception of the manner in which his weight should
be distributed, can never play golf as it should be played. It is as
impossible for such a person to play real golf as it would be for a
durable building to be erected on rotten foundations.

Now let us see what the greatest players have to say about this.
Vardon, at page 68 of _The Complete Golfer_, says:

The movements of the feet and legs are important. In
addressing the ball you stand with both feet flat and
squarely placed on the ground, the weight equally divided
between them, and the legs so slightly bent at the
knee-joints as to make the bending scarcely noticeable. This
position is maintained during the upward movement of the club
until the arms begin to pull at the body. The easiest and
most natural thing to do then, and the one which suggests
itself, is to raise the heel of the left foot and begin to
pivot on the left toe, which allows the arms to proceed with
their uplifting process without let or hindrance. Do not
begin to pivot on this left toe ostentatiously, or because
you feel you ought to do so, but only when you know that the
time has come, and you want to, and do it only to such an
extent that the club can reach the full extent of the swing
without any difficulty.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:06 AM
While this is happening it follows that the weight of the
body is being gradually thrown on to the right leg, which
gradually stiffens, until at the top of the swing it is quite
rigid, the left being at the same time in a state of
comparative freedom, slightly bent in towards the right, with
only just enough pressure on the toe to keep it in position.

That is what Vardon has to say about this important matter.

At page 53 of _Great Golfers_, speaking of the "Downward Swing,"
Vardon further says:

In commencing the downward swing, I try to feel that both
hands and wrists are still working together. The wrists start
bringing the club down, and at the same moment, the left knee
commences to resume its original position. The head during
this time has been kept quite still, the body alone pivoting
from the hips.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:06 AM
It is obvious that if the pivoting is done _at the hips_ it will be
impossible to get the weight on the right leg at the top of the swing
without some contortion of the body, yet we read at page 70 of _The
Complete Golfer_ that "the weight is being gradually moved back again
from the right leg to the left." Thus is the old fatal idea persisted
in to the undoing of thousands of golfers.

I have already referred to the wonderful spine-jumping and rotating
which is described in _The Mystery of Golf_. Many might not understand
the jargon of anatomical terms used in this fearful and wonderful
idea, so I shall add here the author's corroboration of my
interpretation of his notion.

At page 167 he says: "The pivot upon which the spinal column rotates
is shifted from the head of the right thigh-bone to that of the left."

I have always been under the impression that the spinal column is very
firmly embedded on the os sacrum--that, in fact, the latter is
practically a portion of the spinal column, and that it is fixed into
the pelvic region in a manner which renders it highly inconvenient for
it to attempt any saltatory or rotatory pranks.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:06 AM
We are, however, told that the pivot on which the spinal column
rotates "shifts from the right leg to the left leg." If the spine were
"rotating," which of course it cannot do in the golf stroke, on any
"pivot," which, equally of course, it does not, that "pivot" must be
the immovable os sacrum. What then does all this nonsense mean?

James Braid, at page 56 of _Advanced Golf_, says:

At the top of the swing, although nearly all the weight will
be on the right foot, the player must feel a distinct
pressure on the left one, that is to say, it must still be
doing a small share in the work of supporting the body.

Taylor, in _Taylor on Golf_, at page 207, says:

Then, as the club comes back in the swing, the weight should
be shifted by degrees, quietly and gradually, until when the
club has reached its topmost point the whole weight of the
body is supported by the right leg, the left foot at this
time being turned, and the left knee bent in towards the
right leg. Next, as the club is taken back to the horizontal
position behind the head, the shoulders should be swung
round, although the head must be allowed to remain in the
same position with the eyes looking over the left shoulder.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:06 AM
At page 30 of _Practical Golf_ Mr. Walter J. Travis says:

In the upward swing it will be noticed that the body has been
turned very freely with the natural transference of weight
almost entirely to the right foot, and that the left foot has
been pulled up and around on the toe. Without such aid the
downward stroke would be lacking in pith. To get the
shoulders into the stroke they must first come round in
conjunction with the lower part of one's anatomy, smoothly
and freely revolving on an axis which may be represented by
an imaginary line drawn from the head straight down the back.
Otherwise, the arms alone, unassisted to any appreciable
extent, are called upon to do the work with material loss of
distance.

At page 88 of _Golf_ in the Badminton Series, Mr. Horace G. Hutchinson
says:

Now as the club came to the horizontal behind the head, the
body will have been allowed to turn, gently, with its weight
upon the right foot.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:07 AM
We here have the opinions of five golfers, whose words should
undoubtedly carry very great weight. The sum total of their considered
opinion is that in the drive at golf the weight at the top of the
swing must be on the right leg. I have, however, no hesitation in
saying that this idea is fundamentally unsound and calculated to
prove a very serious hindrance to anyone attempting to follow it. So
far from its being true that the weight of the body is supported by
the right foot at the top of the swing, I must say that entirely the
opposite is true, and that at the top of the swing the weight of the
body is borne by the left foot and leg in any drive of perfect rhythm.

This may possibly be going a little too far, so we shall, in the
meantime, content ourselves with _absolutely denying_ that the weight
at the top of the swing goes on to the _right_ leg, and with
_insisting_ that at the top of a perfectly executed swing _the main
portion of the weight must be borne by the left foot and leg_. In so
positively making this statement I am confronted by a mass of
authority which would deter many people from essaying to disprove such
a well-rooted delusion in connection with the game, but I think that
before we have finished with this subject we shall be able to show
very good reason for doubting the statements of these eminent players.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:07 AM
There is no possible doubt as to the rooted nature of this belief in
the minds of these players. James Braid, in fact, emphasises it in
some places. He says in _How to Play Golf_:

When the swing is well started, that is to say, when the club
has been taken a matter of about a couple of feet from the
ball, it will become impossible, or at least inconvenient and
uncomfortable to keep the feet so firmly planted on the
ground as they were when the address was made. It is the left
one that wants to move, and consequently at this stage you
must allow it to pivot. By this is meant that the heel is
raised slightly, and the foot turns over until only the ball
of it rests on the ground. Many players pivot on the toe, but
I think this is not so safe, and does not preserve the
balance so well. When this pivoting begins, the weight is
being taken off the left leg and transferred almost entirely
to the right, and at the same moment the left knee turns in
towards the right toe. The right leg then stiffens a little
and the right heel is more firmly than ever planted on the
ground.

It seems to me that these famous golfers are confronted by a
mechanical problem in this matter. The veriest tyro at golf is
familiar with the axiom that it is absolutely necessary for him to
keep his head still. Many authors tell one that the swing is conducted
as though the upper portion of the body moved on an axis consisting of
the spine. All golfers, authors, and professionals, who know anything
about the game, will tell one that the habit of swaying, which means
moving the head and body away from the hole, is fatal to accuracy.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:07 AM
Harry Vardon, at page 67, says: "In the upward movement of the club
the body must pivot from the waist alone and there must be no swaying,
not even to the extent of an inch." A little further down on the same
page, we read: "In addressing the ball you stand with both feet flat
and securely placed on the ground, the weight equally divided between
them."

Now it seems fairly obvious that if one starts the golf drive with the
weight practically evenly distributed between the right foot and the
left foot, and seeing that it is an axiom of golf that one must not
move one's head, it is impossible for one to get the weight of the
body on to the right foot and leg without absolutely contorting one's
frame. Let us make this clearer still. We have our golfer set at his
ball, his address perfect, and his weight evenly distributed between
his two feet. As he knows that it is wrong for him to move his head,
we can, without interfering with his drive in the slightest degree,
stretch tightly a wire at a right angle to the line of flight to the
hole and pass it across within a quarter of an inch of his neck,
below his right ear.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:07 AM
The position of this wire will not in any way hamper the golfer in his
drive, but in order to fulfil the instructions which are laid down
with the utmost persistence by every golf book, that it is of
fundamental importance to keep the head absolutely still, it will be
necessary for our golfer to play his drive without allowing his head
or neck to touch this wire; but if he can do this, and at the same
time get the weight of his body, at the top of his swing, on to his
right leg, as advised by Taylor, Braid, and Vardon, and by Messrs.
Hutchinson and Travis, without making himself both grotesque and
uncomfortable, he will indeed have performed an unparalleled feat in
the history of golf, for, to put the matter quite shortly, it is
nonsense to suppose that it can be done. The thing is mechanically
impossible.

If a man starts with his weight equally distributed between his legs,
and then uses his spine or any other imaginary pivot to turn his body
upon in the upward swing, it will be impossible for him to shift his
weight so that it goes back on to his right leg. I am not, of course,
allowing for a person who has an adjustable spine, such as that
described by Mr. Arnold Haultain in _The Mystery of Golf_, which
rotates, according to the author, first on one thigh bone and then on
another. This spine is of such a remarkable nature that I must devote,
later on, a little time to considering its vagaries. At present I am,
however, dealing with a matter of practical golf and simple mechanics,
about which there is absolutely no mystery but a vast amount of
misconception.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:07 AM
When I first stated in _Modern Golf_, which, so far as I am aware, was
the first book wherein this fundamental truth was laid down, that the
left was the foot which bore the greater burden, it was regarded as
revolutionary teaching, but there is not a professional golfer of any
reputation whatever who now dares to teach that at the top of the
swing the weight is to be put on the right. There is, however, no harm
in fortifying oneself with the opinion of at least one of the
triumvirate expressed elsewhere. Personally, I think that the
mechanical proposition is so extremely simple and incontrovertible, as
I have stated it, that it is unnecessary to go further, but such is
the veneration of the golfer for tradition that as a matter of duty to
the game I shall leave no stone unturned, not only to scotch, but
absolutely to kill, this mischievous idea which is so injurious to the
game.

In _Great Golfers_, Harry Vardon says, speaking of his address and
stance: "I stand firmly, with the weight rather on the right leg." At
page 50 of the same book he says, speaking of the top of the swing:
"There is distinct pressure of the left toe and very little more
weight should be felt on the right leg than there was when the ball
was addressed." We see clearly here that Vardon's statement in _Great
Golfers_ that at the top of the swing "very little more weight should
be felt on the right leg than there was when the ball was addressed"
does not agree with his statement in _The Complete Golfer_ wherein he
states that "the weight of the body is being gradually thrown on to
the right leg." The unfortunate part about this contradiction is that
_Great Golfers_ was published before _The Complete Golfer_, so that we
are bound to take it as Vardon's more mature and considered opinion
that the weight at the top of the stroke is thrown mainly on the right
leg.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:08 AM
This leaves us apparently as we were, but seeing the contradiction in
Vardon's statement, we may with advantage turn to action
photographs of him taken whilst actually playing the stroke. Here we
see most clearly in such photographs as those shown on pages 86 and 87
of _Great Golfers_, that the body, instead of going away from the
hole, has, if anything, gone forward. This is sufficiently marked in
the photographs which I am now referring to, but in _Fry's Magazine_
for the month of March 1909 there appeared a remarkable series of
photographs showing ten drives by Harry Vardon. These photographs are,
unquestionably, of very great value to the game, for they show beyond
any shadow of doubt whatever, that Vardon's weight is never, at any
portion of his drive, mainly on his right leg. The first photograph
showing him at the top of his swing is a wonderful illustration of the
fact that at the top of the swing in golf the main portion of the
weight goes forward on to the left foot.

Before leaving this portion of our consideration of the distribution
of weight, I must refer again to the description given of this matter
in _The Mystery of Golf_. The author says:

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:08 AM
The whole body must turn on the pivot of the head of the
right thigh bone working in the cotyloidal cavity of the "os
innominatum" or pelvic bone, the head, right knee, and right
foot, remaining fixed, with the eyes riveted on the ball. In
the upward swing the vertebral column rotates upon the head
of the right femur, the right knee being fixed; and as the
club head nears the ball, the fulcrum is rapidly changed from
the right to the left hip, the spine now rotating on the left
thigh bone, the left knee being fixed; and the velocity is
accelerated by the arms and wrists in order to add the force
of the muscles to the weight of the body, thus gaining the
greatest impetus possible. Not every professional instructor
has succeeded in putting before his pupil the correct stroke
in golf in this anatomical exposition.

For which we may be devoutly thankful, for if ever there was written
an absolutely ridiculous thing about golf which could transcend in
stupidity this description, I should like to see it.

As a matter of fact, the statement does not merit serious notice, but
the book is published by a reputable firm of publishers, and no doubt
has been read by some people who do not know sufficient for themselves
to be able to analyse the alleged analysis of the author.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:08 AM
Let us now subject his analysis to a little of the analysing process.
We are told that "the whole body must turn on the pivot of the head of
the right thigh bone working in the cotyloidal cavity of the 'os
innominatum' or pelvic bone." This is merely another way of saying
that the right leg and foot is supporting the whole weight of the
body, although the head must remain fixed. We have already considered
the similar statements expressed in _The Mystery of Golf_, and by much
more important people in the golfing world than the author of this
book, so we need not labour this point, but he goes on to reduce his
directions to the most ludicrous absurdity. We are told that in the
upward swing the vertebral column rotates upon the head of the right
femur.

Of course, I am not personally acquainted with Mr. Haultain, and he
may be speaking from his own practice, but assuming for the sake of
argument that he is a normally constructed man, the base of his
vertebral column never gets anywhere near his right femur, nor is it
possible for anybody's vertebral column to rotate unless the person is
rotating with it, which one is inclined to think would prove rather
detrimental to the drive at golf if indulged in between the stance and
address and impact.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:08 AM
As though we had not already had sufficient fun for our money, we are
told that "as the club head nears the ball the fulcrum is rapidly
changed from the right to the left hip, the spine now rotating on the
left thigh bone."

So far as one can judge from our author's description he must have
been in the habit of playing golf amongst a race of men who have
adjustable spines, the tail end of which they are able to wag from one
side of the pelvic bone to the other. Personally, I have yet to meet
golfers of this description. One feels inclined to ask the author of
this remarkable statement what is happening to the os coccyx whilst
one is wagging one's spine about in this remarkable manner.

This statement is about the funniest thing which has ever been written
in golf, and it has absolutely no relation whatever to practical golf.
It is merely an imaginative and absolutely incorrect exposition of the
golf drive, not only from a golfing, but from an anatomical, point of
view; and it is to me an absolute wonder how anyone, even one who
labels himself "a duffer," can attach his name to such obviously
inaccurate and foolish statements. One really would be inclined to be
much more severe than one is in dealing with such a book were it not
for the amusement which one has derived from a perusal of such fairy
tales as a rotating spine which, during the course of the golf drive,
jumps from one thigh bone to the other, steeplechasing the pelvic bone
as it performs this remarkable feat.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:09 AM
I have referred in other places to the looseness of Mr. Haultain's
descriptions in all matters of practical golf. At page 89 he confirms
one's impression, if confirmation were required, that his idea of the
fundamental principle of the golf swing is as ill-formed as are his
notions of anatomy, for he says: "The left knee must be loose at the
beginning and firm at the finish." At no time during a stroke in golf,
of any description whatever, should there be any looseness of the
body. During the production of the golf stroke the body is practically
full of tension and attention. It is the greatest mistake possible to
imagine that because one portion of the body is doing the work, any
other portion may "slack." One who makes this statement has not a
glimmering of the beginning of the real game of golf. I can readily
believe that to such an one golf is a "mystery."

The left knee is in harness from the moment the ball is addressed
until long after it has been driven, and it is a certainty that the
left knee has far more work to do than has the right, so for anyone to
cultivate an idea that the left knee may, at any time during the
production of the golfing stroke, "be loose," is a very grave error.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:09 AM
While we are considering the matter of the distribution of weight, it
will be advisable for us to devote our attention to the disposition of
the weight at the moment of impact. Speaking of the management of the
weight at this critical time, Vardon says:

When the ball has been struck, and the follow-through is
being accomplished, there are two rules, hitherto held
sacred, which may at last be broken. With the direction and
force of the swing your chest is naturally turned round until
it is facing the flag, and your body now abandons all
restraint, and to a certain extent throws itself, as it were,
after the ball. There is a great art in timing this body
movement exactly. If it takes place the fiftieth part of a
second too soon the stroke will be entirely ruined; if it
comes too late it will be quite ineffectual and will only
result in making the golfer feel uneasy, and as if something
had gone wrong. When made at the proper instant it adds a
good piece of distance to the drive, and that instant, as
explained, is just when the club is following through.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:09 AM
It is evident from this statement, that Vardon is under the
impression that the timing of this body movement should be so
performed as to come in when the club is following through. I have
shown before that the follow-through of a stroke is of no importance
whatever except as the result of a perfectly executed first half of
the stroke, if one may so describe it. It must be obvious to anyone
who knows but little either of golf or mechanics that nothing which
the body or the club does after contact between the ball and the club
has ceased can have any influence whatever upon the flight of the
ball, either as to distance or direction. Practically everything which
takes place after the ball has left the club is the natural result of
what has been done before impact. This cannot be too forcibly
impressed upon golfers, for it is not at all uncommon to find men
deliberately stating that the follow-through exerts a tremendous
influence on the stroke. It should be perfectly manifest that this
cannot be so. It is no doubt of very great importance to have a good
follow-through, but the good follow-through must be the result of a
good stroke previously played, otherwise it will be worthless.

Harry Vardon states that this timing of the body movement takes place
immediately after impact, for that is "just when the club is following
through." He has himself provided the best possible refutation of this
obviously erroneous statement. The timing of the body on to the ball
in the manner mentioned by him practically commences, in every drive
of perfect rhythm as are so many of Vardon's, from the moment the
stroke starts, for the body weight which is put into the golf drive
comes largely from the half turn of the shoulders and upper portions
of the body from the hips in the downward swing. This half turn and
the slight forward movement of the hips are practically one and the
same. If they are not, something has gone wrong with the drive.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:10 AM
Absolute evidence of the correctness of this statement is provided by
Vardon himself in _Fry's Magazine_ for March 1909. Here we see the
remarkable series of ten drives by Vardon which I have already
referred to. The first photograph shows most clearly that at the top
of the swing the main portion of his weight is on his left foot. As a
matter of carrying golf to the extreme of scientific calculation it is
quite probable that there is much more than Vardon's physical weight
on his left leg, for the rapid upward swing of his club is suddenly
arrested when considerably nearer the hole than his left shoulder, so
that the leverage of the head of the club will have thrown more weight
than that which the left actually bears on it as its share of Vardon's
avoirdupois. This, of course, is undoubted as a matter of practical
mechanics, but it is not of sufficient importance to enter into fully
in any way here.

It is, however, of importance for us to consider the photographs which
follow, for here we see quite clearly that very early in the downward
swing Vardon raises his right heel and bends his left knee slightly
forward, and in the third, fourth, and fifth photographs we see very
clearly that he is executing that turn of his body which carries his
weight forward on to the ball in a very marked degree. This point is
very clearly brought out in the instantaneous photographs of both
Vardon's driving, and in that of George Duncan's. It is positively
futile to say that the timing of the body weight in the follow-through
is done when the club is following through, because it is obvious that
this would not be "at the proper instant," and that it could not, by
any stretch of imagination, add "a good piece of distance to the
drive."

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:10 AM
It is curious to note in this connection that on page 53 of _Great
Golfers_ Harry Vardon says:

Almost simultaneously with the impact, the right knee
slightly bends in the direction of the hole, and allows the
wrists and forearms to take the club right out in the
direction of the line of flight, dragging the arms after them
as far as they will comfortably go, when the club head
immediately leaves the line of flight and the right foot
turns on the toe. This allows the body to turn from the hips
and face the hole, the club finishing over the left shoulder.

Here it will be seen that Vardon brings the timing of this very
important forward movement back a little to "almost simultaneously
with the impact." Now this phrase may mean immediately prior to, or
immediately after, impact, and there can be no possible doubt which it
is. It must be _prior_ to impact if it is to exert any beneficial
effect whatever upon the stroke. To add any distance to the drive, it
is obvious that what was done in the way of timing the body on to the
ball must have been done _prior to impact_, and merely continued after
the ball had gone away, so that the finish was perfectly natural.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:10 AM
Now Vardon shows quite clearly in his drive that in his follow-through
his weight goes forward until it is practically all on his left leg.
So, for the matter of that, do the instantaneous photographs of nearly
every famous golfer, but some of them have a very peculiar
misconception of the disposition of weight at the moment of impact.

Let us, for instance, see what James Braid has to say about the matter
at page 53 of _Advanced Golf_. Dealing with this all-important moment,
he says:

I would draw the reader's very careful attention to the
sectional photographs that are given on a separate page, and
which in this form show the various workings of the
different parts of the body while the swing is in progress
as they could not be shown in any other way. They have all
been prepared from photographs of myself, taken for the
special purpose of this book. In some cases, in order to show
more completely the progress of the different movements from
the top of the swing to the finish, the position at the
moment of striking is included. Theoretically, that ought to
be exactly the same as the position at the address: and even
in practice it will be found to be as nearly identical as
possible, in the case of good driving, that is. Therefore,
for the sake of precision, the third photograph in each
series of four is a simple repetition of the first, and is
not a special photograph.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:11 AM
I may mention that this is a common idea of illustrating a golf
stroke. The author of the book shows the stance and address. He then
shows the top of the swing, and after that the finish, and he thinks
that he has then done his duty by his reader. As a matter of fact,
these are all positions in the swing where there is practically
"nothing doing" as the American puts it.

To illustrate the various movements in the drive, I took for _Modern
Golf_, and used, eighteen different positions, and there was not one
too many. It is quite impossible to illustrate the drive in golf by
three positions; and it is absolutely erroneous to attempt to
illustrate the moment of impact by a repetition of the photograph
taken for stance and address. From the golfing point of view it is
almost impossible to imagine two positions which are so entirely
dissimilar. From the point of view of a mere photographer there may be
some slight similarity, as indeed there is in all photographs of
golfers, but to compare stance and address with the position at the
moment of impact with the ball, is mere futility.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:11 AM
Let us quote Braid's remarks with regard to stance and address:

When in position and ready for play, both the legs and the
arms of the player should be just a trifle relaxed--just so
much as to get rid of any feeling of stiffness, and to allow
of the most complete freedom of movement. The slackening may
be a little more pronounced in the case of the arms than with
the legs, as much more freedom is required of them
subsequently. They should fall easily and comfortably to the
sides, and the general feeling of the player at this stage
should be one of flexibility and power.

Everything is now in readiness for making the stroke, and the
player prepares to hit the ball.... While he is doing this he
will feel the desire to indulge in a preliminary waggle of
the club just to see that his arms are in working order,
waving the club backwards and forwards once or twice over the
ball.... Obviously there is no rule in such matters, and the
player can only be enjoined to make himself comfortable in
the best way he can.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:11 AM
Now we see here that the main idea of the player at the moment of
address is to make himself comfortable--in other words, to get into as
natural a position as he possibly can in order to execute his stroke.
The whole idea of the stance and address is to get into a perfectly
natural position, and one that is quite comfortable and best
calculated to enable one to produce a correct stroke. We see clearly
that this is what Braid considers to be necessary at the moment of
address.

Let us turn now to _Advanced Golf_ at page 61, which we have already
quoted. Braid, at that page and on the preceding pages, explains
clearly that the whole idea of the golf stroke is supreme tension, and
that at the moment of impact the tension is greatest. He says: "Then
comes the moment of impact. Crack! Everything is let loose, and round
comes the body immediately the ball is struck and goes slightly
forward until the player is facing the line of flight." Is it possible
to imagine two more diametrically opposed conditions of the human
frame than those which I have described in Braid's own words? Yet we
find this fine player producing, for the guidance of golfers as to
what takes place at the moment of impact, the same photograph which he
shows them for stance and address!

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:11 AM
Moreover, Braid himself clearly shows in his action photographs that
such a statement as this is quite wrong. If we had any doubt at all
about the matter, we might examine the photographs of Braid himself,
which show clearly that the positions taken up by him when addressing
the ball and when hitting it, are, as might easily be believed, widely
different, for at the moment of impact there is the supreme tension
and power which he advises as being a necessity for the production of
a long drive. It is true that James Braid's feet, particularly his
right foot, do not move from the ground so much as do those of Harry
Vardon or George Duncan; but it is nevertheless true that the movement
of his legs, arms, and shoulders show, at the moment of impact, a
position totally different from that taken up by him during his stance
and address.

It might seem that these things are not of sufficient importance to
warrant the critical analysis to which I am subjecting them, but there
can be no doubt that there are a vast number of people to whom golf is
of infinitely more importance than political economy, and to these it
is a matter of most vital importance that they should know what they
are doing and what they ought to do at this critical period; and in
dealing with the books which have been produced in connection with the
game of golf they have such a mass of contradictory and fallacious
teaching to wade through, that it is small wonder that they are, as a
rule, utterly befogged as to the proper principles upon which to
proceed.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:11 AM
Let us, for instance, examine these two statements with regard to the
follow-through. At page 55 of _How to Play Golf_, in his chapter on
"Finishing the Stroke," James Braid says:

The second that the ball is hit, and not before, the player
should begin to turn on his right toe, and to allow a little
bend of the right knee, so as to allow the right shoulder to
come round until the body faces the line of flight of the
ball. When this is done properly the weight will be thrown on
to the left foot, and the whole body will be thrown slightly
forward. The whole of this movement needs very careful
timing, because it is a very common fault with some players
to let the body get in too soon, and in such cases the stroke
is always ruined. Examine the photographs.

Let us now turn to page 62 of _Advanced Golf_. Here we read:

As for the follow-through, there is very little that can be
said here, which is not already perfectly understood, if it
is not always produced. After impact, and the release of all
tension, body and arms are allowed to swing forward in the
direction of the flight of the ball, and I would allow the
right knee to give a little in order to remove all restraint.
But the weight must not be entirely taken off the right foot.
That foot must still be felt to be pressing firmly on the
turf, showing that although the weight has been changed from
one place to another, the proper balance has not been lost.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:12 AM
Braid here says that the weight must not be entirely taken off the
right foot. Well, to all intents and purposes, it is entirely taken
off the right foot, as will be shown by photographs of any of the
leading players in the world at the finish of the stroke, and, indeed,
of James Braid himself. Braid says: "Examine the photographs," and I
have examined them. At pages 57 and 59 of _How to Play Golf_ Braid is
shown finishing a full drive or brassy shot. Here, without any
possible doubt, his weight is all on his left foot. At page 61 of
_Advanced Golf_ there are some photographs of Braid's boots and
trousers from the knee downwards, entitled "Leg action in driving."
One of these is entitled "Finish." Here it will be seen that the whole
of the weight is unmistakably on the left leg.

If one looks at the instantaneous photographs of James Braid in this
book and in _Great Golfers_ one will see quite clearly that in all
finishes his weight goes unmistakably on to his left leg.

Braid makes a very wonderful statement in _Great Golfers_ at page 175.
Writing there of the downward swing, he says: "My body does not
commence to turn till the club head is about two feet from the
ball--namely, at the point when the wrists come into the stroke." As a
matter of fact James Braid's body begins to turn almost simultaneously
with the beginning of the downward stroke, and as another matter of
practical golf the wrists also come in at the very beginning of the
stroke. With this latter point I shall, however, deal later on.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:12 AM
Let me here emphasise the fact that the body turn must commence very
early in the stroke, as indeed is quite natural. It is obvious that if
anyone were to postpone the turning of the body until the club head
"is about two feet from the ball" the rhythm of the stroke would be
utterly destroyed. In this matter I am contradicting Braid flatly
about his own practice. Therefore, I must refer any reader who doubts
the accuracy of my statement, and Braid himself, if he cares to
challenge it, to _Fry's Magazine_ for May 1909, wherein are shown
eight drives by James Braid. No. 1 shows Braid at the top of his
swing; No. 2 shows him before his club head has travelled a foot, and
even in this short distance we see that his body has already turned
very considerably. Any attempt whatever to follow out what Braid says
here and to postpone the turn of the body until the club head is two
feet from the ball, must prove disastrous.

Braid continues on the same page:

At this moment the left knee turns rather quickly, as at the
moment of striking, I am firm on both feet; the quickness of
the action makes it difficult to follow with the eye, but I
am convinced this is what happens. Immediately after impact I
commence turning on the right toe, bending the right knee
slightly. This allows the right shoulder to come round till
the body is facing the hole. It is most essential that this
should be done, and then no thought will be given as to how
the club will finish, as the speed at which the club head is
travelling will naturally take it well through.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:12 AM
Here we have, at least, very important corroboration of the fact that
one need not worry about the follow-through if the first portion of
the stroke has been correctly played. Braid says that at the moment of
striking "the player is quite firm on both his feet and faces directly
to the ball, just as he did when he was addressing it before he began
the upward swing. Anyone who thinks out the theory of the swing for
himself will see that it is obviously intended that at the moment of
impact the player shall be just as he was when he addressed the ball,
which is the position which will afford him most driving power and
accuracy."

This statement is so amazing that I must give definite instructions as
to where to find it. It is on page 54 of _How to Play Golf_, and I
think it proves conclusively that the idea which Braid is endeavouring
to impart to his pupils and readers is entirely wrong, and is not the
method which he himself follows in practice. Confirmation of my
opinion can be obtained from a study of the third picture in the
series of drives by James Braid in the May number of _Fry's Magazine_
for 1909, which I have just referred to. Here we see clearly that the
positions, from a golfing point of view, are utterly dissimilar, as
indeed is most natural.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:12 AM
Braid states that immediately after impact he commences "turning on
the right toe, bending the right knee slightly." I think it will be
found that even with James Braid, who certainly uses his legs in a
somewhat different manner from many of the leading professionals, the
right foot begins to lift before impact with the ball. I am inclined
to think that both Braid and Taylor are more flat-footed at the moment
of impact than most of the other professional golfers; but there can
be little doubt that the body is swung into the blow before impact,
otherwise it would be a matter of practical impossibility for them to
obtain the length which they do; while it is a certainty that for the
ordinary golfer it would be fatal to attempt to keep his weight in any
way whatever on his right leg at the finish of his drive.

This rooted fallacy with regard to the distribution of weight so that
at the top of the swing it shall be on the right foot, has obtained
its hold in a very peculiar manner. At the top of the swing the right
leg is practically perfectly straight, and, naturally, as the foot is
firmly planted on the ground and therefore held at both the heel and
the toe while the leg has turned with the body, there is a very
considerable amount of torsional or twisting strain on the leg. This
torsional strain, added to the fact that the leg is perfectly
straight, has led to the idea that a great deal of the weight is on
the right leg.

Dark Saint Alaick
24-05-2013, 12:13 AM
This idea has been confirmed to a very great degree by the manner of
contact of the left foot with the earth. At the top of the swing the
golfer pivots on the left foot, practically from the ball of the big
toe to the end thereof, or on that portion of his boot representing
this space. This naturally makes his contact with the earth _appear
light_. These two causes, taken together, have produced the fallacy
with regard to having the weight on the right foot and leg at the top
of the swing. In the one case it is a physical cause, namely, the
stiffness and torsional strain on the right leg, and in the other case
it is a visual deception. It stands to reason that, provided the two
surfaces will bear the strain, as much weight could be borne on a
point as on a surface immeasurably greater, but in the second case
there would be a greater _appearance_ of weight. This is exactly what
has happened with regard to the golf drive. It is executed extremely
quickly, and those who have attempted to explain it have not been able
to follow the motions with sufficient rapidity and intelligence, nor
have they been able to explain them accurately either from a
mechanical or anatomical point of view.

Until we can get some golfer who can pass the test suggested by me,
and play his stroke without touching the wire strained within a
quarter of an inch of his neck, after having taken his stance with his
weight evenly distributed between his legs, and at the same time play
it without contortion with his weight on his right leg, we may take it
that this tremendous fallacy with regard to the distribution of weight
at the top of the swing has been exploded.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:15 AM
CHAPTER VI

THE POWER OF THE LEFT


The fetich of the left is, amongst golfers, only second, if indeed it
is second in its injurious nature, to the idea that the weight should
be put on the right foot at the top of the swing. It is very hard
indeed to trace the origin of the idea that the left hand and arm is
of more importance in the golf stroke than the right, but that it is a
very rooted idea there can be no doubt whatever.

To those who are not acquainted with the literature of golf and the
remarkable ideas which many golfers have of the nature of their game,
it would seem almost superfluous to go very fully into this matter,
for one would think that it is sufficiently obvious that the right
hand and arm are the dominant factors in producing the golf stroke. It
is, however, useless to deny that there is a large body of opinion,
backed by most influential authority, in favour of the left hand and
arm being more important than the right.

Let us see, before we go any further in the matter, what the leading
professionals have to say about it.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:15 AM
Harry Vardon, it is true, does not explicitly state that the right
hand is the more important, but by implication he does assert so right
throughout _The Complete Golfer_. Let me quote a few of his remarks
with regard to the left hand. On page 61 Vardon says:

The grip with the first finger and thumb of my right hand is
exceedingly firm, and the pressure of the little finger on
the knuckle of the left hand is very decided. In the same way
it is the thumb and first finger of the left hand that have
most of the gripping work to do. Again, the palm of the right
hand presses hard against the thumb of the left. In the
upward swing this pressure is gradually decreased, until when
the club reaches the turning point there is no longer any
such pressure; indeed, at this point the palm and the thumb
are barely in contact.

We see here clearly that, as indeed Vardon has stated elsewhere, at
the top of the swing the grip of the right has opened up until it may
almost in a measure be said to have ceased to direct operations.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:15 AM
Vardon continues:

This release is a natural one, and will or should come
naturally to the player for the purpose of allowing the head
of the club to swing well and freely back. But the grip of
the thumb and first finger of the right hand, as well as that
of the little finger upon the knuckle of the first finger of
the left hand, is still as firm as at the beginning.

From this it will be seen that the grip at each side of the hand is
apparently as firm as it was at the beginning of the stroke, but in
some mysterious manner it has eased up in between the forefinger and
the little finger. We need not, however, go any further into that
matter at the present time, but we may continue the consideration of
Vardon's statement here. He goes on to say: "As the club head is swung
back again towards the ball, the palm of the right hand and the thumb
of the left gradually come together again. Both the relaxing and the
retightening are done with the most perfect graduation, so that there
shall be no jerk to take the club off the straight line. The easing
begins when the hands are about shoulder high and the club shaft is
perpendicular, because it is at this time that the club begins to
pull, and if it were not let out in the manner explained, the result
would certainly be a half shot or very little more than that, for a
full and perfect swing would be an impossibility. This relaxation of
the palm also serves to give more freedom to the wrist at the top of
the swing just when that freedom is desirable."

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:15 AM
We might, for a moment, leave this statement, and turn to page 126.
Speaking here of the approach shot with the mashie Vardon says: "This
is one of the few shots in golf in which the right hand is called upon
to do most of the work, and that it may be encouraged to do so the
hold with the left hand should be slightly relaxed"; and again at page
147 in dealing with putting Vardon says: "But in this part of the game
it is quite clear that the right hand has more work to do than the
left."

In these statements it is quite evident that Vardon wishes to express
the idea that, generally speaking, the left hand is in command of the
stroke.

Reverting for a moment, and before I proceed to consider what the
other authorities have to say on this subject, to Vardon's remark that
"This is one of the few shots in golf in which the right hand is
called upon to do most of the work," I may say that Vardon does not,
in the whole of _The Complete Golfer_, explicitly describe any one
stroke wherein he shows that the left hand "is called upon to do most
of the work," nor, for the matter of that, does any other professional
golfer or author, although the statement is common to nearly all books
on the game.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:16 AM
James Braid, on page 55 of _How to Play Golf_, says:

A word about the varying pressure of the grip with each hand.
In the address the left hand should just be squeezing the
handle of the club, but not so tightly as if one were afraid
of losing it. The right hand should hold the club a little
more loosely. The left hand should hold firmly all the way
through. The right will open a little at the top of the swing
to allow the club to move easily, but it should automatically
tighten itself in the downward swing.

Here again we see the idea that the left is in charge, because
although we are told that in the address the left hand should "just be
squeezing" the club, yet we are told clearly and definitely that "the
left hand should hold firmly all the way through." It is somewhat
difficult to reconcile these directions, and it is obvious that if the
right is going to "open a little at the top of the swing" the club
will certainly move easily--in fact it will move so easily that the
accuracy of the stroke will be very considerably interfered with.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:16 AM
Let us for a moment turn to _Advanced Golf_. There, James Braid,
speaking of the top of the swing, says: "Now for the return journey.
Here at the top, arms, wrists, body--all are in their highest state of
tension." Let me pause here for a moment to ask how it is possible for
"arms, wrists, body" all to be "in their highest state of tension," if
the right hand is to "open a little at the top of the swing to allow
the club to move easily"; and how is it possible for the right hand to
"automatically tighten itself in the downward swing" if it was already
in its "highest state of tension" when it was at the top of the swing?

It will be apparent that it is utterly impossible for the arms and
wrists to be tighter than they are when they are "in their highest
state of tension." Therefore, we must take it that James Braid's
advice at page 55 of _How to Play Golf_ is over-ridden by his advice
at page 57 of _Advanced Golf_, for I think that we are entitled to
consider that _Advanced Golf_ represents Braid's last word with regard
to the science of golf.

Quoting still from the same passage, page 57 of _Advanced Golf_, Braid
says: "Every muscle and joint in the human golfing machinery is wound
up to the highest point." It is impossible to get away from that. We
are told that at the beginning of the downward swing "every muscle and
joint in the human golfing machinery is wound up to the highest
point."

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:16 AM
Now the student of golf who desires to start his swing on a firm and
sure foundation must mark this statement well. I repeat it for the
third time: "Every muscle and joint in the human golfing machinery is
wound up to the highest point," and let it be remembered that Braid is
now speaking _of the start of the downward swing_.

We will now turn to _Taylor on Golf_. At page 193 Taylor says:

My contention is simply this: that the grasp of the right
hand upon the club must be sufficiently firm in itself to
hold it steady and true, but it must not be allowed on any
account to over-power the left. The idea is that the latter
arm must exercise a predominant influence in every stroke
that may be played. As regards my own position in the matter,
my grip with either hand is very firm, yet I should hesitate
before I told every golfer to go and do likewise.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:16 AM
Here we see that Taylor distinctly says that "the idea is that the
latter arm (_i.e._ the left) must exercise the predominant influence
in every stroke that may be played," and although he says explicitly
that his own grip with both hands is very firm, he puts the utterly
false idea of the predominance of the left into the minds of those who
are influenced by his teaching.

Taylor, at page 107 of _Great Golfers_, says in dealing with the
"Downward Swing":

The club is brought down principally by the left wrist, the
right doing very little until the hands are opposite the
right leg, when it begins to assert itself, bringing the full
face of the club to the ball.

It is almost unnecessary to say, especially in view of Taylor's
statement that he holds very firmly with both hands, that he does not
carry out this dangerous teaching. Harry Vardon says to attempt it is
fatal, and I am pleased to add my corroboration.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:17 AM
This amazing fallacy is wonderfully deeply rooted. A friend of mine
some time ago was in trouble about his iron shots. He consulted a
professional, who endeavoured to cure him by telling him when playing
his stroke to hold so lightly with his right hand that at any time
during the stroke he could slide it up and down the shaft.

Oh no! He is not a duffer, nor is he mentally unbalanced. He is merely
a professional golfer who plays for England and suffers from the
hallucination handed on to him by more famous players than he.

What could be stronger than this? Let me quote Taylor again. At page
90 of _Taylor on Golf_ he says:

The right hand is naturally the stronger of the two--much
more powerful in the average man than the left--and the
learner is just as naturally prone to use it. But in the game
of golf he must keep in front of him at all times the fact
that the left hand should fill the position of guide, and it
must have the predominating influence over the stroke.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:17 AM
That this is rather unnatural I am perfectly willing to
admit. Its being unnatural is the basis of its great
difficulty, but it is a difficulty that must needs be
grappled with and overcome by any man who desires to play the
game as it should be played.

But Taylor will not give in to this idea himself! Is not this
wonderful?

Harry Vardon says of the grip that one should "remember that the grip
with _both_ hands should be firm. That with the right hand should not
be slack as one is so often told." This is valuable corroboration, for
it must be remembered that Vardon only subscribes to the fetich of the
left _by implication_. Nowhere, I think, can we convict him of
actually preaching it.

Now let us turn to the volume on _Golf_ in the Badminton Library
contributed by Mr. Horace G. Hutchinson. At page 85 Mr. Hutchinson
says:

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:17 AM
Since, as will be shown later on, the club has to turn in the
right hand at a certain point in the swing, it should be held
lightly in the fingers, rather than in the palm, with that
hand. In the left hand it should be held well home in the
palm, and it is not to stir from this position throughout the
swing. It is the left hand, mainly, that communicates the
power of the swing; the chief function of the right hand is
as a guide in direction.

At page 87 Mr. Hutchinson continues:

So much, then, for the grip. Now, when the club, in the
course of its swing away from the ball, is beginning to rise
from the ground, and is reaching the horizontal with its head
pointing to the player's left, it should be allowed to turn
naturally in the right hand until it is resting upon the web
between the forefinger and the thumb.

We see here that this distinguished amateur is an out and out adherent
of the fallacy of the left. He tells us distinctly that it is the
"left hand, mainly, that communicates the power of the swing, and that
the chief function of the right hand is as a guide in direction," but
notwithstanding the fact that "the chief function of the right hand is
as a guide in direction," we see that at the top of the stroke it
turns loosely in the hand until it is "resting upon the web between
the forefinger and the thumb."

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:17 AM
Of course, in the circumstances, it will be very hard indeed for us to
follow out James Braid's idea of everything at this point being in
supreme tension, but it is interesting to see what Mr. Hutchinson
thinks about the matter.

We have here the opinions of the three most distinguished
professionals in the world, backed by that of one of the distinguished
amateurs in the game, a man who has distinguished himself both by his
play and his writing. In the face of this weight of authority it may
seem rash to venture to state plainly and explicitly that as a matter
of practical golf the right hand and arm is the dominant partner, and
that it is the duty of every normal golfer to have this idea firmly
implanted in his mind when he settles down to his address.

As the right is the dominant partner in the golf drive, so must the
predominance of the right be the dominant idea in one's mind, but the
domination of the right must not be abused, as we shall show later on.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:18 AM
It is, of course, proper for a golfer to have clearly fixed in his
mind the fact that the right is the more important member of the two,
but when he has once got that fact carefully and well stowed away in
his mind, it will be no more trouble to him than it is at present to
every normal person to use his knife in his right hand with which to
cut his meat, for it is an absolutely natural proceeding. The trouble
with the fetich of the left is that not only is it a perfectly
unnatural proceeding, but it is also, on that account, something extra
for the golfer to cumber his mind with during his swing. If he plays
his stroke naturally and without any thought of the mismade maxims of
unpractical persons, he will inevitably let the right hand and arm
take charge of the stroke, but the right will not at any time
endeavour to do more than its proper share, and therefore the left
will be given every chance to do a fair amount of the work. It is the
interference with Nature by putting the left forward into a place
which it has no right to occupy, which ruins so many golf strokes.

Let us now turn to _The Complete Golfer_. Here, at page 60, Harry
Vardon says:

We must now consider the degree of tightness of the grip by
either hand, for this is an important matter. Some teachers
of golf, and various books of instruction, inform us that we
should grasp the club firmly with the left hand and only
lightly with the right, leaving the former to do the bulk of
the work and the other merely to guide the operations.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:18 AM
It is astonishing with what persistency this error has been
repeated, for error I truly believe it is. Ask any really
first-class player with what comparative tightness he holds
the club in his right and left hands, and I am confident that
in nearly every case he will declare that he holds it,
nearly, if not quite, as tightly with the right hand as with
the left. Personally, I grip quite as firmly with the right
hand as with the other one. When the other way is
adopted--the left hand being tight and the right hand simply
watching it, as it were--there is an irresistible tendency
for the latter to tighten up suddenly at some part of the
upward or downward swing, and, as surely as there is a ball
on the tee, when it does so there will be mischief.

If we sum up the advice of Vardon and Taylor, and of Braid as shown in
his latest work _Advanced Golf_, we see clearly that although they
subscribe to the idea of the predominance of the power of the left
hand and arm, they do not themselves carry it out in practice. Taylor
says that his grip with both hands is very firm, yet he should
hesitate before recommending other people to follow his methods. I
think we may take it for granted that a method which has resulted in
four open championships may be considered good enough to follow.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:18 AM
Vardon, as we have seen, only subscribes to this notion inferentially,
and nobody could be more emphatic than he is with regard to the
distribution of force in the grip. His words "Ask any really
first-class player with what comparative tightness he holds the club
in his right and left hands, and I am confident that in nearly every
case he will declare that he holds it, nearly, if not quite, as
tightly with the right hand as with the left," present the case
exactly. Any man who plays golf properly will find it impossible to
tell you how he distributes the force of his grip on his club, and
what proportion of power the grip of the left bears to the right. As a
matter of fact, the man who plays golf properly has no time to think
of such nonsense as this. This is a matter which is regulated for him
by common sense and nature.

The trouble steps in when he is advised to interfere with the ordinary
course of Nature, and to put the left hand in a position of authority
which it has no right whatever to try to exercise. I say advisedly
"try" to exercise, because it never can exercise the power which it is
supposed to have. It stands to reason, therefore, that any attempt
whatever to make it exercise a power superior to the more powerful arm
must result in interfering with the proper functions of the hand and
arm which should be naturally in command of the stroke.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:18 AM
We have seen that James Braid in _Advanced Golf_ has quite altered the
opinions which he expresses in _How to Play Golf_, and he also agrees
that at the top of the swing, and until the stroke is played, it is
right to grip the club as hard as one can with both hands--in fact,
he says as plainly as it is possible for anyone to say anything, that
during the whole of the downward swing the muscles are in a state of
supreme tension, and fortunately he does not repeat the common error,
the error which he himself makes in _How to Play Golf_, of advising
the player to encumber his mind with any idea of regulating the
increase of speed of the club head.

Vardon puts the matter splendidly when he says:

Personally, I grip quite as firmly with the right hand as
with the other one. When the other way is adopted--the left
hand being tight and the right hand simply watching it, as it
were--there is an irresistible tendency for the latter to
tighten up suddenly at some part of the upward or downward
swing, and, as surely as there is a ball on the tee, when it
does so there will be mischief.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:18 AM
This is such an important statement that I must, in passing, emphasise
it, although I hope to deal with it again later on, for Vardon here
strikes a deadly blow to the absurd nonsense which most books lay down
about regulating the grip during the upward and downward swing. As
Vardon truly says, any attempt to apportion the respective power of
the grip of the left and right during the golf swing must inevitably
result in disaster, for there will unquestionably be, as he well
remarks, a pronounced tendency to tighten up at some part of the swing
in a jerky manner. The only way to guard against this is to be, as
James Braid says in _Advanced Golf_, in a state of supreme tension
from the moment the downward swing starts.

It must be remembered that Vardon himself advocates easing up with the
grip of the right at the top of the swing, although he says that he
grips as firmly with the right as the left. It stands to reason that
if Vardon does ease up with his right at the top of the swing, he
must during his downward stroke restore the balance of power. It seems
perfectly clear that in doing this there is a very great danger of
what he describes as an "irresistible tendency for the latter," that
is the right hand, "to tighten up suddenly."

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:19 AM
I cannot see that, because Vardon starts with his grip equally firm
with each hand, and then relaxes the firmness of his grip with his
right hand at the top of the stroke, trusting to regain his firmness
by the time he has reached the ball again, he removes from his swing
the danger of the sudden tightening-up which he shows will threaten
the swing of anyone who attempts to let the left hand have the
predominant grip. It seems to me perfectly clear that this danger must
be even in Vardon's downward swing, but we know quite well that
Vardon, as a stroke player, is a genius, and that even if it is not a
danger for him, it would be for ninety-five of every hundred golfers.

The truth is, with regard to the golf grip, although none of the
leading professionals or authors are courageous enough to state it,
that for the ordinary golfer--aye, and even for the extraordinary
golfer--there is only one way to apportion the force of the left and
right in the grip, and that is _not to think about it at all when one
is doing it_, but to grip very firmly with both hands, and leave any
apportionment of force which may be necessary to Nature, and the
golfer who follows this advice and instruction will find that Nature
can attend to it infinitely better than he can.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:19 AM
In golf we frequently find that one fallacy is built up on another,
and it is quite an open question if the fallacy of the power of the
left hand and arm is not founded on another fallacy, namely, the
fallacy of the present overlapping grip. Now this sounds like rank
heresy, and I may as well say at once that I am not prepared to
assert that the present overlapping grip is a fallacy, but it is at
least open to argument if it is the best grip which can be taken of a
golf club.

There is no such thing as standing still in golf or any other
game--either we are progressing or we are going backwards. In golf,
notwithstanding the vast amount of false teaching which is published,
we are unquestionably advancing. It must not be thought from this that
it is of no importance that most of the matter which is published
about golf is entirely misleading, for that is not so. This misleading
matter is followed by an enormous army of golfers who are not able to
think out the matter for themselves, but there are a very great number
of golfers who absolutely disregard the published tuition of the
greatest experts in the world and play golf as it should be played,
and in no case is this more pronounced than in the persons of leading
professional golfers, for they write one thing, but do absolutely the
other themselves.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:19 AM
In the old days, when Vardon and all the other champions used the
two-handed grip, it would have been rank folly for any person other
than Vardon to have asserted that it was better to get the grip of the
right hand off the club, as the overlapping grip does to a very great
extent, but this grip was tried by Vardon, and it very soon became
almost universal. However, I think we are justified in asking if this
grip is undoubtedly the best that it is possible for us to get. Before
the overlapping grip became fashionable both hands had their full grip
on the shaft of the club, and in those days men played great golf, and
there are many of them who still play great golf with the same hold,
which they have refused to alter.

At page 194 of _Taylor on Golf_, speaking of the grip, Taylor says:

To sum up the matter, I should describe the orthodox manner
of gripping with the right in the following words: The
fingers must close around the club in such a way that
provision is made for the thumb to cover and cross the shaft,
the first joints of the fingers, providing this is done,
being just in sight. Nothing more or nothing less. This is
the grip generally accepted as being orthodox, and the one
generally favoured by the majority of those who decide to
follow up the game properly. But, as is the case with
everything which is favoured by any considerable number of
enthusiasts, there are those who, untrammelled by tradition,
break away and hold the club differently, with one hand at
least.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:19 AM
Take, as for instance, the case of Mr. John Ball, jun. This
gentleman--one of the leading golfers of the day--holds the
club firmly, not to say tightly, in the palm of his right
hand. Well, he has discovered that this does not
detrimentally affect his play, so I presume that may be taken
as a satisfactory proof that the orthodox way may sometimes
be departed from. Then, after Mr. Ball, I might mention the
name of Mr. Edward Blackwell. He is almost certainly the most
consistently good long driver we possess now, and his
unorthodox method of grip with the right hand has not
affected his play.

Taylor, of course, uses the overlapping grip, which is to-day the
orthodox grip.

Taylor speaks here of "those who, untrammelled by tradition, break
away and hold the club differently, with one hand at least," but it
seems to me that the two golfers quoted are not those who are breaking
away from the traditional hold. Rather does it seem to me that it is
we of the orthodox grip of to-day who have broken away from the best
traditions of golf, and taking best and best of those who have adopted
the modern grip and those who have maintained the old grip, there is
practically "nothing in it." Looking at the grip of men like Mr. H. H.
Hilton, Mr. John Ball, and Mr. Edward Blackwell, it would, I think,
to-day, require a person almost bereft of intelligence to imagine for
one moment that the power of the stroke in the play of these golfers
is obtained from their left arms and hands, and I do not suppose for a
single moment that any one of these players would dream of asserting
that he gets his length or direction from the left arm.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:20 AM
We are now confronted with the fact that one at least of these players
with the two-handed grip is at practically no disadvantage against the
best golfers in the world, and we must take it for granted in the face
of what we have said, that his power of stroke and his command thereof
is obtained from his right hand and arm. Now that being so, let us say
for the sake of argument that he desires to improve his play by
bringing the action of his wrists into greater harmony by adopting the
overlapping grip. Surely one is confronted with this question--should
one overlap the left hand with the right, or should one overlap the
right with the left. In the present overlap the left hand takes the
first grip of the club, and the right hand overlaps it, and in so
doing is taken, to a very great extent, off the shaft of the club.

The question now arises, Should not one first take one's grip with the
right hand, the dominant hand, the guiding hand, and the hand which is
operated by the stronger arm, and having got this grip, proceed to
overlap with the left, always allowing, of course, for the necessary
insertion of the thumb of the left between the shaft and the palm of
the right hand?

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:20 AM
This may sound revolutionary, but I assure my readers that it is not
one half so revolutionary as the change from the old two-handed grip
to the present overlapping grip, for in that change the right hand
was, to a very great extent, deprived of its pride of place. I think
there is very little doubt that a player who became accustomed to the
right-handed grip with the left overlap, would find that he produced a
better game than he was able to do with the present overlapping grip.
The fact is that we are inclined to take a much too complimentary and
optimistic view of our exploits. Golf has now come to such a pass that
it is played almost perfectly by a few of the best players, so that we
have come to consider a five by a leading player as a serious lapse;
but we must not judge the great body of golfers by the perfect
players. These men would probably play very well under any conditions
which could exist in the game. We have to consider the greatest good
of the greatest number--in other words, the object of our search is to
ascertain and understand perfectly what is the best way, and although
I am stating this proposition with regard to the golf grip quite
tentatively, and am laying it down as a subject for argument, I have
very little doubt indeed that it will be found in the future that the
right-handed grip is the best grip for playing golf.

I think there is very little doubt that the most important change in
the next decade will be in the right hand and arm coming into their
kingdom. It need not be thought that this will happen in a day, or a
month, or a year. For very many years the great game of golf was
played, and was well and truly played by men who never dreamed of
putting part of one hand beneath the other--who would have scouted the
overlapping grip and the levering of the right hand off the shaft as
sacrilege--but some one introduced the idea, because it brought the
wrists closer together so that they worked more in harmony than with
the old grip. Harry Vardon tried it and found it good, and it went
into the game of golf and the history thereof.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:20 AM
And to see Vardon use it, one might well say, "What more can you
want?"; but that is not argument. Probably the one who asked that
question would have asked the same question had he seen Vardon playing
when he was using the old grip, when one wrist was fighting the other;
so we must not be deterred from our speculation, from peering into the
future. Of course, the essence of the overlapping grip is that it
reduces the conflict of the wrists, and so conduces to greater
accuracy and to less interference with the rhythm of the swing. It
stands to reason that in the old days of the two-handed grip this
conflict was worse than it would be now, for then the fetich of the
left had not been weakened, and it was a distressful thing to have a
hefty left in possession of the end of one's shaft and interfering
with the proper functions of the right in an unwarrantable manner.

Scientific golfers have, however, now come to the conclusion that the
right hand and arm are the dominant partners in the production of the
golf stroke, although there are many of the old school who still
pathetically retain and exhibit their allegiance to the old tradition
of the left being the master.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:20 AM
If we have established the fact that the right is the dominant factor
in the production of the drive, it seems to me that it follows quite
naturally that the place of honour on the shaft should be allotted to
it, and that it should be allowed the full grip, and not as it is at
present, pushed off the shaft so that the grip of the dominant hand is
practically reduced to that of the thumb and the first and second
fingers. If this point is conceded the right hand obtains the full
benefit of its undoubtedly superior power, for it obtains a firm and
natural grip, whereas the present overlapping grip is a most unnatural
hold and a difficult one for beginners to acquire, although very few
players who have once used it return to the old grip.

Not only is the proposed grip more solid and natural, and productive
of greater power and accuracy than the present overlapping grip, but
it unquestionably carries the main idea of the overlapping grip to its
logical conclusion, as it reduces the stroke much more to a one-wrist
shot than does the present grip.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:20 AM
There will always be found many people who are prepared to condemn
utterly anything which they do not understand. Some of these are sure
to exercise themselves on this subject, so I shall give them some
additional food for thought. Some time ago, a golfer who was capable
of removing Mr. John Ball from the Amateur Championship Competition,
lost his left thumb at the second joint. After his misfortune he took
to driving a much longer ball than he had been in the habit of doing
before his accident.

Now there must have been some reason for this. The only one which I
can suggest is that his accident put the right hand more into its
proper and natural place on the shaft than it had been before.
Curiosity led me to try to reproduce this grip as much as possible. I
used the ordinary overlapping grip, with the exception that I allowed
my thumb to remain out and to rest on the back of my right hand in a
line with the knuckle of the little finger. I was astonished to find
how closely it seemed to bring the wrists together. The injured golfer
would probably have the ideal golf grip if he overlapped his right
with his left forefinger instead of using the ordinary overlap, for he
would have a perfectly free and full right-hand grip, no interference
by the thumb of the left hand, and a natural overlap with the left
forefinger on the little finger of the right hand.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:21 AM
There is surely food for thought in these considerations, and I am
sure that many who take to golf late in life could do much better with
this grip and the short swing than they do with the grip which is most
in vogue, and with much striving after an exaggerated swing. It is not
wise for us to think that there is nothing to discover or to improve
on in the grip. There is in this suggestion much room for experiment
and argument, and unless I am very much mistaken we shall, in the
future, see the relative position of the hands on the shaft altered.

I may here refer again to the remarks made on the power of the left by
Mr. Horace Hutchinson. It will be remembered that he said:

Since, as will be shown later on, the club has to turn in the
right hand at a certain point in the swing, it should be held
lightly in the fingers, rather than in the palm, with that
hand. In the left hand it should be held well home in the
palm, and it is not to stir from this position throughout the
swing. It is the left hand, mainly, that communicates the
power of the swing; the chief function of the right hand is
as a guide in direction.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:21 AM
Notwithstanding Mr. Horace Hutchinson's statement with regard to the
function of the right hand, there is given on page 86 of the Badminton
_Golf_ an illustration entitled "At the top of the swing (as it should
be)." Here we see a player in about as ineffective a position for
producing a drive as one could possibly imagine, for the right elbow
is considerably above the player's head and is pointing skyward. It
would be an impossibility from such a position to obtain either
adequate guidance or power from the right hand, and it is a matter of
astonishment to find the name of such a fine player and good judge of
the game as Mr. Horace Hutchinson attached to an illustration which
must always be a classical illustration of "The top of the swing (as
it should _not_ be)."

We may here for the time being disregard the fundamentally unsound
position of the right arm, for Mr. Horace Hutchinson has apparently
altered his mind since, as we find him in _Great Golfers_ photographed
at the top of his swing with the right elbow in an entirely different
position. We see there clearly that he had come to realise the
importance of keeping his elbow well down and as much as possible in
the plane of force indicated by the swing and the shaft of the golf
club. These photographs are very interesting. Mr. Horace Hutchinson
says that the golf club "should be held well home in the [left] palm,
and it is not to stir from this position throughout the swing," yet at
the top of Mr. Horace Hutchinson's swing illustrated on page 296 of
_Great Golfers_ we see clearly that at the top of his swing the club
is barely held in the fingers of the left hand--as a matter of fact
the forefinger of the left hand is raised and the club is merely
resting in the three other fingers, which appear to be curved on to
the club and hardly exerting any pressure whatever.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:21 AM
It is abundantly clear from this photograph that Mr. Hutchinson, who
is the most pronounced adherent to the fetich of the left, is driving
his ball with a grip which is, to all intents and purposes, a
right-handed stroke. This photograph was taken in action and at the
rate of about one twelve-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second, so that
there cannot be much doubt as to the fact that Mr. Horace Hutchinson
is merely another exemplification of the fact that the golfers who
write for the public tell them one thing, while they themselves
practise another.

Before concluding this chapter on the power of the left, I may mention
that Mr. H. H. Hilton in Mr. John L. Low's book _Concerning Golf_,
subscribes to the idea of attempting to regulate the force of the
grips taken by the hands. He says on page 78 of that book:

When the main object of a shot is to obtain length, hold
tight with the left hand. The left hand will then do most of
the work in taking up the club. The right hand comes in on
the down swing to add force to the shot, and all parts of the
player's anatomy cohering together, the impetus will carry
his shoulders round, and unless he arbitrarily checks the
motion, he will finish his shot with his arms and club thrown
forcibly away from him; in short, he will have followed
through.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:21 AM
It will be seen that this fine player distinctly advises a stronger
grip with the left than with the right hand when one's object is
distance. In the drive the object, of course, generally is distance,
and we are distinctly advised by Mr. Hilton to play our stroke in a
manner which Harry Vardon has clearly laid down as almost certain to
lead to irretrievable disaster, for starting with a firm grip with our
left, which we are to put practically in command of the club on the
upward swing, we are then to bring the right into play "on the down
swing to add force to the shot."


It will be clearly seen here that Mr. Hilton is under the impression
that the left is performing the more important portion of the work,
for he speaks of the right hand as coming in to add force to the shot,
whereas, in fact, the main portion of the force is provided by the
right, and if there is any question of either hand and arm _adding_
force to the shot, that will be done by the left hand and arm, and not
by the right.

Dark Saint Alaick
27-05-2013, 03:22 AM
I do not think it is necessary for me to go any further in order to
show how deeply rooted and how widespread is this delusion about the
power of the left. It is another one of those pernicious fallacies
which absolutely strike at the root of the game of the great body of
golfers, and it is impossible for one to take too much trouble in
discrediting it to such an extent that it will soon be recognised as
not being practical golf.

I can hardly close this chapter better than by a quotation from a
letter received by me from the professional of an American club as far
afield as San Antonio, Texas. He writes:

It has taken me years of persistent effort to bury the many
prejudices against the proper use of the right arm, but they
must go, and I am glad to see you voiced sentiments strong
enough to make men stop and think over the situation. Let us
hope they will act.