The Soul of Golf

[Dark Saint Alaick]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.