The Soul of Golf

[Dark Saint Alaick]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.