THE SOUL OF GOLF
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
Frontispiece.
GEORGE DUNCAN
The famous young Hanger Hill professional, one of the finest gol'fers, and probably the best golf coach, in the world.
THE SOUL OF GOLF
BY
P. A. VAILE
AUTHOR OF ' MODERN GOLF,' * MOETRN LAWN ".
'SWERVE, OR THE FLIGHT OF THE MALI.,' ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1912
THE SOUL OF GOLF
BY
P. A. VAILE
AUTHOR OF ' MODERN GOLF,' ' MODERN LAWN TENNIS,
'SWERVE, OR THE FLIGHT OF THE BALL,' ETC.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1912
COPYRIGHT
p
TO
PHILIP REGINALD THORNTON
MY CO-WORKER IN IMPERIAL POLITICS
261490
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
viii THE SOUL OF GOLF
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 calcu- lated, an he follow it, to put him back for years, until indeed he shall find the truth, the soul of golf.
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
PREFACE ix
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 after- wards 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.
CONTENTS
CHAP.
PREFACE .
I. THE SOUL OF GOLF . I
II. THE MYSTERY OF GOLF . IS
III. PUTTING . • 47
IV. THE FALLACIES OF GOLF . -95 V. THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEIGHT. . n?
VI. THE POWER OF THE LEFT • 140
VII. THE FUNCTION OF THE EYES . .162
VIII. THE MASTER STROKE • *78
IX. THE ACTION OF THE WRISTS . X. THE FLIGHT OF THE GOLF BALL XI. THE GOLF BALL XII. THE CONSTRUCTION OF CLUBS . XIII. THE LITERATURE OF GOLF AFTERWORD INDEX . -353
ILLUSTRATIONS
PLATE FACE PAGE
GEORGE DUNCAN .... Frontispiece I. HARRY VARDON'S GRIP 16
II. HARRY VARDON. STANCE AND FRONTAL AD- DRESS IN SHORT PUT 38
III. HARRY VARDON AT THE TOP OF HIS SWING . 60
IV. HARRY VARDON AT THE TOP OF HIS SWING IN
THE DRIVE 82
V. J. H. TAYLOR AT THE TOP OF HIS SWING IN
THE DRIVE 104
VI. HARRY VARDON. THE FINISH OF HIS DRIVE . 124
VII. HARRY VARDON. THE FINISH OF THE DRIVE . 146
VIII. EDWARD RAY. FINISH OF DRIVE . . .168
IX. JAMES BRAID. FINISH OF STROKE . . .190
X. HARRY VARDON. FINISH OF A DRIVE . .212
XL JAMES BRAID. FINISH OF DRIVE . . . 234
XII. GEORGE DUNCAN. A CHARACTERISTIC FINISH . 256
XIII. J. SHERLOCK. STANCE AND ADDRESS FOR
IRON-SHOT ....... 278
XIV. J. SHERLOCK. TOP OF SWING IN IRON-SHOT . 304 XV. J. SHERLOCK. FINISH OF IRON-SHOT . . -330
>
CHAPTER I
THE SOUL OF GOLF
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
i B
SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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
i THE SOUL OF GOLF 3
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.
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
4 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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 dis- tributed 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
i THE SOUL OF GOLF 5
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 ?
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 unpleasant- ness 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 pro- fessionals 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
6 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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 beauti- fully 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
i THE SOUL OF GOLF 7
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.
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 ex- aggerated. 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
8 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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 character- istic 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.
When one writes of the soul of golf it sounds almost as though one were guilty of a little senti- mentality. 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
i / THE SOUL OF GOLF 9
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 sports- man 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."
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
io THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
attention of players and writers has been most assidu- ously 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.
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 un- interesting ; 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
i THE SOUL OF GOLF n
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.
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 depart- ment 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.
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
12 THE SOUL OF GOLF
CHAP.
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 per- nicious 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 demon- strated 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.
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.
i THE SOUL OF GOLF 13
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
14 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP, i
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.
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.
CHAPTER II
THE MYSTERY OF GOLF
THERE is no such thing as " the mystery of golf." One might reasonably ask, " If there is no such thing as 1 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. 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 imple- ments 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
15
1 6 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
weaker excuses for his want of intelligence and mechanical accuracy. Until the golfer fully under- stands 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 him- self. It is useful then for him to be told of the mysteries of golf — the wonderful mysteries, the psycho- logical difficulties, the marvellous cerebration, the in- credibly rapid nerve "telegraphing," and the wonderful muscular complications which take place between the time that he addresses the ball and hits it, or otherwise.
Now, as a matter of fact, this is all so much balder- dash, 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
PLATE I.
HARRY VARDON'S GRIP
Showing the overlapping of the first finger of the left hand by the little finger of the right. This is now the orthodox grip.
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 17
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.
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
C
1 8 THE SOUL OF GOLF
CHAP.
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
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 19
golfer by those who never played such a stroke them- selves, 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.
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 con- temptible 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
20 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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 intelli- gence 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.
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
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 21
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 :
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 con-
22 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
stitution 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.
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 detri- mental 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
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 23
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.
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 pro- ceed 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 depres- sion 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 physio- logical 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 meaning- less and misleading term. The soul of golf means, in
24 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
effect, the heart of golf — a true and loving understanding of the very core of the game.
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 him- self 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 in- sufficient, 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 pro- ceeds 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 follow- ing 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.
This quotation, I may say, is not from William Park's book, but is taken from the volume I am
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 25
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 what- ever 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 con- sideration might know) near the beginning of the down- ward siving. 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 state- ment 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 con- tinues :
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.
Here is another remarkable passage — " and as to that mashie shot where you loft high over an abomin- able 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
26 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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 ?
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 connec- tion 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
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 27
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 dis- tribution 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 mis- taught 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 riot 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
28 THE SOUL OF GOLF
CHAP.
inconvenient between the waggle and the moment when one strikes the ball.
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 ir- regular— the stroke is a failure. No wonder it is difficult."
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 re- spect different from numerous other strokes in numerous
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 29
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 :
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,
30 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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 con- sciously 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.
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 supereroga- tion 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
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 31
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 5 7 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 5 8 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.
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 state- ment is, of course, an extremely ridiculous one, especially
32 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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 down- ward swing, the 'speed of the club is increased by ex- tremely 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.
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
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 33
mystery which he has evolved from the innermost re- cesses 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 im- portance 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 circula- tion, 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 1 have had some very remarkable illustrations of the fact. So strongly, indeed, do I
D
34 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 35
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."
For one who has attempted a critical analysis of the psychology of golf the author makes some wonderful statements. Speaking about " looking " versus " think- ing," 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
36 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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 in- distinctly. 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.
It will probably not be news to most of us that there is such a thing as " a vacant stare." We prob- ably 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, Hoffding, as saying, " We must will to see, in order to
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 37
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.
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 con- sequence, that he will not properly hit it."
Here is another paragraph worthy of consideration : " But if one tautens any of the muscles necessary for
38 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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 im- possible 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
PLATE II.
*» 6-
'.-
HARRY VARDON Stance and frontal address in short put.
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 39
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 ! "
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
40 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
through the cms 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 in feet a second, and speedily excite definite groups of muscles in definite ways, with the effect of producing the desired move- ments."
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 1 1 1 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 produc- tion 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
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 41
existence of the " creative imagination " the work under notice.
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 some- thing 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 analyti- cal 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 super- lative 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,
42 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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 " ?
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 Distri- bution 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 accom- plished, 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
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 43
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.
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 com- bined." 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 un- fortunate 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
44 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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
ii THE MYSTERY OF GOLF 45
which are, and they are the things which matter. No wonder, then, that he has " come a cropper."
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 im- portance must be that the eyes should be in exactly the same place and position as they were at the moment of address.
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 circum-
46 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP, n
stances. ... 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.
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
47
48 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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 con- fidence. 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.
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,
in PUTTING 49
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 1 4 3 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 in- struction to offer in the matter of putting. There is no rule and there is no best way.
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.
E
50 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
Let us now repeat what James Braid has to say on the important matter of putting. On page 1 1 9 of How to Play Golf he says :
It happens, unfortunately, that concerning one depart- ment 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 dis- couraging, 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.
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
in PUTTING 51
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.
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 demon- strated, 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 them- selves in this particular department ? Certainly not.
Now it will be admitted that this is a very gloomy outlook for him who desires to learn how to put. He
52 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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
in PUTTING 53
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 dele- terious 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 con- nection 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,
54 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
and make him put on the lines most generally adopted.
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 what- ever 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.
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,
in PUTTING 55
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 mean- time, be sufficient for me to consider and criticise these statements generally. If this were my own uncorrobor- ated 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.
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 1 44, 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 J saw Braid putting, he was trying a Vaile putter for
56 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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 illustra- tion 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 pro- fessional can improve his putting or not. Any profes- sional 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 6W/*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
in PUTTING 57
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.
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 calcula- tions 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
58 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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
. . . 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
in PUTTING 59
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 formulae, 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.
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 funda- mental 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.
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
60 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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
PLATE III.
HARRY VARDON
At the top of his swing, showing his weight mainly on the left leg. This characteristic is very marked in Vardon's play.
Ill
PUTTING 61
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.
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
62 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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
in PUTTING 63
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 cir- cumstances, 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 tuff.
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
64 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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
in PUTTING 65
is impossible, although they are so elementary, to exaggerate their importance, and it is amazing, con- sidering 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.
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.
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 proba- bility 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
F
66 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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
in PUTTING 67
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.
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.
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.
68 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
I believe this to be a matter of very great im- portance, 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
in PUTTING 69
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.
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
70 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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.
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
in PUTTING 71
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.
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 illustra-
72 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
tion 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.
This stroke was a revelation to me of the importance of the principles which I am now enunci- ating, 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 :
" 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."
in PUTTING 73
" 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.
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
74 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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.
Ill
PUTTING 75
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.
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."
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
76 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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."
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," par- takes 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
in PUTTING 77
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.
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.
78 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
There may be considerable truth in this, though, obviously, great skill and confidence on the part of the player are taken for granted.
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.
Here we are told that the ball " simply skates over the turf." As I have shown before, this is one of the
in PUTTING 79
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 accom- plished 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.
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.
8o THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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 con- struction 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 inter- vening 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 illus- trating 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.
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
in PUTTING 8 1
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, pro- vided 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 demon- strate 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.
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
G
82 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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 altera- tion 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 any- thing 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.
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
PLATE IV.
HARRY VARDON
At the top of his swing in the drive. This is a fine illustration of Varrlon's perfect management of his weight, which is mainly on his left foot. Observe carefully the wrists, which are in the best possible position to develop power.
Ill
PUTTING 83
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 abso- lutely in the middle, which is the only proper part wherewith to hit a golf ball.
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
84 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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 :
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
in PUTTING 85
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.
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
86 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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."
Vardon goes fully into the general principles under-
in PUTTING 87
lying 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.
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 th* 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
88 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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 in- tentionally 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
in PUTTING 89
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.
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 in- structions 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.
In the first place, I may remark that we do not generally borrow from a slope " by running straight up
90 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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
in PUTTING 91
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.
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
92 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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. There- fore it is reasonable to suppose, and indeed it is un- doubted 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
Ill
PUTTING 93
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.
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
94 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP, m
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 put- ting straight at the hole with drag, because a ball can be made to carry its drag for about this distance.
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
95
96 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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 slow- ness 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.
It is obvious that no swing can be started from the lowest point in an arc. If, for example, we take the
iv THE FALLACIES OF GOLF 97
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.
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 mis- informs 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
H
98 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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.
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
iv THE FALLACIES OF GOLF 99
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.
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 im- pact, 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
ioo THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
possible for his muscles to respond to the command issued by his mind.
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 them- selves 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 :
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,
IV
THE FALLACIES OF GOLF 101
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.
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
102 THE SOUL OF GOLF CHAP.
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. 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 re- membered 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