The Soul of Golf Part 14

It is necessary that in the making of this stroke the right hand should do more work than the left, and therefore the club should be held rather more loosely by the left hand than by its partner. The latter will duly take advantage of this slackness, and will get in just the little extra work that is wanted of it. In the upward swing carry the club head just along the line which it would take for an ordinary drive. The result of all this arrangement, and particularly the slackness of the left hand and comparative tightness of the right is, that there is a tendency in the downward swing for the face of the club to turn over to some extent, that is for the top edge of it to be overlapping the bottom edge. This is exactly what is wanted, for, in fact, it is quite necessary that at the moment of impact the right hand should be beginning to turn over in this manner, and if the stroke is to be a success the golfer must see that it does so.

It will be seen from this quotation that Vardon is under the impression that in playing the pull the club goes straight back from the ball in the same manner as it would be taken were one playing an ordinary drive. We notice, too, that he commits himself to the statement, that it is necessary that the top edge of the face of the club should be practically overlapping the bottom at the moment of impact. This, in effect, means that the club is actually deprived of its loft at the moment of impact.

It will be apparent to anyone who understands very little about the ordinary principles of mechanics that it would be an impossibility to play an effective shot in this manner. Indeed it would be impossible to raise the ball from the ground, and any attempt whatever to give this turn over of the wrists at the moment of impact would inevitably result in a very large proportion of foundered b.a.l.l.s.

It must be remembered that Vardon is advising the player to consciously attempt to regulate the loft of his club during an impact which lasts for no more than the ten-thousandth of a second. Golf is at all times a game calling for a remarkable degree of mechanical accuracy, but it is obviously asking, even of the most perfect player, far too much when we request that he shall, by the action of his hands and wrists, regulate the loft of his club in an impact which lasts for such an extremely short time. We must remember that if the shot were played as Vardon describes it, the loft of the club face is continually changing during, let us say, the foot before it gets to the ball and the foot after it has pa.s.sed it.

The whole idea of the stroke in golf, in so far as regards loft, ought to be that at the moment of impact the player has nothing whatever to do with the loft, his duty being confined to hitting the ball in a certain way and allowing the loft to do its own work, and to take the angle at which it will naturally come down, but any attempt consciously to regulate the loft of the club during impact, especially on the lines laid down by Vardon, must inevitably result in disaster.

Vardon tells us that at the moment of impact it is necessary that the club face should be turning so that it will be practically overlapping at least the moment after the ball is struck.

His error is by no means an uncommon one. The same thing exists in lawn-tennis in the lifting drive, where about ninety per cent of the players who try the lifting drive under the impression that it is got by a turn over of the wrist, do the turn too soon and founder the ball--in other words, put it into the net. If the pull were to be played in the way Vardon describes it, the result would be exactly the same. The ball would simply be topped or absolutely foundered.

I cannot emphasise too strongly the fact that this turn over of the wrists in the pull has nothing whatever to do with the production of the stroke, although Vardon says that it has. This turn over of the wrists will, if it precedes the moment of impact, ruin the stroke. It must come naturally long after the ball has gone on its way, and it must come not by any voluntary or conscious effort on the part of the player, but as the natural result of the correctly played first portion of the stroke.

In my chapter on "The Flight of the Ball," I shall go more fully into the mechanical principles of the production of the pull. It will be sufficient for me to say here that the pull is produced by an upward, outward, glancing blow, but there must be no attempt whatever to alter the loft of the club at the moment of impact.

In so flatly contradicting such a master of stroke play as Harry Vardon, it may be as well for me to fortify myself by evidence taken from the work and photographs of another famous golfer who was himself originally under the impression that the pull was obtained in this manner, but who has apparently since abandoned this idea. I feel sure that for the great majority of players who know anything whatever of elementary mechanics, it will be unnecessary for me to do this, but there is a vast number of players who are not well acquainted with even simple mechanical problems, and it is for these that I take the trouble to bring forward James Braid to give evidence against this idea of turning over the wrist at the moment of impact.

We must remember that Braid himself has stated in _How to Play Golf_ that the striking of the ball is merely an incident in the travel of the club's head, and we must remember that this book _How to Play Golf_ was written long after the quotation which I am now about to give from _Great Golfers_ at page 175. There James Braid tells us that "in playing for a _pulled ball_ the right wrist turns over at the moment of impact." This is emphatic enough, and Braid here commits himself to the same statement as Vardon does, that is to say, that the right wrist turns over _at the moment of impact_. This is what I absolutely deny.

It is natural to suppose that Braid's book, _Advanced Golf_, contains the author's last word with regard to the science of playing the pulled ball, one of the b.a.l.l.s, let us remember, which Harry Vardon considers the master stroke in the game. Let us therefore turn to Braid's ill.u.s.tration of playing for a pull in the four photographs following page 78. Braid here fortunately ill.u.s.trates the actual moment of impact in the pull, and it will be seen on examining his club that it is apparently perfectly soled, that is to say that the club is lying as truly and flatly as it is at the moment of address.

This is very important and quite incontrovertible as being Braid's considered opinion, because this stroke is a posed photograph for the purpose of ill.u.s.trating the impact in the pull. We see quite clearly from this photograph that there is absolutely no turning over of the wrists, but that on the contrary, the right hand is, if anything, well back on the shaft, and showing no sign whatever, as I have already said--not even a symptom--of beginning to turn over. Nor, as a matter of fact, should it do so. The club does not begin to turn over in the manner described until it has reached practically the full extent of its outward swing on the far side of the line of flight.

This photograph is, in itself, quite sufficient evidence to show us that Braid has abandoned his idea with regard to the necessity for turning over the right wrist at the moment of impact in the pull, but it is instructive to note that there is in the whole of _Advanced Golf_ not one word about turning over the wrists at the moment, of impact in the pull, so that we may take it as definitely settled that James Braid has, since the publication of _Great Golfers_, found out his error in this matter, for, against his one sentence in _Great Golfers_ that "in playing for a _pulled ball_ the right wrist turns over at the moment of impact," we have not only his statement in _How to Play Golf_ that the impact is a mere incident in the travel of the club head, but the still more eloquent fact that in _Advanced Golf_ he says no word whatever in support of this theory, and that he most expressly and emphatically by his own photographs contradicts the idea.

We need not consider what Taylor has to say in connection with the production of the pull, for we see clearly that his idea of both the slice and the pull is that they are merely errors in golf and not to be encouraged.

Let us turn now to a consideration of the slice. The same misconception which is so prominently shown by nearly every writer about golf with regard to the pull obtains also in connection with the slice. This is clearly shown by James Braid in _Great Golfers_, for following the quotation which I have already given with regard to the pulled ball, he says: "But for a sliced ball I cut a little across the ball, the wrist action being the reverse of that for a pull, viz., the right hand is rather under than over."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PLATE IX. JAMES BRAID

Here, in spite of what Braid says, it will be seen that his weight at the finish goes almost entirely on to the left foot.]

Braid tells us that for a pulled ball he turns his right wrist over _at the moment of impact_. Well, as the wrist action for the slice is the reverse of this, it follows that _at the moment of impact_ he turns his right wrist under. This is a very common misconception. It is one which is held by an astonis.h.i.+ng number of practical players.

Mr. Walter J. Travis in his book on _Practical Golf_ repeatedly makes the error of thinking that this turn under of the wrist has any effect whatever on the stroke, but it is just as great an error to think that this turn under of the wrist has anything to do with the production of the slice, as it is to think that the turning over of the wrist has anything whatever to do with the pull. Both of these actions quite naturally _follow_ the correct production of the strokes referred to.

The slice is an inwardly glancing blow, if anything, with a suspicion of downward action, whereas, as I have already explained, the pull is an outward, upward, glancing blow. There must be no attempt whatever to turn the right wrist under or downward at the moment of playing the slice, as Braid says he does in _Great Golfers_, although I have not been able to find the same statement in _Advanced Golf_, where we should naturally expect to see it if Braid still has this idea. The curious thing is that in James Braid's ill.u.s.trations in _Advanced Golf_ for playing a slice the right hand is much further forward on the club than it is in those showing the grip for the pull; in fact were it not that the stance shows clearly that the photographs are correctly marked, one would be much inclined to think that they had been wrongly ent.i.tled. In playing for the slice, Braid's hand is well over the club, whereas in the pull it is almost underneath it. In _Advanced Golf_ this grip for a slice is extremely p.r.o.nounced, in fact very much more so than in his ill.u.s.trations of the stance and address for this stroke which he gives in his book _How to Play Golf_.

The popular misconception about the slice is well instanced by what Harry Vardon has to say in connection with the cut mas.h.i.+e approach. He says at page 129 of _The Complete Golfer_:

It is also most important that at the instant when ball and club come into contact the blade should be drawn quickly towards the left foot. To do this properly requires not only much dexterity, but most accurate timing, and first attempts are likely to be very clumsy and disappointing, but many of the difficulties will disappear with practice, and when at last some kind of proficiency has been obtained, it will be found that the ball answers in the most obedient manner to the call that is made upon it. It will come down so dead upon the green that it may be chipped up in the air until it is almost directly over the spot at which it is desired to place it.

I have no hesitation whatever in saying that this is absolutely bad golf. In all cases where cut is applied to the golf ball there must be no attempt whatever to introduce anything into the stroke during the period of contact between the ball and the club. I am here dealing with Vardon's statement with regard to the mas.h.i.+e approach, but it is apparent that all cut shots are, in effect, slices, and if one gets the idea into one's mind that the slice is obtained by anything which is done consciously during impact and timed by the player to be done in that s.p.a.ce of time, it must militate severely against one's chance of producing a successful shot.

A little farther down on the same page Vardon says:

At the moment of impact the arms should be nearly full length and stiff, and the wrists as stiff as it is possible to make them. I said that the drawing of the blade towards the left foot would have to be done quickly because obviously there is very little time to lose; but it must be done smoothly and evenly, without a jerk, which would upset the whole swing, and if it is begun the smallest fraction of a second too soon the ball will be taken by the toe of the club, and the consequences will not be satisfactory. I have returned to make this the last word about the cut, because it is the essence of the stroke and it calls for what a young player might well regard as an almost hopeless nicety of perfection.

Here it is quite evident that Vardon thinks that the cut on a mas.h.i.+e approach is played by something imported into the stroke _during impact_, whereas the truth is that the club in a good shot properly played never alters from the line of the arc mapped out by the mind from the very beginning of the stroke. Vardon says that the cut "must be applied smoothly and evenly without a jerk, which would upset the whole swing." It is obvious that if the head of the club has travelled in a certain line down to within a fraction of an inch of the ball, and is then suddenly pulled across the ball, _there must be a jerk_.

This, however, is not what happens when the stroke is well played. The club face simply pa.s.ses across the intended line of flight of the ball with the front edge of the sole approximately at a right angle to such intended line of flight, but the club head proceeds across the line in an uninterrupted arc. If what Vardon, Mr. Travis, and many other people lay down, were correct, a drawing of the stroke would show the club head proceeding to the ball in a curve, then a sudden jump inwards towards the player with a continuation approximating to the follow-through of the first half of the stroke, but it is almost needless to say that nothing of this kind takes place either in this modified slice or the true slice at golf, which we shall have to deal with more particularly later on.

Speaking of this shot--the cut mas.h.i.+e stroke--Vardon says: "It will come so dead upon the green that it may be chipped up into the air until it is almost perfectly over the spot at which it is desired to place it."

This may be so. I have played the shot myself repeatedly, and I have repeatedly seen perhaps the greatest master in the world of the cut mas.h.i.+e approach, to wit J. H. Taylor, playing this shot, and there cannot be any doubt whatever that this particular cla.s.s of mas.h.i.+e approach nearly always gives the ball a considerable run from left to right. This, indeed, is perfectly natural, for one goes right in underneath the ball and gives it a tremendous side roll tending to make it swerve in the air from left to right, and when it strikes the green, to run in the same direction. So p.r.o.nounced indeed is the swerve and run of this ball that I have seen J. H. Taylor playing at Mid-Surrey when the green was practically completely obstructed by a large tree, play this shot so that it curved round the tree on to the edge of the green and then ran in almost to the pin.

The shot which stops so dead at the hole, as Harry Vardon mentions, must of necessity have much more in the nature of back cut which produces back-spin than has the ball played by the stroke which he describes.

Vardon refers to the pull and the slice as being the master strokes in golf. I have already said that if I had to pick any one stroke which could be called the master stroke in golf, it would be the wind-cheater, and it is open to question if the long plain drive is not ent.i.tled to greater respect than either the pull or the slice. Be that as it may, there is in my mind very little doubt about the respective merits of the wind-cheater and the other strokes referred to. The wind-cheater is the ball which is produced with a large amount of back-spin. Harry Vardon describes it at page 105, and he explains that in order to make the push shot perfectly "the sight should be directed to the centre of the ball, and the club should be brought directly on to it (exactly on the spot marked on the diagram, page 170)." I may remark here that the spot shown on the ball at page 170 of _The Complete Golfer_ for a push shot is absolutely above the centre of ma.s.s of the ball, and that at page 106 Harry Vardon gives a diagram of "The push shot with the cleek." In this diagram he shows that the face of the cleek at the moment of impact is perpendicular.

It is quite certain that even if one could hit the ball above the centre of its ma.s.s with a perpendicular face, it would be impossible to get the ball off the ground in this manner. The push shot with the cleek must be played with loft on the club, and indeed it does not matter what club is used for this shot, there must be _loft_ on the face of the club _at the moment of impact_ if one is to obtain a satisfactory result, and not only must there be loft on the face of the club, but it is a certainty that the impact of the club with the ball must be _below_ the centre of the ball's ma.s.s, and not as Vardon shows it at page 170 of _The Complete Golfer_, above it.

Vardon, for playing this push shot, uses a cleek with a shorter handle and with more loft than his ordinary cleek. This, indeed, is quite natural, for the shot is, in the nature of it, a very straight up and down shot in the line to the hole, and also as it is desirable that the ball shall be hit by the club before the club head has reached the lowest point in its swing, Vardon naturally has his hands forward of the ball at the moment of impact. This, of course, to a certain extent, counteracts the loft of the cleek, but in no case does it counteract it to the extent shown by Vardon in the diagram at page 106 of _The Complete Golfer_, for were the blow made as shown by these diagrams, it would be a mechanical impossibility to obtain the result described by Vardon.

The reason for keeping the hands forward of the ball is, as I have indicated, that the club head may make impact with the ball before it has reached the bottom of its swing, and Vardon's reason for playing with a club of greater loft than is usually employed is that this greater loft helps to make up for the fact that his hands are forward of the ball at the moment of impact. Playing this stroke with an ordinary cleek would rob the cleek of so much of its loft that the probability is that the flight of the ball would in its initial stages be too low to give a satisfactory result.

Vardon says at page 106: "The diagram on this page shows the pa.s.sage of the club through the ball as it were, exactly," but the trouble is that it does not show the pa.s.sage of the club through the ball "as it were, exactly," because at the moment of impact with the ball the club must have sufficient loft on its face to lift the ball, and, moreover, the face of the club must make its first contact at a point at most as high as the centre of the ball, but preferably much lower, so that the force of the blow has an opportunity of exerting itself upwardly through the centre of the ball's ma.s.s. Vardon plays this shot perfectly, but he does not describe it as well as he plays it. He says at page 106 of _The Complete Golfer_:

I may remark that personally I play not only my half cleek stroke, but all my cleek strokes in this way, so much am I devoted to the qualities of flight which are thereby imparted to the ball, and though I do not insist that others should do likewise in all cases, I am certainly of opinion that they are missing something when they do not learn to play the half shot in this manner. The greatest danger they have to fear is that in their too conscious efforts to keep the club clear of the ground until after impact, they will overdo it and simply top the ball, when, of course, there will be no flight at all.

There can be no doubt that this stroke is an extremely valuable one, particularly with the cleek, and it is a stroke which will well repay anyone for the time spent in practising it. There is, indeed, as Vardon says, a great danger of the player topping the ball if he tries to keep too far away from the ground until after the impact, but he must at all costs get out of his mind the idea of hitting the ball where Vardon says it should be hit, viz. above the centre of the ball's ma.s.s. This never was golf. It is not golf now, and it never will be golf.

It is almost incredible, but is a fact, that a golf journalist who presumed to say that he knew what was "at the back of his (Harry Vardon's) head" stated in an article in a sporting magazine in London, that this push shot, one of Vardon's most beautiful and accurate strokes, is obtained by thumping the ball on to the earth--in fact that the stroke is almost what one might term a "b.u.mp ball," to use the cricket term. Any idea more abhorrent to the true golfer than the notion of producing his finest cleek shots and approach shots by banging the ball on to the earth can hardly be imagined, nor anything more incorrect.

The wind-cheater is an invaluable stroke, but there can be no doubt that it is a stroke calling for a very considerable degree of skill in order to play it perfectly, or indeed very well, and in connection with this matter there was a very peculiar but entirely mistaken idea that for the production of this stroke it was necessary at the moment of impact to turn over both wrists. This idea obtained for years, and notwithstanding my repeated explanations, the deeply rooted notion was persevered in and used in such a manner by many players that it seriously interfered with their game.

Some of the criticism which I had to put up with at the time that I was instructing golfers in these matters was very remarkable. I must give one instance which seems almost incredible. I had explained in the pages of _Golf Ill.u.s.trated_, the leading golfing journal of London, how the pull is produced, and I had therein indicated as clearly and decidedly as I now do that it was impossible to produce the pull by the method indicated by Harry Vardon. Mr. A. C. M. Croome, the well-known international player, solemnly a.s.serted in the _Morning Post_ that he had himself seen Harry Vardon produce the shot in the manner which I said was an impossibility, and that in effect an ounce of practice was worth a pound of theory.

I took the trouble to explain that a cinematograph with about 400 pictures, or perhaps a good many less per second, was sufficient to deceive an ordinary man into thinking that he saw a continuous picture.

I explained that the camera which took the photographs for my purpose was timed to give an exposure of one twelve-hundred-and-fiftieth of a second, and that this was, therefore, at least three times as rapid as the machine which deceives an ordinary man into thinking that he sees a single picture, but notwithstanding that the camera was so tremendously rapid in its exposure, the golf club beats it to such an extent that at the moment of impact the club is represented by a swish of light or movement on the plate, and the ball immediately after impact is represented by something resembling a section of a sperm candle. So extremely rapid is its flight that it is impossible to obtain even by so short an exposure anything resembling clear definition.

I showed clearly that an implement which was moving so fast as to absolutely beat the machine which was three times as fast as the machine which deceived the human being, was not likely to be able to be followed accurately by the human eye unaided in any way whatever.

Still, that was the kind of criticism which I had to undergo.

I was told exactly the same thing when I explained that in the push shot there must be no attempt whatever to turn over the wrists at the moment of impact, that in this shot as in all other strokes at golf, there must be no attempt whatever made to interfere with, or alter, during impact, the angle of the loft taken at the time of address, for any such attempt as this must end in trouble.

It was some years after this controversy that Mr. A. C. M. Croome produced a column in the _Morning Post_ ent.i.tled "Justice," in which he referred to the matter as follows:

MR. VAILE RIGHT

It is common talk that Sherlock has improved a great deal since he migrated from Oxford to Stoke Poges, and for once common talk is right. His driving, at least when the ground is hard, is distinctly longer than it used to be, but the increased length has not been purchased at the expense of steadiness. The ball still flies from his wooden clubs along a line ruled straight to the hole. Even more valuable to him than the gain in length is the acquisition of all that range of shots which, if correctly played, leave the striker posed with his arms straight out and the back of his right hand uppermost.

A few years ago I, in common with many other misguided golfers, believed that the movement of the right hand was the cause, not the consequence, of correct execution.

Consequently a large percentage of the shots attempted to be played in this way went anywhere but to the desired place. We turned the key in the lock too soon. So far as I know Mr. P.

A. Vaile was the first publicist to set forth the truth. I have differed from him on many points and found myself unable to follow the more abstruse of his treatises. It is a pleasure to acknowledge a debt to him, and it is a heavy debt, for a misconception of the work done by the right hand in holding the ball up against a left hand wind is fraught with disastrous consequences. Sherlock was performing this feat most exactly on Tuesday and hitting the ball monstrous far with his irons forbye.

I was very pleased to see this statement by Mr. Croome, for several reasons. It was a sportsmanlike acknowledgment of error, and a fine instance of what I call "the detached mind," which is extremely rare in England. The majority of controversialists are too much taken up with the personal aspect of the controversy, to remember that the controversy if it is worth entering upon, must always be of more importance than the controversialists, but beyond this, it is always of importance, especially for one who is in the habit of writing golf, to know the game to the core, for such an one can do much to spread a correct knowledge of the game, and this misconception of the action of the wrists has been responsible for millions of foundered shots.