The Soul of Golf Part 18

At the beginning of Professor Thomson's article he said:

I shall not attempt to deal with the many important questions which arise when we consider the impact of the club with the ball, but confine myself to the consideration of the flight of the ball after it has left the club.

It would, indeed, have been well if Professor Thomson had carried out his expressed intention of leaving this matter alone, for in dealing with it he has shown most conclusively that he has no practical grip of the question which he has attempted to deal with. At page 15 of his article he says:

I have not time for more than a few words as to how the ball acquires the spin from the club, but if you grasp the principle that the action between the club and the ball depends only on their _relative_ motion, and that it is the same whether we have the ball fixed and move the club, or have the club fixed and project the ball against it, the main features are very easily understood.

I can readily believe that this statement of Professor Thomson's is absolutely accurate. The only thing which troubles me about it is that I think the person of ordinary intellect will find it absolutely impossible to "grasp the principle" which Professor Thomson lays down.

If we have the club fixed and project the ball against it, we know quite well that the ball will rebound from the club, but if we are to have the ball fixed and move the club against it, nothing will happen unless we move the club fast enough, in which case we should simply smash the club.

This is a most amazing ill.u.s.tration of looseness of thought--such an astonis.h.i.+ng ill.u.s.tration that I should not have believed Professor Thomson capable of it if it had not been published broadcast to the world with his authority. Of course, I know perfectly well what Professor Thomson means to say, but I have not to deal with that, and as a matter of fact what he means to say is quite wrong, but it will be sufficient for me to show that what he _does_ say is wrong.

Professor Thomson then goes on to say:

Suppose Fig. 27 represents the section of the head of a lofted club moving horizontally forward from right to left, the effect of the impact will be the same as if the club were at rest and the ball were shot against it horizontally from left to right.

Here Professor Thomson shows that he is quite under a misapprehension as to the production of the golf stroke. He pre-supposes that the club is moving in a horizontal direction at the moment it hits the ball. In a vast majority of instances, probably in about ninety per cent of cases, the club is not moving in a horizontal direction--in fact, it would be hardly too much to say that it never moves in a horizontal direction. It is nearly always moving either upwards or downwards in a curve at the moment it strikes the ball, so that it stands to reason, especially when the club face is travelling upwards, which is what it does in the great majority of cases, that the blow is never delivered horizontally, but is always struck more or less upward through the ball's centre of ma.s.s.

Practical teachers of golf know how extremely hard it is to induce the beginner, and for the matter of that many people who are far beyond beginners, to trust the loft of the club to raise the ball from the earth; so many players never get out of the habit of attempting to hit upwards.

It stands to reason that if the blow in golf were delivered as with a billiard cue, any blow struck in that manner, provided the face of the club had sufficient loft, would tend to produce back-spin, but practically no blow in golf is struck in the manner described by Professor Thomson; nor is the beneficial back-spin of golf obtained in this manner, in fact the loft of the club has comparatively little to do with producing the back-spin which so materially a.s.sists the length of the carry. There can, of course, be no doubt that loft does a.s.sist a person in producing this back-spin, or, as Professor Thomson calls it, under-spin, but to nothing like the extent which is imagined by the worthy Professor. The beneficial back-spin of golf is obtained by striking the golf ball before the head of the club has reached the lowest point in its swing; in other words, the back-spin is put on a golf ball by downward cut--by the very reverse to that cut which is put on a ball when a man tops it badly. In the one case it is up cut, or, as it is called in lawn-tennis, top, which is a misleading term which has led many people, besides Sir J. J. Thomson, astray, and in the other case it is downward cut, which is exactly similar in its effect to the chop at lawn-tennis.

Professor Thomson, for the purpose of ill.u.s.trating the fact that the golf ball obtains the beneficial spin, which influences its carry so materially, from the loft of the club, shows us a club face with a loft much greater than that of a niblick, and proceeds to demonstrate from this loft, which it is unnecessary to tell a golfer does not exist on any club which is used for driving, that the ball acquires its back-spin from the loft of the face of the club.

I have already referred to the Professor's fundamental fallacy that the golf stroke is delivered in a horizontal line--in effect that the force of the blow proceeds horizontally, but he is guilty of another very great error from the point of view of practical golf when he shows a club such as he has done, in order to explain how the beneficial back-spin of golf is obtained. Such a club as he shows might be useful for getting out of a bunker, but it certainly would be of no use whatever in practical golf for driving. As every golfer knows, the face of the driver is, comparatively speaking, very upright, and firing a ball at a wall built at the same angle as the loft of a driver would certainly not produce on that ball much in the way of back-spin. The idea of a modern golf ball which flattens very considerably on the face of the club, rolling up the face of a driver on account of its loft, is too ridiculous to be considered seriously by a practical golfer.

The trouble is that Professor Thomson always takes for his hypothesis something which does not exist in golf, so that in the great majority of cases it does not really matter to us what he proves. As a matter of fact, there is in golf only one horizontal stroke, and that is the stymie stroke introduced into the game by me, and which I have hereinbefore fully described. This stroke shows us conclusively how the power goes mostly into elevation instead of into propulsion. It is an absolute answer, if one were required, to Professor Thomson's theories. Professor Thomson's error is of such a fundamental nature that I must quote his sentence again in giving my readers the full paragraph wherein he exposes the delusion under which he is suffering.

He says:

Suppose Fig. 27 represents the section of the head of a lofted club moving horizontally forward from right to left, the effect of the impact will be the same as if the club were at rest and the ball were shot against it horizontally from left to right. Evidently, however, in this case the ball would tend to roll up the face, and would thus get spin about a horizontal axis in the direction shown in the figure; this is under-spin and produces the upward force which tends to increase the carry of the ball.

This is the rock upon which Professor Thomson has split. He is under the impression that the beneficial back-spin of golf is obtained by loft, whereas it is perfectly possible to obtain the beneficial back-spin of golf with a club having a vertical face, and being at the moment of impact in a vertical plane, but in order to do this it would be necessary that the ball should be teed very high, as indeed one of the most famous professionals in the world is in the habit of doing when he is playing for a low ball against the wind.

When in _Modern Golf_ I stated that a high tee for a low ball was practical golf, it was considered revolutionary, if not incorrect, doctrine, but players now understand that by using the high tee for a low ball they are enabled to cut down beyond the ball more than they could do if the ball were lying on the earth, and that they are, in this manner, enabled to obtain much more of the back-spin which gives the ball its extra carry, and also to play it with less loft.

This is a very serious error for a man of Professor Thomson's attainments to make, and indeed it is to me a wonder how he could possibly make the mistake of thinking that the force in the blow at golf is administered horizontally. This is one of the worst errors which he has made, but the idea that the back-spin of golf is obtained mainly by the loft of the club is utterly unsound and pernicious. It is so unsound, and the correct understanding of the method of producing this stroke is so important to golf, especially to the golf of the future, that I must explain fully how this stroke is obtained.

I have already shown that it is played by a downward glancing blow which hits the ball before the club reaches the lowest point in its swing, and I have already shown the delusion under which many players labour, even including so eminent a player as Harry Vardon, that the ball is struck down on to the earth. Although the ball is struck a descending blow, there is in the blow much more of the forward motion than the downward, so that all the ordinary principles with regard to getting the ball up into the air, apply with equal force to this stroke as to any other, and it is a matter of prime importance that the ball must be struck below the centre of its ma.s.s--that the loft of the club must get in underneath what is popularly called the middle of the ball. If this does not take place the ball will not rise from the earth, and to show as Harry Vardon does, at page 170 of _The Complete Golfer_, that the ball must be struck at or above the centre of its ma.s.s, and with, as he indicates at page 106, a vertical face, is utterly unsound golf.

I cannot emphasise too strongly that in this miscalled push shot, which is answerable for all back-spin, the loft must be allowed to do its work in the ordinary manner, otherwise the stroke will be a failure.

Having now made it perfectly clear how this stroke is obtained, I must explain a little more clearly the wonderful character of this ball which is without any doubt whatever, in my mind, the king of golf strokes in so far as regards obtaining distance and accuracy and direction. On account of the downward glancing blow the ball has been struck, it leaves the club with a very great amount of back-spin. The hands are always forward of the ball at the moment of impact in this stroke when it is properly played. It stands to reason that this, to a certain extent, decreases the loft of the club with which the stroke is played. The result is that the ball goes away on the first portion of its journey with a very low flight, keeping very close indeed to the earth. All the time it is doing this, however, the ball, as we know, is spinning backwards, which means that the lower portion of the ball is spinning towards the hole, and that it is on the lower portion of the ball that the motions of progression and revolution conspire.

It is equally obvious that on the upper portion of the ball the progression through the air is at the same rate, but in so far as regards its frictional-producing result on the air, it is lessened by the fact that the upper portion of the ball is revolving or spinning backwardly towards the player. The result of this is that the ball is getting much more friction on the lower portion than it is on the top, but as speed can always dominate spin, this is not very apparent until about two-thirds of the carry.

As the speed of the ball begins to decrease, the friction of the spin gets a better grip on the air, and the result is that with the continual rubbing of the air on the lower portion of the ball, it is forced upward and so it continues until the lifting power of the combined propulsion and revolution is exhausted. By this time the ball has arrived at the highest point of its trajectory and it then begins in the natural order of things to fall towards the earth.

It is obvious that by this time much of the back-spin will have been exhausted, but there still remains a considerable amount of rotation, and as the ball begins to fall towards the earth this back-spin which has. .h.i.therto been used for forcing the ball upwards into the air, still exerts its influence, and as it is travelling towards the earth the remnant of the back-spin exerts its influence to extend the carry of the ball, because the main frictional portion of the ball has, to a certain extent, on account of the dropping of the ball, been altered and s.h.i.+fted probably a little more towards the lower side of the ball.

The result of all this is that by the time this ball, in a well played drive, comes to earth, most of the beneficial back-spin which obtained for it its long flight, will have been exhausted, and that portion which remains and has not been exhausted will, in all probability, be killed on impact, for the ball pitches on one point, and naturally the top portion tends to throw forward so that the ball will run along the course. It stands to reason that it would require an enormous amount of back-spin to stay with the ball during the period of its low flight, to lift the ball then to the highest point in its trajectory near the end of its carry, to stay with it still in its descent, and then to be strong enough to resist the shock of landing so as to check the run of the ball. The result is that on account of the low trajectory of this ball and of the phenomena explained by me, it is frequently, when well played, and particularly in dry weather, a good runner, so that we see that in this ball we have practically the ideal golf drive; a drive with which no other can compare; a drive which is as good, although it is called the wind-cheater, for a still day as in a gale.

From this explanation it will be seen what a poor chance anyone would have who follows Professor Thomson's ideas of obtaining the beneficial back-spin of golf from the loft of the club and a horizontal blow.

Professor Thomson gives some ill.u.s.trations of the pull and the slice.

In two of his figures he shows horizontal blows being produced in a straight line with the line of flight. Both of these, I may say, are absolutely impossible in golf. He shows a slice in Fig. 29 which would be much more likely to result in a pull, and he shows a pull in Fig.

31 which would almost certainly result in a slice even if the shots were possible, which, as he shows them, they are not.

Professor Thomson shows by diagram an ordinary slice which he says is produced by "such a motion as would be produced if the arms were pulled in at the end of the stroke." This in itself is an utterly loose definition. What Professor Thomson evidently means is if the arms were pulled in during the stroke or at the moment of impact, but as I have shown the slice is not produced by the arms being pulled in at the moment of impact. It is produced by the club head travelling across the ball at an angle to the intended line of flight of the ball. Professor Thomson shows the slice in this case by diagram, and correctly, but he says that if the club were fixed rigidly and the ball were fired at the club down the same line as the club made in its previous stroke, the ball would come off the club in exactly the same manner as when it was. .h.i.t by the club, but in this he is making a very grave error, as I think I shall be able to show.

I shall quote Professor Thomson with regard to this matter. His proposition is so simple that although I give his indicating letters it will not be necessary for me to reproduce his diagram. He says:

Suppose, now, the face of the club is not square to its direction of motion, but that looking down on the club its line of motion when it strikes the ball is along P Q (Fig.

28), such a motion as would be produced if the arms were pulled in at the end of the stroke, the effect of the impact now will be the same as if the club were at rest and the ball projected along R S, the ball will endeavour to roll along the face away from the striker; it will spin in the direction shown in the figure about a vertical axis. This, as we have seen, is the spin which produces a slice.

This, as we have already seen, is not the spin which produces a slice, but we need not waste any further time going into that matter. We can, however, deal with what Professor Thomson meant to say when he wrote

... but if you grasp the principle that the action between the club and the ball depends only on their _relative_ motion, and that it is the same whether we have the ball fixed and move the club or have the club fixed and project the ball against it, the main features are very easily understood.

For the purpose of a.n.a.lysing what Professor Thomson evidently meant when he wrote this, let us take the ordinary case of a slice. We all know now quite well that a slice is produced by a glancing blow coming inwardly across the intended line of flight, and Professor Thomson tells us it is exactly the same thing whether we hit the ball with the club or fire the ball against the club. Let us see how this works out in the slice.

We will consider, for the sake of argument, that the slice has been produced by a stroke which has come across the intended line of flight at an angle of 30 degrees. We shall now fasten our club rigidly and fire the golf ball out of a catapult against its face so that it hits it dead in the centre, and so that it travels down a line at an angle of 30 degrees to the face. Now most of us know enough elementary mechanics to know that in hitting a still object such as the face of the golf club, the ball will come off it at the same angle at which it hit it--in other words that the angle of reflection is the same as the angle of incidence, allowing always, of course, for the slight alteration which will be made by the loft of the club. In this case, of course, we have one object which is absolutely still, and all the motion during impact is confined to the ball.

Now let us consider the impact in the slice. In this case the club strikes the ball a violent blow. The ball, to a very great extent, flattens on the face of the club, and both the ball and the club travel together for a certain distance across the direct line of flight to the hole, and during the time that they are thus travelling together the club is imparting spin to the ball and influencing its direction, so that instead of the ball doing anything whatever in the nature of spinning off the face of the club at a natural angle, it is driving, during its initial stages, very straightly for a long distance before the spin begins to take effect.

It seems to me that the slice may be taken as a very good ill.u.s.tration showing that what Professor Thomson meant to explain is quite incorrect from a golfing point of view. It is quite evident that before we could accept as authoritative the explanations which have been given by Professor Thomson of these somewhat abstruse problems, it would be necessary for us to have, as he puts it, "a new dynamics."

I have already dealt very fully both in England and America with this remarkable lecture by Professor Thomson. I have criticised it in the leading reviews and magazines of the world, and the authoritative golfing paper of England--_Golf Ill.u.s.trated_--in a leader, invited Professor Thomson to make good his a.s.sertions, but he has not been able to do so. One can understand fallacious matter being published under the names of professional golfers when one knows quite well that the majority of the work is done by journalists hired for the purpose, but it is almost impossible to understand how such utterly false doctrine could be put out by so eminent a man, and under the auspices of the Royal Inst.i.tution of Great Britain.

The flight of the ball has always been a fascinating and for most people a very mysterious subject, but except in one or two matters there is no mystery whatever about the flight of the golf ball, but even amongst practical golfers there is an amazing lack of accurate information. For instance, we find Mr. Walter J. Travis, in _Practical Golf_ at page 139, saying:

With a very rapid swing, the force or energy stored up in the gutta ball is greater than in the Haskell. The latter, by reason of its greater comparative resiliency does not remain in contact with the club head quite so long, and therefore does not receive the full benefit of the greater velocity of the stroke in the same proportion as the less resilient gutta. It flies off the face too quickly to get the full measure of energy imparted by a very swift stroke. This responsiveness or resiliency, however, a.s.serts itself in a greater and more compensating degree in the case of the shorter driver. It makes up, in his case, for the lack of speed, and he finds his distance very sensibly increased.

This is a remarkable error for a golfer like Mr. Travis to make. It is abundantly plain that the rubber-cored ball stays on the face of the club much longer than the old gutta-percha ball did. Provided that there were such things in the world as incompressible b.a.l.l.s, the impact in the drive would be of the least possible duration with them, but the more compressible the ball becomes the longer it will dwell on the face of the golf club.

That the rubber-cored ball does dwell for a greater period on the face of the club is responsible, to a great extent, for the fact that the modern ball swerves much more when sliced or pulled than did the old guttie in similar circ.u.mstances, and the reason seems to be that on account of the fact that the ball stays longer on the face of the club during the time that the club is going across the intended line of flight, it is able to impart to the ball a much greater spin. This spin, as we know, exerts its influence princ.i.p.ally towards the end of the ball's flight, and in all probability it gets to work now approximately at the same place where the spin in the old gutta-percha ball began to a.s.sert itself, but probably a little further in the carry.

We all know that once the spin has begun to a.s.sert itself so as to make the ball swerve, its deflection from the line, particularly with a suitable wind, is extremely rapid, and we all know equally well that the carry of the rubber-cored ball is much longer than that of the old gutta-percha. It stands to reason that the ball having a much greater distance wherein to swerve will execute a correspondingly larger swerve than it would if its carry were shorter.

We find some amazing statements made by authors who profess to deal with golf. For instance at page 167 of _The Mystery of Golf_, we are informed that

... another important thing about the follow-through, surely, is this. As Mr. Travis has pointed out, such is the resiliency of the rubber ball that club and ball are in contact for an appreciable period of time--the impact, that is, is not instantaneous. It is highly probable that the trajectory of the ball is largely influenced by this period of contact. If you follow through your club head travels in precisely the same line as the ball, and the flight of the ball is by this rendered straighter, steadier, and longer.

This, truly, is a wonderful instance of a.n.a.lytical thought by one who is attempting to explain the mystery of golf. He has come to the conclusion that "it is highly probable that the trajectory of the ball is largely influenced by this period of contact."

I have seen many goals kicked at Rugby football, and have kicked a few myself, and I am almost sure that in every case when a goal was scored the boot had a good deal to do with the direction. Marvellous _a.n.a.lysis_ this!

We may, however, discard these wonderful efforts of a.n.a.lysis and deal with the remark made by the author that "if you follow through, your club head travels in precisely the same line as the ball," for this is absolutely incorrect in the case of many strokes wherein one desires to influence the flight of the ball by applying spin. For instance, at practically no time of its travel, no matter how good the stroke is and how perfect one's follow-through, is the club head in the slice or the pull "in precisely the same line as the ball." This is merely one of hundreds of instances of confused thought for which the poor golfer has to suffer.

I have before referred to the idea of pulling and slicing to counteract wind. It is astonis.h.i.+ng how deeply rooted this idea is. At page 53 of _Concerning Golf_ Mr. John L. Low says: "There is no shot which produces such straight results as the sliced shot against a right hand breeze," to which I reply that there is no shot which gives such straight results as the straight shot in itself without slice or pull of any description whatever, and that as a matter of fact it is practically impossible to calculate within twenty yards, and that means double the distance, where one will land if one starts pulling and slicing in a cross wind.