The Soul of Golf Part 25

Let me give an ill.u.s.tration of what I mean. The golfer is told now that at the top of his swing he must get his weight on to his right foot, and that he must keep his head still. The merest attempt to do this produces a conflict at once. Then he is told that his left hand must dominate the right: here is conflict again. But when he learns that in order to keep his head still he must put his weight at the top of his swing on his left foot, the conflict vanishes, he finds that it is natural and easy to do; and he forgets to enc.u.mber his mind with the fact that it has to be done, so that it becomes just as habitual with him to put his weight in the right place as it is when he is walking. The same thing applies with regard to the instructions which he has always had drilled into him to allow the left hand and arm to usurp the position of the right. Here again he is distinctly exhorted to encourage these two members to enter into conflict during the stroke. Although I explained to him most clearly that this idea about the left being the more important member of the two is utterly wrong, and that the right is, and always must be, the dominant member in the golf swing, I did not tell him to remember this during the golf swing, and he is indeed a very foolish person if he attempts to remember it.

All he has to do is to cut the false doctrine out of his mind, and nature will attend to the rest. So it will be seen that when one has grasped the truth in connection with golf one has advanced by such a process of elimination that there is left for the happy golfer when he addresses his ball very little to think of but hitting that ball.

Golf in the past has suffered from the multiplicity of false directions. It is by recognising these for what they are, and by forgetting them that the golfer will ultimately arrive at _The Soul of Golf_.