The Soul of Golf Part 3

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 p.r.o.ne to error. The reason is not far to seek. It is found in the work of such men as our author, and others who should know much better than he; it is found in the work of men who teach the unfortunate golfer to stand wrongly, to swing wrongly. These, in company with our author, will be duly arraigned in our chapter on "The Distribution of Weight." That is the plain answer why golfers do not get the results which they should get from the amount of work and thought which they put into their game, for golfers are, unquestionably, as a cla.s.s, the most thoughtful of sportsmen. If they were not, a book such as I am dealing with could not possibly have secured a publisher. Continuing his argument on this subject he says:

... and yet how often it has taken three, four, and even five strokes to cover those hundred yards! It would be laughable were it not so humiliating--in fact, the impudent spectator does laugh until he tries it himself; then, ah! then he, too, gets a glimpse into that mystery of mysteries--the human mind--which at one and the same time wills to do a thing and fails to do it, which knows precisely and could repeat by rote the exact means by which it is to be accomplished, yet is impotent to put them in force. And the means are so simple. So insanely simple.

To which I say, "And the means are indeed so simple, so sanely simple." It is writers who do not understand the game at all who make them insanely complex. As a definite ill.u.s.tration 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 a.n.a.lytical mind say that the ordinary golfer could repeat by rote the exact means by which anything is to be accomplished when it is now a matter of notoriety that practically the whole of the published teaching of golf is fundamentally unsound?

Speaking of the golfer's difficulties in the drive the author says, "The secret of this extraordinary and baffling conflict of mind and matter is a problem beyond the reach of physiology and psychology combined." Yes, there is no doubt that it is; but it is a matter which is well within the reach of the most elementary mechanics and common sense.

It will probably seem that I am dealing with this attempt to explain the mystery of golf very severely, but I do not feel that I am treating the matter too strictly. Golf is enveloped and encompa.s.sed round about with a wordy ma.s.s of verbiage. All kinds of men and some women, who have no clearly defined or scientific ideas, have presumed to put before the unfortunate golfer directions for playing the game which have landed him in a greater maze of bewilderment than exists in any other game which I know. It is obvious that if a man is both "a duffer" and a slow thinker it will be unsafe for him, until he has improved both his game and his mental processes, to attempt to explain the higher science of golf for anyone. It should be sufficient for him to study the mechanical processes whereby he may improve his own game until at least he has been able to take himself out of the cla.s.s which he characterises himself as the duffers. To explain golf scientifically in the face of the ma.s.s of false doctrine which enc.u.mbers 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 circ.u.mstances most budding cyclists, and I have taught many, confine their attention to the clear path right ahead, and consequently the obstacles "these to the right, those to the left"

do not trouble them. This, psychologically speaking, is a curious confession of the power of outside influences to affect the main issue. It seems to me that right through the consideration of this subject the author, like many other golfers, has been devoting his mind far too much to the things which he imagines about golf, instead of to the things which are, and they are the things which matter. No wonder, then, that he has "come a cropper."

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-a.n.a.lytical mind it will be perfectly obvious that _the image of the ball_ could be just as well preserved if the golfer had lifted his head three to six inches, but his stroke would have been irretrievably ruined.

Now, as a matter of fact, by the time the club has arrived at the ball it is altogether too late to attend to anything. All the attention has already been devoted to the stroke, and it has been made or marred. As we have clearly seen from what James Braid says about the stroke the moment of impact is the time when the attention and the tension is released, so it will obviously be of no service to us to endeavour forcibly to impress upon our minds in any way the image of the ball.

If there is any one thing to think of at the moment of impact, the outstanding point of importance must be that the eyes should be in exactly the same place and position as they were at the moment of address.

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 circ.u.mstances.... 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 circ.u.mstances" and neglect of the real game. Much time is wasted in an a.n.a.lysis 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 att.i.tude which they all adopt with regard to putting. Now, putting may quite properly be said to be the foundation of golf. It really is the first thing which should be taught, but, as a matter of fact, it is generally left until the last. Practically all instructors start the player with the drive. It is beyond question that the drive is the most complex stroke in golf, and it is equally beyond question that the put is the simplest. There can be no shadow of doubt whatever that the only scientific method of instructing a person in the art of playing golf is one which is diametrically opposed to that adopted by practically all the leading players of the world. Instead of starting the beginner at the tee and taking him through his clubs in rotation to the putting-green, the proper order for sound tuition would be to start him six inches from the hole and to back him through his clubs to the tee.

This is so absolutely beyond argument that I need not labour the point here, except in so far as with it is bound up the important question of attention--that is, of riveting one's eye and one's mind on the ball for the whole period employed in making the stroke. As I said in the preceding chapter, attention is habit. Attention includes the habit of keeping the eye on the ball and the head still until the stroke has been played. The best way of inculcating the vices of lifting the head and the eye during the stroke is to teach the player the drive first. It stands to reason that if a player is started, say, with a six-inch put, that he has at the moment of making his stroke both the ball and the hole well within the focus of his eyes, so that it is absolutely unnecessary for him to lift his eye in order to follow the ball. It therefore follows that he is not tempted to lift his eye.

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 confidence. 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, 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 att.i.tude 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 143 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 instruction 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 a.s.signed 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.

Let us now repeat what James Braid has to say on the important matter of putting. On page 119 of _How to Play Golf_ he says:

It happens, unfortunately, that concerning one department 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 discouraging, 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 apt.i.tude 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 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 bra.s.sie, 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 demonstrated, 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 pa.s.sing, 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 themselves 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 is thrown entirely on his own resources. I must quote Taylor once again with regard to putting. He says: