A test of the golfer—The versatility of the cleek—Different kinds of cleeks—Points of the driving mashie—Difficulty of continued success with it—The cleek is more reliable—Ribbed faces for iron clubs—To prevent skidding—The stance for an ordinary cleek shot—The swing—Keeping control over the right shoulder—Advantages of the three-quarter cleek shot—The push shot—My favourite stroke—The stance and the swing—The way to hit the ball—Peculiar advantages of flight from the push stroke—When it should not be attempted—The advantage of short swings as against full swings with iron clubs—Playing for a low ball against the wind—A particular stance—Comparisons of the different cleek shots—General observations and recommendations—Mistakes made with the cleek.
It is high time we came to consider the iron clubs that are in our bag. His play with the irons is a fine test of the golfer. It calls for extreme skill and delicacy, and the man who is surest with these implements is generally surest of his match. The fathers of golf had no clubs with metal heads, and for a long time after they came into use there was a lingering prejudice against them; but in these days there is no man so bold as to say that any long hole can always be played so well with wood all through as with a mixture of wood and iron in the proper proportions. It may be, as we are often told, that the last improvement in iron clubs has not yet been made; but I must confess that the tools now at the disposal of the golfer come as near to my ideal of the best for their purpose as I can imagine any tools to do, and no golfer is at liberty to blame the clubmaker for his own incapacity on the links, though it may frequently happen that his choice and taste in the matter of his golfing goods are at fault. There are many varieties of every class of iron clubs, and their gradations of weight, of shape, of loft, and of all their other features, are delicate almost to the point of invisibility; but the old golfer who has an affection for a favourite club knows when another which he handles differs from it to the extent of a single point in these gradations. Some golfers have spent a lifetime in the search for a complete set of irons, each one of which was exactly its owner's ideal, and have died with their task still unaccomplished. Happy then is the player who in his early days has irons over all of which he has obtained complete mastery, and which he can rely upon to do their duty, and do it well, when the match is keen and their owner is sorely pressed by a relentless opponent.
First of these iron clubs give me the cleek, the most powerful and generally useful of them all, though one which is much abused and often called hard names. If you wish, you may drive a very long ball with a cleek, and if the spirit moves you so to do you may wind up the play at the hole by putting with it too. But these after all are what I may call its unofficial uses, for the club has its own particular duties, and for the performance of them there is no adequate substitute. Therefore, when a golfer says, as misguided golfers sometimes do, that he cannot play with the cleek, that he gets equal or superior results with other clubs, and that therefore he has abandoned it to permanent seclusion in the locker, you may shake your head at him, for he is only deceiving himself. Like the wares of boastful advertisers, there is no other which is "just as good," and if a golfer finds that he can do no business with his cleek, the sooner he learns to do it the better will it be for his game.
And there are many different kinds of cleeks, the choice from which is to a large extent to be regulated by experiment and individual fancy. Some men fancy one type, and some another, and each of them obtains approximately the same result from his own selection, but it is natural that a driving cleek, which is specially designed for obtaining length, having a fairly straight face and plenty of weight, will generally deliver the ball further than those which are more lofted and lighter. Making a broad classification, there are driving cleeks, ordinary cleeks, pitching cleeks, and cleeks with the weight in the centre. For the last-named variety I have little admiration, excellent as many people consider them to be. If the ball is hit with absolute accuracy in the centre of the club's face every time, all is well; but it is not given to many golfers to be so marvellously certain. Let the point of contact be the least degree removed from the centre of the face, where the weight is massed, and the result will usually be disquieting, for, among other things, there is in such cases a great liability for the club to turn in the hands of the player.
As an alternative to the cleek the driving mashie has achieved considerable popularity. It is undoubtedly a most useful club, and is employed for the same class of work as the cleek, and, generally speaking, may take its place. The distinctive features of the driving mashie are that it has a deeper face than that of the cleek, and that this depth increases somewhat more rapidly from the heel to the toe. By reason of this extra depth it is often a somewhat heavier club, and there is rather less loft on it than there is on the average cleek. When you merely look at a driving mashie it certainly seems as if it may be the easier club to use, but long experience will prove that this is not the case. In this respect I think the driving cleek is preferable to either the spoon or the driving mashie, particularly when straightness is an essential, as it usually is when any of these clubs is being handled. It frequently happens that the driving mashie is used to very good effect for a while after it has first been purchased; but I have noticed over and over again that when once you are off your play with it—and that time must come, as with all other clubs—it takes a long time to get back to form with it again,—so long, indeed, that the task is a most painful and depressing one. Five years ago I myself had my day with the driving mashie, and I played so well with it that at that time I did not even carry a cleek. I used to drive such a long ball with this instrument, that when I took it out of my bag to play with it, my brother professionals used to say, "There's Harry with his driver again"; and I remember that when on one occasion Andrew Kirkaldy was informed that I was playing a driving mashie shot, he was indignant, and exclaimed, "Mashie! Nay, man, thon's no mashie. It's jest a driver." Then the day came when I found to my sorrow that I was off my driving mashie, and not all the most laborious practice or the fiercest determination to recover my lost form with it was rewarded with any appreciable amount of success. After a time I got back to playing it in some sort of fashion, but I was never so good with it again as to justify me in sticking to it in preference to the cleek, so since then I have practically abandoned it. This, I am led to believe, is a fairly common experience among golfers, so the moral would seem to be, that you should make the most of your good days with the driving mashie, that at the first sign of decaying power with the club another and most thorough trial should be given to the deserted cleek, and that at this crisis that club should be persevered with in preference to the tool which has failed. The driving mashie usually demands a good lie if it is to be played with any amount of success. When, in addition to the lie being cuppy, the turf is at all soft and spongy—and these two circumstances are frequently combined—the ball very often skids off the face of the club, chiefly because of its perpendicularity, instead of rising nicely from the moment of impact as it would do when carefully played by a suitable cleek. Of course if the turf is firm there is much greater chance of success with the driving mashie than if it is loose. But one finds by long experience that the cleek is the best and most reliable club for use in all these difficult circumstances. Even the driving cleeks have a certain amount of loft on their faces which enables them to get nicely under the ball, so that it rises with just sufficient quickness after being struck. And there is far less skidding with the cleek.
This question of skidding calls to mind another feature of iron clubs generally, and those which are designed for power and length in particular, which has not in the past received all the consideration that it deserves. I am about to speak of the decided advantage which in my opinion accrues from the use of iron clubs with ribbed faces in preference to those which are smooth and plain. Some golfers of the sceptical sort have a notion that the ribs or other marking are merely ornamental, or, at the best, give some satisfaction to the fancy; but these are certainly not their limits. The counteraction to skidding by the ribbed face is undoubtedly very great, and there are certain circumstances in which I consider it to be quite invaluable. Suppose the ball is lying fairly low in grass. It is clear to the player that his iron club, as it approaches it, will be called upon to force its way through some of the grass, and that as it comes into contact with the ball many green blades will inevitably be crushed between the face of the club and the ball, with the result, in the case of the plain-faced club, that further progress in the matter of the follow-through will be to some extent impeded. But when the face of the club is ribbed, at the instant of contact between ball and club the grass that comes between is cut through by the ribs, and thus there is less waste of the power of the swing. The difference may be only small; but whether it is an ounce or two or merely a few pennyweights, it is the trifle of this kind that tells. And, of course, the tendency to skid is greater than ever when the grass through the green, or where the ball has to be played from, is not so short as it ought to be, and the value of the ribbed face is correspondingly increased.
PLATE XXII. FULL SHOT WITH THE CLEEK. STANCE