The Soul of Golf

by P. A. Vaile

J. SHERLOCK
Top of swing in iron-shot. Note the position of the ball, and the upright swing of the club.

These experiments are of very great value, and should be carefully noted by golf ball makers, but Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey was not content with testing the golf balls for their flight. After having put in several days doing this, and having fired fully 500 shots, he continued his experiments with these balls with the object of ascertaining their relative merits on the putting-green. He says:

I obtained a piece of lead three-quarters of an inch thick, two inches wide, and three feet long, in which I cut a straight and smooth groove one inch wide. One end of this piece of lead I rested on the cushion at the baulk end of a billiard table, and directed its other end towards the spot on which the red ball is placed in the game of billiards. The forward end of the grooved lead I tapered off so that a ball ran evenly and smoothly from the groove on to the table without any drop or deviation as it left the piece of lead, which from its weight, when once set, could not change its position. I now placed a thimble on the spot at the far end of the table and rolled an accurately-turned wooden ball the same size as a golf ball down the sloping groove. After a little adjustment of the lead piece its line of fire was correct, and I was able to knock the thimble off the spot fifty times in succession. The ball travelled with sufficient speed just to reach the cushion beyond the thimble when the latter was moved aside, and the shot at the thimble nicely represented a slow put of eight feet in length.

This is a most interesting way of testing the golf ball. I may say that I have myself carried out experiments on similar lines, and that the results which I obtained practically confirm the accuracy of those which Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey got. He found that on testing various golf balls the results were widely different. He tried each ball several times in a series of twenty tries at the thimble. He found that individually they seldom hit it more than three or four times in a series, and that some of the balls, particularly those which he had found to be incorrect so far as regards their centre of gravity, rolled away from the thimble as much as two feet to the right or left, and that they sometimes actually went into the corner pockets of the table. This would seem to be incredible, but I can vouch for the accuracy of Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's statements.

It is an amazing thing to think of, but it is perfectly true, that the modern golf ball is so badly constructed that in a straight roll down the middle of the table such as that described by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey, the ball will absolutely roll as far off the line as the corner pockets, and indeed sometimes farther even than this. That is what the golfer has to contend with when he tries to put with a bramble ball on a golf green, but, of course, as he does not know it, he blames himself for an off day, or the green for being "beastly," but he never by any chance whatever gives a thought to his horribly defective golf ball.

Sir Ralph says that the guttie was a notable exception to the inaccuracy of the rubber cores. He found that in its different series of twenty tries it often struck the thimble from fourteen to fifteen times, and when it missed was usually within an inch of the mark. This shows clearly the wonderful difference which I have already emphasised between marking by indentation and marking by excrescence. Sir Ralph also emphasises a point to which I had already directed attention as to the ball marked by excrescences running truly when hit hard. It is when the ball has no great propulsive force behind it that its inherent vice is most surely shown. Sir Ralph says:

Any of the balls if played fairly hard from a cue could be made to strike the thimble every time; but then such a hard hit ball would go far beyond the hole in golf, and probably overrun the putting green! The smooth billiard-table cloth may be taken to represent the hard, bare and fast putting green of a dry summer.

That is a very fair comparison, with the exception that the hard, bare and fast putting-green of a dry summer would present infinitely greater inaccuracies to the already sufficiently inaccurate golf ball than would the billiard table. Let the unthinking golfer ruminate a little on this subject, and the day is not far distant when we shall never see such a thing as an excrescence on a golf ball.

Sir Ralph was very ingenious and thorough in his experiments. He desired to obtain the nearest possible approximation which he could to a natural putting-green, so he stretched a strip of rough green baize on the billiard table and tested the balls on this. He made a chalk mark on which to place the thimble, and its distance from the lead gutter was the same as in his other experiments. He then found that the balls, with the exception of those which had been marked as having their centre of gravity much out of place, ran with far greater accuracy. Most of them hit the thimble from eight to ten times in their individual series of twenty shots, but the guttie was, as usual, an easy winner. Sir Ralph found that on the billiard table if the balls were played fairly hard from a cue, although too hard for golf, the thimble could be knocked over every time.