The Soul of Golf

by P. A. Vaile

There are many fearful and wonderful putters on the market at the present time. Lately there has been produced a putter with a very shallow face, which is now being largely used because a man who has won the open championship frequently is using it. For ninety per cent of golfers a putter with a narrow face is a very great mistake, and I believe that in saying ninety per cent I am fixing the percentage low. I do not think that any putter should be built whose face is so narrow that at the moment of striking the ball properly with the putter the top edge of the putter is below the top of the ball. I am firmly of opinion that a putter which is so built that it delivers the main portion of its force below the centre of the ball's mass is absolutely defective. I go even so far as to say that I believe that in a scientifically constructed putter the face should be made much broader than the face of the average putter, and that the weight, instead of being massed at or near the bottom of the putter, should be reversed, and put, if anything, nearer the top. The whole essence of true putting is that the ball shall be rolled up to the hole, and not at any portion of its journey played with drag, or as one is sometimes told to do, slid along the green. Any attempt whatever to put with drag, or by tapping the ball, must cause inaccuracy.

I saw, a short time ago, one of the finest golfers in England, Mr. A. Mitchell, lose an important match on the putting-green, or, to be a little more accurate, on quite a number of putting-greens. He was then, and I believe still is, making the same mistake as James Braid made when he was such a bad putter, viz. tapping his puts, and finishing low down on the line after the ball. It is almost impossible for anyone to be a good putter with this stroke, and his chance of being a good putter is rendered remoter still if he attempts to do putting of this nature with a shallow-faced putter.

A putter should have very little loft indeed, if any. It is questionable, from a scientific point of view, if the putter should be lofted at all, but in practice a very slight degree of loft is generally used, and there may be something to be said in favour of this slight loft if one is playing the put as it should be played, as nearly as possible by the wrists, for if that is done it stands to reason that the putter with a very slight loft will tend, in, of course, an extremely small degree, but still to such a degree as to be perceptible, to deliver its blow upwardly through the ball's mass, and this naturally tends to give the ball a truer roll off the club than would be the case if the putter were perfectly vertical.

If one were using a putter with a vertical face, it seems fairly clear that at the moment of impact, when one is endeavouring to roll the ball forward, it is held simultaneously at two points. There must then, it seems, be some slight dragging on the face of the club and also on the green, but when the putter has some small loft on it and the blow is delivered, to a certain extent, upwardly, the ball will naturally get a truer roll from it, and for this reason perhaps the smallest degree of loft on a putter is advisable.

Shallow faces and broad soles in putters have nothing whatever to recommend them, and there is very little doubt that golfers will, in due course, find this out, and will use a putter so made that it will carry the weight where it is most wanted, and that certainly is not at the base of the ball, for, unnecessary as it may seem to mention the fact, the put is the one stroke in golf which we always desire to keep as close to the green as possible. We know quite well that in all other clubs, when we want to get the ball off the ground quickly, we take a club which has its weight thrown into the sole, but as we want exactly the opposite thing on the putting-green, it seems reasonable to think that we should alter the adjustment of our weight when constructing a putter which has any claim whatever to being considered a scientifically made club.

I have referred to the defect of the broad sole, and I have in a previous chapter of this book indicated that the perfect put should bear as close a resemblance to the swing of a pendulum as the player can give it. Let us now for a moment imagine that we have as the weight on the pendulum the head of an ordinary metal putter, and let us so adjust this metal head that in the swing of the pendulum it will barely clear a marble slab placed underneath it. Let us now remove the metal putter and substitute in its place such a club as one of the ordinary aluminium-headed clubs, or a Schenectady, and hang this club on the end of the pendulum so that when the pendulum is absolutely vertical the front edge of the sole of the club clears the slab by exactly the same space as the metal putter did when at rest. We shall now find that this club will swing freely back in the same manner as the metal putter did, but we shall get a very striking exemplification of the fact that the breadth of the sole of this club will prevent it swinging forward at all, for the rear portion of the sole will foul the marble slab. This, of course, is sufficient to absolutely prevent a proper follow-through, for even when this happens on a good green the delicacy of the put is such that it is more than likely the stroke will be ruined.

This is an illustration of what I mean when I say that the golfer is importing into his game an unnecessary risk when he uses a broad-soled club. It will be seen from the example which I have given that there is an infinitely greater danger of soling with such a club than there is when one is playing with an ordinary metal putter.

The same error with regard to breadth of sole is very frequently seen in the mashie. Indeed, the sole of the mashie is so broad and taken back at such an unscientific angle that very frequently the player strikes with the back edge of the sole before the front. It stands to reason that when he does this he is cocking up the front edge of his club, and so robbing himself of a great portion of the loft of the club. Many players lay the face of the mashie back in order to increase the natural loft of the club. In nine cases of ten when they do this, instead of increasing the usefulness of their clubs they diminish it, for they insist then upon the front edge of the face of the mashie striking the ball higher up than would be the case if they played with the club in the ordinary way.

PLATE XV.