The Soul of Golf

by P. A. Vaile

Nevertheless, when commencing the downward swing, do so in no gentle, half-hearted manner, such as is often associated with the idea of gaining speed gradually, which is what we are told the club must do when coming down from the top on to the ball. It is obvious that speed will be gained gradually since the club could not possibly be started off on its quickest rate. The longer the force applied to the down swing, the greater do the speed and the momentum become, but this gradual increase is independent of the golfer, and he should, as far as possible, be unconscious of it. What he has to concern himself with is not getting his speed gradually, but getting as much of it as he possibly can right from the top. No gentle starts, but hard at it from the very top, and the harder you start the greater will be the momentum of the club when the ball is reached.

That, I take it, is absolutely sound advice, for herein there is no stupid restriction whatever, nor should there be, for the golfer, from the time his club leaves the ball till it gets back to it, should have nothing whatever wherewith to cumber his mind but the one idea, and that is to hit the ball. Braid is surely wide of the mark when he says "but this gradual increase is independent of the golfer, and he should, as far as possible, be unconscious of it."

Firstly, it seems to me that this gradual increase is entirely dependent on the golfer, and secondly, that he should be extremely conscious of it, and the necessity for the production of it; but this is one of the many things in golf which, when once it is thoroughly learned, becomes so much a matter of second nature that the golfer does it instinctively. He knows perfectly well that he will gradually increase his pace until he hits the ball, but he will not have it in his mind that he has to do so. All this is bound to be in the hit. The man who drives the nail does not worry himself about gradually increasing the pace of the hammer head until it encounters the head of the nail. He knows he is doing it, but he does not worry himself about it as the golfer does about his similar operation. If the golfer would remember that nothing matters much except to hit the ball hard and truly, and would disregard a lot of the absolute nonsense about the domination of either one hand or the other, the gradual acceleration of speed, and many other items of a similar nature, he would find that his game would be infinitely improved.

I could quote pages from leading authors dwelling upon this matter of the gradual increase of speed, but I shall content myself with the passage which I have here quoted from James Braid, together with the remarks that I have made in former portions of this book, and may make in later chapters. Braid, in Advanced Golf, is sufficiently emphatic about this matter, and I think we may take it that in Advanced Golf he has given up the idea expressed in his smaller and less important work How to Play Golf, that one should trouble oneself with the even acceleration of speed. Whether he has or not, it is an absolute certainty that any idea of consciously regulating the speed of the club's head in the drive, will result in a very serious loss of distance, for it will be found an utter impossibility for anyone so to regulate the speed of the club without seriously detracting from the rate at which the head is moving through the air, and as every golfer knows, or should know, the essence of the golf stroke is, that the club shall be travelling at the highest possible speed when it strikes the ball. I am, of course, now speaking with regard to the drive, and obtaining the greatest distance possible, for that is generally the object of the drive.

The point which must be impressed upon the golfer is, that from the moment he starts his downward swing until he hits the ball, he has nothing whatever to think of except hitting that ball. Everything which takes place from the top of the swing to the moment of impact should practically be done naturally, instinctively, sub-consciously—any way you like, except by the exercise of thought during that process as especially applied to any particular portion of the action, for it is proved beyond doubt that the human mind is not capable of thinking out in rotation each portion of the golf drive as it should be played, during the time in which it is being played.

Probably there is more ignorance about the action of the wrists in golf than about any other portion of the golf stroke, yet this is a matter of the utmost importance, a matter of such grave importance that I must in due course deal with it more fully and examine the statements of the leading writers on the subject.

It is laid down clearly and distinctly by nearly all golf writers and teachers that the golfing swing must be rhythmical, that there must be no jerking, no interruption of the even nature of the swing—in fact, we have seen that according to many of them the stroke is a sweep and not a hit, yet we are told distinctly that at the moment of impact a snap of the wrists is introduced. This must tend, of course, to introduce a tremendous amount of inaccuracy in the stroke at a most critical time, and it is therefore a matter worthy of the closest investigation.

We have already dealt with the fallacy of the sweep. It is a curious thing that although the leading golfers and authors pin their faith to the sweep as being the correct explanation of the drive in golf, yet nearly all of them, when it comes to a question of the stroke with the iron clubs, say that it is a hit. Now the stroke with the iron clubs is identical with the stroke with the wooden clubs, with the exception, of course, in many cases, that it has not gone back so far; but the action of the wrists is, or should be, the same. The club head travels, stroke for stroke, relatively in exactly the same arc; the beginning of the stroke and finish of the stroke is the same, and all the other laws, mutatis mutandis, apply. It would, indeed, be hardly too much to say that there is at golf only one stroke, and that every other stroke is a portion of that stroke, that stroke being, of course, the drive. If we take the drive as the supreme stroke in golf, and examine the nature of the stroke, we shall find that in that stroke is included practically every stroke in the game. That being so, it seems to me extremely hard to differentiate between a cleek shot and a drive—in fact, in so far as regards the production of the shot it is impossible to differentiate between them. If the one is a hit, the other is, and as a matter of fact, every stroke in golf, with the possible exception of the put, is a hit.

While we are speaking of hits and fallacies, it will not be out of place to devote a little attention to a point of extreme importance, and at the same time one which is very much neglected in most books dealing with the game. It is the ambition of many a golfer to get what he imagines to be "the true St. Andrews swing." They try this in numberless cases, where, from the stiffness of their joints and their build generally, it is impossible in the nature of things that they can obtain a very full swing. It is bad enough in these cases, for I speak now of people who have taken to the game when their frames have become so set that it is practically an impossibility for them to obtain anything in the nature of a full swing, but the attempt to obtain a long swing is not, however, confined to those who have taken to the game late in life, although it is with them naturally a greater error than it is with those who started the game when their limbs were more supple and their frames more easily adapted to the stroke.

If I allow myself to take my natural swing, I can nearly always see the head of the club at the top of my swing, and at the finish it is hanging nearly as far over the right shoulder as it was at the top of the swing over the left shoulder. There can be no doubt that with a swing like this, when one can control it sufficiently, one gets a very long ball, and there is a very delightful feeling in getting a perfect drive with such a swing, but from the very nature of the stroke it stands to reason that it must be less accurate than a much shorter and less showy effort.