The Soul of Golf

by P. A. Vaile

The trouble steps in when he is advised to interfere with the ordinary course of Nature, and to put the left hand in a position of authority which it has no right whatever to try to exercise. I say advisedly "try" to exercise, because it never can exercise the power which it is supposed to have. It stands to reason, therefore, that any attempt whatever to make it exercise a power superior to the more powerful arm must result in interfering with the proper functions of the hand and arm which should be naturally in command of the stroke.

We have seen that James Braid in Advanced Golf has quite altered the opinions which he expresses in How to Play Golf, and he also agrees that at the top of the swing, and until the stroke is played, it is right to grip the club as hard as one can with both hands—in fact, he says as plainly as it is possible for anyone to say anything, that during the whole of the downward swing the muscles are in a state of supreme tension, and fortunately he does not repeat the common error, the error which he himself makes in How to Play Golf, of advising the player to encumber his mind with any idea of regulating the increase of speed of the club head.

Vardon puts the matter splendidly when he says:

Personally, I grip quite as firmly with the right hand as with the other one. When the other way is adopted—the left hand being tight and the right hand simply watching it, as it were—there is an irresistible tendency for the latter to tighten up suddenly at some part of the upward or downward swing, and, as surely as there is a ball on the tee, when it does so there will be mischief.

This is such an important statement that I must, in passing, emphasise it, although I hope to deal with it again later on, for Vardon here strikes a deadly blow to the absurd nonsense which most books lay down about regulating the grip during the upward and downward swing. As Vardon truly says, any attempt to apportion the respective power of the grip of the left and right during the golf swing must inevitably result in disaster, for there will unquestionably be, as he well remarks, a pronounced tendency to tighten up at some part of the swing in a jerky manner. The only way to guard against this is to be, as James Braid says in Advanced Golf, in a state of supreme tension from the moment the downward swing starts.

It must be remembered that Vardon himself advocates easing up with the grip of the right at the top of the swing, although he says that he grips as firmly with the right as the left. It stands to reason that if Vardon does ease up with his right at the top of the swing, he must during his downward stroke restore the balance of power. It seems perfectly clear that in doing this there is a very great danger of what he describes as an "irresistible tendency for the latter," that is the right hand, "to tighten up suddenly."

I cannot see that, because Vardon starts with his grip equally firm with each hand, and then relaxes the firmness of his grip with his right hand at the top of the stroke, trusting to regain his firmness by the time he has reached the ball again, he removes from his swing the danger of the sudden tightening-up which he shows will threaten the swing of anyone who attempts to let the left hand have the predominant grip. It seems to me perfectly clear that this danger must be even in Vardon's downward swing, but we know quite well that Vardon, as a stroke player, is a genius, and that even if it is not a danger for him, it would be for ninety-five of every hundred golfers.

The truth is, with regard to the golf grip, although none of the leading professionals or authors are courageous enough to state it, that for the ordinary golfer—aye, and even for the extraordinary golfer—there is only one way to apportion the force of the left and right in the grip, and that is not to think about it at all when one is doing it, but to grip very firmly with both hands, and leave any apportionment of force which may be necessary to Nature, and the golfer who follows this advice and instruction will find that Nature can attend to it infinitely better than he can.

In golf we frequently find that one fallacy is built up on another, and it is quite an open question if the fallacy of the power of the left hand and arm is not founded on another fallacy, namely, the fallacy of the present overlapping grip. Now this sounds like rank heresy, and I may as well say at once that I am not prepared to assert that the present overlapping grip is a fallacy, but it is at least open to argument if it is the best grip which can be taken of a golf club.

There is no such thing as standing still in golf or any other game—either we are progressing or we are going backwards. In golf, notwithstanding the vast amount of false teaching which is published, we are unquestionably advancing. It must not be thought from this that it is of no importance that most of the matter which is published about golf is entirely misleading, for that is not so. This misleading matter is followed by an enormous army of golfers who are not able to think out the matter for themselves, but there are a very great number of golfers who absolutely disregard the published tuition of the greatest experts in the world and play golf as it should be played, and in no case is this more pronounced than in the persons of leading professional golfers, for they write one thing, but do absolutely the other themselves.