The Soul of Golf

by P. A. Vaile

It is evident that Vardon has but a hazy idea of the correct method of production of the pull, although, as we well know, he is a master of the art of producing this stroke. At page 92 of The Complete Golfer he gives his description of the manner in which he thinks one of the master strokes of the game is produced. I must quote him again fully, for it is necessary to do this in order that my readers may follow the trend of his mind:

It is necessary that in the making of this stroke the right hand should do more work than the left, and therefore the club should be held rather more loosely by the left hand than by its partner. The latter will duly take advantage of this slackness, and will get in just the little extra work that is wanted of it. In the upward swing carry the club head just along the line which it would take for an ordinary drive. The result of all this arrangement, and particularly the slackness of the left hand and comparative tightness of the right is, that there is a tendency in the downward swing for the face of the club to turn over to some extent, that is for the top edge of it to be overlapping the bottom edge. This is exactly what is wanted, for, in fact, it is quite necessary that at the moment of impact the right hand should be beginning to turn over in this manner, and if the stroke is to be a success the golfer must see that it does so.

It will be seen from this quotation that Vardon is under the impression that in playing the pull the club goes straight back from the ball in the same manner as it would be taken were one playing an ordinary drive. We notice, too, that he commits himself to the statement, that it is necessary that the top edge of the face of the club should be practically overlapping the bottom at the moment of impact. This, in effect, means that the club is actually deprived of its loft at the moment of impact.

It will be apparent to anyone who understands very little about the ordinary principles of mechanics that it would be an impossibility to play an effective shot in this manner. Indeed it would be impossible to raise the ball from the ground, and any attempt whatever to give this turn over of the wrists at the moment of impact would inevitably result in a very large proportion of foundered balls.

It must be remembered that Vardon is advising the player to consciously attempt to regulate the loft of his club during an impact which lasts for no more than the ten-thousandth of a second. Golf is at all times a game calling for a remarkable degree of mechanical accuracy, but it is obviously asking, even of the most perfect player, far too much when we request that he shall, by the action of his hands and wrists, regulate the loft of his club in an impact which lasts for such an extremely short time. We must remember that if the shot were played as Vardon describes it, the loft of the club face is continually changing during, let us say, the foot before it gets to the ball and the foot after it has passed it.

The whole idea of the stroke in golf, in so far as regards loft, ought to be that at the moment of impact the player has nothing whatever to do with the loft, his duty being confined to hitting the ball in a certain way and allowing the loft to do its own work, and to take the angle at which it will naturally come down, but any attempt consciously to regulate the loft of the club during impact, especially on the lines laid down by Vardon, must inevitably result in disaster. Vardon tells us that at the moment of impact it is necessary that the club face should be turning so that it will be practically overlapping at least the moment after the ball is struck.

His error is by no means an uncommon one. The same thing exists in lawn-tennis in the lifting drive, where about ninety per cent of the players who try the lifting drive under the impression that it is got by a turn over of the wrist, do the turn too soon and founder the ball—in other words, put it into the net. If the pull were to be played in the way Vardon describes it, the result would be exactly the same. The ball would simply be topped or absolutely foundered.

I cannot emphasise too strongly the fact that this turn over of the wrists in the pull has nothing whatever to do with the production of the stroke, although Vardon says that it has. This turn over of the wrists will, if it precedes the moment of impact, ruin the stroke. It must come naturally long after the ball has gone on its way, and it must come not by any voluntary or conscious effort on the part of the player, but as the natural result of the correctly played first portion of the stroke.

In my chapter on "The Flight of the Ball," I shall go more fully into the mechanical principles of the production of the pull. It will be sufficient for me to say here that the pull is produced by an upward, outward, glancing blow, but there must be no attempt whatever to alter the loft of the club at the moment of impact.

In so flatly contradicting such a master of stroke play as Harry Vardon, it may be as well for me to fortify myself by evidence taken from the work and photographs of another famous golfer who was himself originally under the impression that the pull was obtained in this manner, but who has apparently since abandoned this idea. I feel sure that for the great majority of players who know anything whatever of elementary mechanics, it will be unnecessary for me to do this, but there is a vast number of players who are not well acquainted with even simple mechanical problems, and it is for these that I take the trouble to bring forward James Braid to give evidence against this idea of turning over the wrist at the moment of impact.