I must quote again a passage in Mr. Croome's article. He says: "Even more valuable to him than the gain in length is the acquisition of all that range of shots which, if correctly played, leave the striker posed with his arms straight out and the back of the right hand uppermost." This is a somewhat curious sentence. As a matter of fact, anyone who acquires this range of shots will acquire with it extra distance, for the finish, as I have already stated, but cannot state too often or too emphatically, is the characteristic finish of the wind-cheater—a ball which carries the beneficial back-spin of golf, the secret at once of length and direction.
CHAPTER IX
THE ACTION OF THE WRISTS
There is no doubt that a proper wrist action in the drive is of very great importance, and it is just as undoubted that the real secret of wrist action has been enshrouded in mystery by anyone who has in any way attempted to deal with it. Indeed, so great a master of the game as James Braid, absolutely confesses that he does not know where the wrists come in during the drive. As Braid has already stated that it is almost impossible to teach putting, it really looks as though there is quite a considerable gap in golf which must be left to his pupils' imagination, but this is not really so. These great golfers really know golf and teach it much better than their published works would lead one to believe, and as a matter of fact in very many instances the matter which I am criticising so plainly is, I believe, not their own. I cannot believe that much of the ridiculous nonsense which is published in association with the greatest names of the world would be upheld by them in an ordinary lesson—in other words, I am firmly convinced that they suffer in the interpretation by persons whose knowledge of golf is extremely limited.
It will, however, be interesting to see what the great golfers have to say with regard to wrist work. Let us turn first to Harry Vardon at page 70 of The Complete Golfer. There he says:
Now pay attention to the wrists. They should be held fairly tightly. If the club is held tightly the wrists will be tight, and vice versa. When the wrists are tight there is little play in them and more is demanded of the arms. I do not believe in the long ball coming from the wrists. In defiance of principles which are accepted in many quarters, I will go so far as to say that, except in putting, there is no pure wrist shot in golf. Some players attempt to play their short approach with their wrists as they have been told to do. These men are likely to remain at long handicaps for a long time. Similarly there is a kind of superstition that the elect among drivers get in some peculiar kind of "snap"—a momentary forward pushing movement—with their wrists at the time of impact, and that it is this wrist work at the critical period which gives the grand length to their drives, those extra twenty or thirty yards which make the stroke look so splendid, so uncommon, and which make the next shot so much easier. Generally speaking, the wrists, when held firmly, will take very good care of themselves; but there is a tendency, particularly when the two V-grip is used to allow the right hand to take charge of affairs at the time the ball is struck, and the result is that the right wrist, as the swing is completed, gradually gets on to the top of the shaft instead of remaining in its proper place.
There are several important statements in this paragraph. Vardon says, "I do not believe in the long ball coming from the wrists," and I say that there is no doubt whatever that in the ordinary acceptation of the term the long ball no more comes from the wrists than it does from the feet, for as Vardon indicates here, in a drive of perfect rhythm there is no such thing as getting the wrists into the work at, or about, the moment of impact, as is so frequently advocated by authors who preach what they do not themselves practise.
Vardon says that "except in putting there is no pure wrist shot in golf." I have already shown that not even in putting is there such a thing as a pure wrist shot in golf, unless, indeed, the player should be playing with a putter which has an absolutely perpendicular shaft. In this case, and in this only, is it possible to play a pure wrist shot in golf if one follows out correctly the instructions which are recognised as being the soundest guide in good putting.