The Soul of Golf

by P. A. Vaile

Before quoting from James Braid in Advanced Golf I must draw particular attention to what Vardon has said about the "snap" of the wrists at the moment of impact. He says that "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." It is surely not to be wondered at that this, as Vardon terms it, "superstition" exists, when we read in a book such as Advanced Golf, which was published several years after Vardon's Complete Golfer, statements to this effect:

Then comes the moment of impact. Crack! Everything is let loose, and round comes the body immediately the ball is struck, and goes slightly forward until the player is facing the line of flight. The right shoulder must not come round too soon in the downward swing but must go fairly well forward after the ball is hit. If the tension has been properly held all this will come quite easily and naturally; the time for the tension is over and now it is allowed its sudden and complete expansion and quick collapse. That is the whole secret of the thing—the bursting of the tension at the proper moment—and really there is very little to be said in enlargement of the idea. At this moment the action of the wrists is all-important, but it cannot be described. Where exactly the wrists begin to do their proper work I have never been able to determine exactly, for the work is almost instantaneously brief. Neither can one say precisely how they work except for the suggestion that has already been made. It seems, however, that they start when the club head is a matter of some eighteen inches from the ball, and that for a distance of a yard in the arc that it is describing they have it almost to themselves, and impart a whip-like snap to the movement, not only giving a great extra force to the stroke, but, by keeping the club head for a moment in the straight line of the intended flight of the ball, doing much towards the ensuring of the proper direction. It seems to be a sort of flick—in some respects very much the same kind of action as when a man is boring a corkscrew into the cork of a bottle. He turns his right wrist back; for a moment it is under high tension, and then he lets it loose with a short, sudden snap. Unless the wrists are in their proper place as described, at the top of the swing, it is impossible to get them to do this work when the time comes. There is nowhere for them to spring back from.

Here it will be seen that in a work of James Braid which is entitled Advanced Golf and which was published several years after Harry Vardon's Complete Golfer and by the same firm, we have advice and information given to us which is diametrically opposed to the ideas of Harry Vardon. There can be no doubt whatever that Vardon's opinion with regard to this matter is much sounder than Braid's, and in order that I may assist anybody who is in doubt as to which opinion to be influenced by, I shall analyse Braid's statement.

We must, before we begin to consider Braid's advice, remember that he himself admits that he does not know where the wrists come in.

This reminds me of an incident which occurred a short time ago. An unfortunate golfer who had an idea that a golf ball should be hit in much the same manner as a cricket ball, or any other common sort of ball, came to me in my office one day and asked me to show him what was wrong with his swing. I put down a ball for him on a captive machine, handed him a golf club and said: "Let me see you hit it?" He proceeded to hit it, but the instant his club head moved away from the ball it was apparent to me that he had not a rudimentary idea of the golf stroke. His left wrist began to turn outwards instead of inwards and downwards. I showed him at once how wrong he was in the fundamental principles of the golfing stroke, for, as is quite usual, he had no idea whatever of the proper distribution of his weight, having been taught by his professional that it must, at the top of the swing, be on his right leg. But the main point to which I want to draw attention is contained in his plaintive remark to me:

"Yes, that is all right now you show it to me, and I can feel that it is better, but it is when I come to play the ball and have to remember all these things that I make a mess of it."

My reply to him was: "My dear fellow, the man who understands how to teach golf does not teach you how to remember all these things. He teaches you how to forget them—in other words, he so instructs you that everything you do between the moment that you address the ball and the time that you hit it, is done practically without any strain on your mind whatever. It is done by habit or second nature. Anyone who teaches you in such a manner that you have to remember each of the things which you think go to make up a perfect drive while you are making that drive is no use whatever to you as a teacher," and he was immensely relieved even at the bare idea of this revolutionary teaching.

Nevertheless, in effect, this is the only true and scientific tuition for the golfing drive. We want to make the golfer handle his club in such a manner that all these things which the ordinary book tells him about as being necessary to be done and to be considered seriatim, fall into their places as naturally as one foot comes after another in a walk. To do this we have, unquestionably, to go through an enormous amount of elimination of utterly false doctrine, and the quotation I have just given from Advanced Golf is an excellent illustration of what a true teacher has to do in the way of beating down and clearing away harmful doctrine.

Here we have published with the authority of a great player like James Braid, and in absolute opposition to the advice of an equally great player, Harry Vardon, a statement to the effect that the wrists come into the drive and influence the stroke for eighteen inches before and after impact. We are told that "at this moment the motion of the wrists is all-important, but it cannot be described." We need not wonder that the action of the wrists cannot be described, for at the moment referred to by James Braid, there is, as a matter of practical golf and undoubted fact, no wrist action whatever. If one had any doubt whatever about this, one would only have to look at Braid's photographs in Advanced Golf showing how he plays for a pull and a slice respectively.

In both of these strokes Braid uses identically similar photographs to show his stance and address. Personally, as I have already stated, I consider that he is, from a golfing point of view, utterly wrong in doing such a thing, for there can be no doubt that the positions are extremely different. Indeed, it would be quite ridiculous to suppose that they were not so, but taking these photographs as Braid's mental picture of what he does at the moment of impact, we see there clearly that the wrists are, at the moment of impact, in exactly the same position as they were at the moment of address.