The Soul of Golf

by P. A. Vaile

I have not time for more than a few words as to how the ball acquires the spin from the club, but if you grasp the principle that the action between the club and the ball depends only on their relative motion, and that it is the same whether we have the ball fixed and move the club, or have the club fixed and project the ball against it, the main features are very easily understood.

I can readily believe that this statement of Professor Thomson's is absolutely accurate. The only thing which troubles me about it is that I think the person of ordinary intellect will find it absolutely impossible to "grasp the principle" which Professor Thomson lays down. If we have the club fixed and project the ball against it, we know quite well that the ball will rebound from the club, but if we are to have the ball fixed and move the club against it, nothing will happen unless we move the club fast enough, in which case we should simply smash the club.

This is a most amazing illustration of looseness of thought—such an astonishing illustration that I should not have believed Professor Thomson capable of it if it had not been published broadcast to the world with his authority. Of course, I know perfectly well what Professor Thomson means to say, but I have not to deal with that, and as a matter of fact what he means to say is quite wrong, but it will be sufficient for me to show that what he does say is wrong.

Professor Thomson then goes on to say:

Suppose Fig. 27 represents the section of the head of a lofted club moving horizontally forward from right to left, the effect of the impact will be the same as if the club were at rest and the ball were shot against it horizontally from left to right.

Here Professor Thomson shows that he is quite under a misapprehension as to the production of the golf stroke. He pre-supposes that the club is moving in a horizontal direction at the moment it hits the ball. In a vast majority of instances, probably in about ninety per cent of cases, the club is not moving in a horizontal direction—in fact, it would be hardly too much to say that it never moves in a horizontal direction. It is nearly always moving either upwards or downwards in a curve at the moment it strikes the ball, so that it stands to reason, especially when the club face is travelling upwards, which is what it does in the great majority of cases, that the blow is never delivered horizontally, but is always struck more or less upward through the ball's centre of mass.

Practical teachers of golf know how extremely hard it is to induce the beginner, and for the matter of that many people who are far beyond beginners, to trust the loft of the club to raise the ball from the earth; so many players never get out of the habit of attempting to hit upwards.

It stands to reason that if the blow in golf were delivered as with a billiard cue, any blow struck in that manner, provided the face of the club had sufficient loft, would tend to produce back-spin, but practically no blow in golf is struck in the manner described by Professor Thomson; nor is the beneficial back-spin of golf obtained in this manner, in fact the loft of the club has comparatively little to do with producing the back-spin which so materially assists the length of the carry. There can, of course, be no doubt that loft does assist a person in producing this back-spin, or, as Professor Thomson calls it, under-spin, but to nothing like the extent which is imagined by the worthy Professor. The beneficial back-spin of golf is obtained by striking the golf ball before the head of the club has reached the lowest point in its swing; in other words, the back-spin is put on a golf ball by downward cut—by the very reverse to that cut which is put on a ball when a man tops it badly. In the one case it is up cut, or, as it is called in lawn-tennis, top, which is a misleading term which has led many people, besides Sir J. J. Thomson, astray, and in the other case it is downward cut, which is exactly similar in its effect to the chop at lawn-tennis.

Professor Thomson, for the purpose of illustrating the fact that the golf ball obtains the beneficial spin, which influences its carry so materially, from the loft of the club, shows us a club face with a loft much greater than that of a niblick, and proceeds to demonstrate from this loft, which it is unnecessary to tell a golfer does not exist on any club which is used for driving, that the ball acquires its back-spin from the loft of the face of the club.

I have already referred to the Professor's fundamental fallacy that the golf stroke is delivered in a horizontal line—in effect that the force of the blow proceeds horizontally, but he is guilty of another very great error from the point of view of practical golf when he shows a club such as he has done, in order to explain how the beneficial back-spin of golf is obtained. Such a club as he shows might be useful for getting out of a bunker, but it certainly would be of no use whatever in practical golf for driving. As every golfer knows, the face of the driver is, comparatively speaking, very upright, and firing a ball at a wall built at the same angle as the loft of a driver would certainly not produce on that ball much in the way of back-spin. The idea of a modern golf ball which flattens very considerably on the face of the club, rolling up the face of a driver on account of its loft, is too ridiculous to be considered seriously by a practical golfer.