The Soul of Golf

by P. A. Vaile

We will consider, for the sake of argument, that the slice has been produced by a stroke which has come across the intended line of flight at an angle of 30 degrees. We shall now fasten our club rigidly and fire the golf ball out of a catapult against its face so that it hits it dead in the centre, and so that it travels down a line at an angle of 30 degrees to the face. Now most of us know enough elementary mechanics to know that in hitting a still object such as the face of the golf club, the ball will come off it at the same angle at which it hit it—in other words that the angle of reflection is the same as the angle of incidence, allowing always, of course, for the slight alteration which will be made by the loft of the club. In this case, of course, we have one object which is absolutely still, and all the motion during impact is confined to the ball.

Now let us consider the impact in the slice. In this case the club strikes the ball a violent blow. The ball, to a very great extent, flattens on the face of the club, and both the ball and the club travel together for a certain distance across the direct line of flight to the hole, and during the time that they are thus travelling together the club is imparting spin to the ball and influencing its direction, so that instead of the ball doing anything whatever in the nature of spinning off the face of the club at a natural angle, it is driving, during its initial stages, very straightly for a long distance before the spin begins to take effect.

It seems to me that the slice may be taken as a very good illustration showing that what Professor Thomson meant to explain is quite incorrect from a golfing point of view. It is quite evident that before we could accept as authoritative the explanations which have been given by Professor Thomson of these somewhat abstruse problems, it would be necessary for us to have, as he puts it, "a new dynamics."

I have already dealt very fully both in England and America with this remarkable lecture by Professor Thomson. I have criticised it in the leading reviews and magazines of the world, and the authoritative golfing paper of England—Golf Illustrated—in a leader, invited Professor Thomson to make good his assertions, but he has not been able to do so. One can understand fallacious matter being published under the names of professional golfers when one knows quite well that the majority of the work is done by journalists hired for the purpose, but it is almost impossible to understand how such utterly false doctrine could be put out by so eminent a man, and under the auspices of the Royal Institution of Great Britain.

The flight of the ball has always been a fascinating and for most people a very mysterious subject, but except in one or two matters there is no mystery whatever about the flight of the golf ball, but even amongst practical golfers there is an amazing lack of accurate information. For instance, we find Mr. Walter J. Travis, in Practical Golf at page 139, saying:

With a very rapid swing, the force or energy stored up in the gutta ball is greater than in the Haskell. The latter, by reason of its greater comparative resiliency does not remain in contact with the club head quite so long, and therefore does not receive the full benefit of the greater velocity of the stroke in the same proportion as the less resilient gutta. It flies off the face too quickly to get the full measure of energy imparted by a very swift stroke. This responsiveness or resiliency, however, asserts itself in a greater and more compensating degree in the case of the shorter driver. It makes up, in his case, for the lack of speed, and he finds his distance very sensibly increased.

This is a remarkable error for a golfer like Mr. Travis to make. It is abundantly plain that the rubber-cored ball stays on the face of the club much longer than the old gutta-percha ball did. Provided that there were such things in the world as incompressible balls, the impact in the drive would be of the least possible duration with them, but the more compressible the ball becomes the longer it will dwell on the face of the golf club.

That the rubber-cored ball does dwell for a greater period on the face of the club is responsible, to a great extent, for the fact that the modern ball swerves much more when sliced or pulled than did the old guttie in similar circumstances, and the reason seems to be that on account of the fact that the ball stays longer on the face of the club during the time that the club is going across the intended line of flight, it is able to impart to the ball a much greater spin. This spin, as we know, exerts its influence principally towards the end of the ball's flight, and in all probability it gets to work now approximately at the same place where the spin in the old gutta-percha ball began to assert itself, but probably a little further in the carry.

We all know that once the spin has begun to assert itself so as to make the ball swerve, its deflection from the line, particularly with a suitable wind, is extremely rapid, and we all know equally well that the carry of the rubber-cored ball is much longer than that of the old gutta-percha. It stands to reason that the ball having a much greater distance wherein to swerve will execute a correspondingly larger swerve than it would if its carry were shorter.

We find some amazing statements made by authors who profess to deal with golf. For instance at page 167 of The Mystery of Golf, we are informed that