It is that good golf is played through the lower nerve-centers and motor channels, while poor golf is due to the direct interference of the brain, or consciousness.
In other words, the more I succeed in eliminating the mental or thinking part of golf, and the more I depend upon the muscular sense, the better my golf has become.
Shortly after the account of Maria Montessori’s work in the “children’s houses” in Rome was published, I obtained a copy of the book, and from it received a suggestion that led me to apply the idea to golf, with the result that my game has been revolutionized, and I have tried the idea upon others with considerable success.
To explain my application of the principle, I must call attention to the Montessori method of teaching handwriting. The usual method of schools has been to place before a child a written letter, give the child a pen, and tell him to copy the letter. Unaccustomed to holding a pen, and totally unfamiliar with the outlines of the letter he is directed to copy, the child holds the pen in a vise-like grip, and with unnecessary muscular exertion moves slowly through a series of mechanical strokes until at last he has produced a crude representation of the original. The Montessori method, on the other hand, is to give to the child a fairly large model of the letter cut out of sandpaper and pasted on a smooth surface. Over these outlines the child is made to pass his finger, at first slowly, but gradually with more lightness and speed until he has become thoroughly familiar with the movements necessary to reproduce the letter. With a pencil-like stick he is then taught to touch the outlines in the same manner, until his sense of touch has become so thoroughly educated to the “feel” of the letter that spontaneously he discovers that he can reproduce it without the model.
“Tracing the letter,” explains Dr. Montessori, “in the fashion of writing begins the muscular education which prepares for writing.... The child who looks, recognizes, and touches the letter in the manner of writing, prepares himself simultaneously for reading and writing. Touching the letters, and looking at them at the same time, fixes the image more quickly through the coöperation of the senses. Later, the two facts separate; looking becomes reading, and touching becomes writing.”
This suggested to me that the method most used for playing golf followed the method of the old-fashioned system of writing, wherein the child, seeing the letter A, for instance, has a preconceived idea of the motions necessary to make it, and his mind forces his muscles step by step in a cramped and painstaking way to go through certain predetermined movements. This was exactly my scheme in playing golf, and I know from observation that it is the scheme of many other golfers. There is neither freedom nor spontaneity, because the mind controls and dominates each muscular movement necessary in making the swing.
If I were to describe the reason why the majority of players do this, I should say that it is due to their placing more reliance in their sense of vision than on their sense of feeling. One cannot see the correct timing of a stroke, but he can feel it.
My former method was to figure out how everything should “look” when I addressed the ball, and my present method is absolutely to ignore what it looks like, and depend entirely upon what it “feels” like.
If I depend upon what things look like in the address, I “set” some of my muscles in such and such a way to accommodate this preconceived notion. If I depend upon how it feels, I have to relax more and more of my muscles, or I am aware of the resistance one set offers to another.
In the light of my new method, the matter of true balance and poise will assume the importance it deserves because in the preliminary “waggle” of the club, which is generally done with the hands and arms alone, the body being held rigid, the muscles of the body will have to be relaxed in order that one may feel out the correct positions. This has been my own experience, and I think that if consideration be given the fact that the actual stroke is delivered with all the muscles in action, the nearer the player reproduces the actual conditions in his preliminary waggle, the better chance he will have to bring off the shot. If the muscles are “set,” with the idea of “aiming,” so to speak, with everything in repose in the address, it can hardly be called a good preliminary of the actual effort.