Let your teacher choose your clubs for you, and, in any case, do not make the mistake of fitting yourself up at first either with too many clubs or with clubs too heavy for you.
A BREEZY MORNING
As to first steps in learning, I am disposed to think that an old-time method, by which young people learned first to use one club with some skill and confidence before going on to another, was a good one. In that case they would begin with a cleek or an iron before using the driver.
The learner should give great attention to some first principles. Let her note the grip she is told to use. Very likely it will seem to her uncomfortable, and not at all the most convenient way of holding a club in order to hit a ball; but it is the result of much experience, and has not been arbitrarily chosen for her especial discomfort.
In like manner the stance, or way of standing when making a stroke, must be noted carefully and copied exactly. In private practice defy the inward tempter which suggests that you can do much better in some other way. Don't, above all, allow yourself to think that you will hit the ball more surely if you stand farther behind it—not even if you have seen your brother tee a ball away to the left of his left foot and still get a long shot.
"Keep your Eye on the Ball"
Don't think that the perpetual injunction, "Keep your eye on the ball," is an irritating formula with little reason behind it. It is, as a matter of fact, a law quite as much for your teacher as for yourself. And don't suppose that you have kept your eye on the ball because you think you have. It is wonderful how easy it is to keep your eye glued—so to speak—to the ball until the very half-second when that duty is most important and then to lift the head, spoiling the shot. If you can persuade yourself to look at the ball all through the stroke, and to look at the spot where the ball was even after the ball is away, you will find that you not only hit the ball satisfactorily but that it flies straighter than you had hitherto found it willing to do. When you are getting on, and begin to have some satisfaction with yourself, then remember that this maxim still requires as close observance as ever. If you find yourself off your game—such as it is—ask yourself at once, "Am I keeping my eye on the ball?" And don't be in a hurry to assume that you were.
Always bear in mind, too, that you want to hit the ball with a kind of combined motion, which is to include the swing of your body. You are not there to use your arms only. If you begin young, you will, I expect, find little difficulty in this. It is, to older players, quite amazing how readily a youngster will fall into a swing that is the embodiment of grace and ease.