Chapter 4 - Stance And Address

Balance and poise Aiming Elbow-set Flexed knees

After the grip comes the stance. Grip the club correctly and stand properly to the ball in the address and the subsequent actions will be the more easily mastered. So do not rush these very necessary preliminaries.

You must be balanced and poised in the address, neither sloppy nor taut. On the first tee of any golf course any weekend you will see scores of players killing their chance of hitting the ball by the way they take up their stance.

Some crouch over the ball with the set of the shoulders entirely and irretrievably wrong. Others stand stiff-kneed and stiff-armed, and there are those who slump and droop like exhausted recruits awaiting dismissal at the end of a route march.

And you will find the player who, while standing reasonably well, is quite wrongly lined-up. The average golfer has a vague idea of aiming and lining-up the stance in relation to his intended line of flight. Asked how he contemplates his drive from the tee he usually replies that he looks down the middle of the fairway and tries to hit the ball there.

There is more to it than that. At a two-shot hole, or par four if you prefer it, the good golfer aims to dispatch his ball from point A, which is the tee, to point B which is a selected part of the fairway which he judges to be the best from which to play the second shot, that is the shot to point C, which is the green.

There are many good testing holes, well designed by a thinking architect where the player's selection of point B will require careful thought because the obviously best spot on which to land the drive will also be the more dangerous with a hazard, or hazards, placed close to it. This leaves the player with the alternative choice of a bold shot which MUST be well struck and well aimed, or a line which is less ambitious, offering more scope for the avoidance of trouble but calling for a more difficult shot to the green.

However you visualize the shot which you seek to play at a particular hole this is the best way to set about taking aim. Stand a yard or two behind the ball after teeing it and survey the situation by taking a line from the teed ball to point B where you want to put it, and then along that same line on to a distant landmark, say a tall tree, a roof-top or a church spire.

Take up your stance parallel to that intended line of flight and check it by reference to that landmark in the distance. In this way you will not have your concentration disturbed by the sight of trouble lurking near your chosen point B, a consideration which you have already weighed up in your preliminary survey from behind the ball. Your concentration will remain on striking the ball in the direction of that particular landmark.

Similarly when you play your second shot, from point B to point C, you will be sizing up the requirements as you walk up to the ball from directly behind. Again pick an object beyond the green and concentrate on hitting the ball on a line towards that object with the club of the strength needed to drop your ball on the green.

I emphasize the need to concentrate on a distant landmark for full shots because of the danger of last moment fears breaking into the concentration. To make more certain of avoiding a bunker close to the spot on the fairway (in the case of the drive) and set into the green (in the case of the second shot) a subconscious alteration in the stance just before commencing the swing is liable to occur, enough in itself to send the ball off-line even if the swing remains undisturbed.

When you have decided on the shot you wish to play this is how you should go about the business of setting yourself up to play that shot.

Note what the first-class player does. He takes the club from his caddie, moulds his hands on the grip to induce the initial feel of the club head and squares up the face to the grip before he addresses the ball. Only then does he sole the club behind the ball with grip and club-face still, of course, square to the intended line of flight.

The positioning of the feet, the actual taking up of the stance, comes LAST in this brief order of procedure in preparation for the playing of the stroke.

The average amateur reverses this procedure. He takes his club out of the bag, takes up his stance with the club vaguely grounded behind the ball and then fiddles with the hands and club head in the course of adjusting his grip.

This blurs the mental picture of the intended stroke and frequently builds up tension. It is the reason why so many mediocre players vary their grip on the club from one shot to the next without even realizing it.
Get the club-face and grip squared up BEFORE you place the feet in position.

And having done this in the correct order you will set your feet (for a straightforward shot) parallel to the intended line of flight just wide enough to take the width of your shoulders when using the driver. The weight should run through from the soles to the heels of both feet.

Bend forward from the waist don't lean slightly flexing both knees. A glance will enable you to check that the club-face is lined-up squarely and here I would raise a point about which many people have a wrong conception, especially where iron clubs are concerned.

The front bottom edge, or leading edge of the base of the iron club, is the one with which you line-up, not the top edge. This front bottom edge must be set at right-angles to the proposed line of flight. Do that and the blade will be properly squared up. Many players feel, quite wrongly, that in this position the face of the club is open. Nothing of the sort. It is square, the position you want. Make sure you get it, but NOT by turning your club head AFTER you have settled your grip. If necessary you must move away from the ball and re-apply your grip so that with the bottom, or leading, edge squared to the intended line of flight your hands, too, are squared up with the two "V"s pointing to a spot between the chin and the right shoulder.

Your club is now properly set at the back of the ball. You are standing square to the proposed line, bending from the waist (in which case your back will be straight, as it MUST be) with your knees flexed.

Set the right foot square to the line, that is, pointing to twelve o'clock, and turn the left toe slightly out, pointing to five to twelve. With a driver the ball will be on a line drawn at right-angles from the inside of the left heel.

With the other clubs, as they increase in loft, so the position of the ball in relation to the feet will move gradually nearer the centre, until when we get down to the shorter irons the ball is nearer the right foot than the left for a straightforward shot with this particular grade of club. The width of the stance also will decrease as you go down the range of the clubs. All these adjustments are fractional and not to be exaggerated.

The feet having been properly placed, the right at twelve o'clock and the left at five to twelve, you do not dismiss them from your mind as being of no further account. The feet remain active throughout the whole course of the swing. It is the feet that motivate the swing.

Nicely balanced in a position of readiness you should feel the weight running right through to the heels, but not to the extent that you find yourself rocking back on the heels. With the weight evenly distributed on both feet, the flexed knees should be inclined slightly inwards. There is no place in golf for bow-legged ness. A tendency to the opposite extreme is better, but at all stages of the stance and the swing avoid exaggeration. This is a pitfall against which a teacher has to guard, especially with a keen pupil willing and eager to learn.

While warning against exaggeration I must stress that the inward flexing of the right knee is a vitally important feature of the stance. Inward flexing means that this knee is turned in towards the ball, and while the weight will be equally distributed that part of the weight which the right foot has to bear will be mainly on the inside of that foot.

I will have more to say on this when dealing with the back-swing.

The right shoulder will settle comfortably below the level of the left. After all your arms are both the same length and the right hand is below the left on the shaft. Hence the need for the right shoulder to be lower than the left for the arms to settle easily into position.

RIGHT ELBOW INSIDE THE. LEFT

Figure 8a

The balanced stance free from tension. Knees flexed, right elbow below the left. Arms neither cramped against the body, nor stretched to reach the ball.

The arms in address should never be tense or rigid. They should hang comfortably from the shoulders just clear of the body, the wrists slightly arched, NOT dropped (Fig. 8a). You will learn that you need time and room in which to hit the ball and initially the correct address gives you the room.

Do not push the arms out so far from the body that you have to reach for the ball. If you find yourself doing this you are standing too far from the ball. Conversely, with the arms and hands too close to the body you are obviously too near to the ball.

The correct distance which permits the hands to hang properly is something which each individual must discover for himself, bearing in mind the simple considerations mentioned in the previous two paragraphs.

I now come to the set of the elbows in the address. Ideally the OUTSIDE of the left elbow should be set facing not pointing down the fairway. The right elbow will be set inside uppermost (Fig. 8b).

Remember, no pointing of the left elbow. The left arm hangs straight and there is no point along a straight line. Set the left elbow FACING down the fairway. That is the way I have put it and that is the way I mean.

I have said also that this is "ideally" the best left elbow position. But some people, particularly those with double-jointed elbows, find it difficult, even impossible to achieve this without turning the wrist and hand. The wrist and hand must NOT become involved in this matter of elbow-set.

So again we have a small matter of bone-structure presenting a problem which some will be unable to solve. Such people must leave the left elbow inside uppermost (Fig. 9) and learn to take care against a tendency to drag the left hand over and off-line at and immediately after impact.

The object of setting the elbows in the way I have described is to bring the right arm "inside" the left in the address, which is how we want it at impact. In other words the left arm is further away from the body than the right.

This enables the right arm to fold more readily into its position on the backs wing and helps in keeping the right arm in the downswing behind and not over the master left arm. This in turn serves to bring the club head into the ball from the inside.

The correct elbow-set at address lessens the danger of the club head being opened or closed in the movement away from the ball, but I shall have more to say about this when dealing with the backswing.
One final word of warning. Beware of letting the left hand move over the shaft in your effort to achieve the correct set of the left elbow.

NOT The ideal Elbow-set\ The inside of both elbows is turned uppermost Only the right" elbow should be ser this way.

Figure 9

A left elbow set-up you should try to avoid.

We have dealt entirely with the square stance where the feet are set parallel to the intended line of flight. Variations to the stance and form of addressing the ball are simple when carried out correctly. They become complex only when needless and harmful body adjustments are made.

As you go through to the more lofted pitching clubs the stance will require to be opened by the simple expedient of drawing the left foot back from the intended line of flight. To close the stance draw the right foot back.

Incidentally, a slightly closed stance is favored by a number of top players for the playing of the longer shots. It is entirely a matter for the individual.

Opening or closing the stance calls for a simple movement of one foot or the other. Just when these simple variations are needed you will learn with experience, the general idea being to open the stance to fade the ball and close it for draw.

Do not shuffle round with the feet and body as so many people do. All they are doing, in fact, is setting up another square stance, sloppy variety, on a different line from the one they intend to send the ball on

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