Chapter 9 - Making A Delivery

Timing and co-ordination The eight o'clock position  Give yourself time The "Apex" of the swing Swinging and stopping Hit into and along a line Swing-and-stop exercise

The game of golf is very much a battle between the conscious and the sub-conscious mind. You can think of making a position. You can think of making a shape to the swing. But the blending of a delivery into that shape must be done by training the hands and the club head to react subconsciously, that is, by imitating the intention which is portrayed in your practice swing.

If a player is so absorbed in the delivery that he is over-eager to make it, when he is at the top of the swing his reflexes take over. His intention races too far ahead of time and the action is doomed to be rushed and distorted. Hence the time-worn phrase "hitting from the top".

Many who remain poor players, despairing of making any marked progress, keep themselves in the toils for two main reasons they are afraid to turn their backs on the target in the backswing and far too anxious to get the club back to the ball in the return movement.

You must train yourself to make a delivery at the ball within the framework of a shaped swing by subconsciously sensing the action involved. With many players the swing is blacked out from the time they have taken the club head back a few feet from the ball until the stroke has been played for better or worse usually worse.

It is one thing to acquire a shaped swing which brings you to the poised position at the top of the backswing and then through into the follow-through and finish as already described in this book. But this in itself is not sufficient. The striking of the golf ball demands more than the making of one end at the top of the swing and coming down and through to the other end (the finish) in the vague belief that something will happen in the middle.

There you have just one more reason why learning to play golf well with a method which will prove lasting is a slow, gradual process. Many a young player with a good-looking swing, outwardly full of promise, eventually arrives at a stage where his game fails to develop further. Almost invariably, this is because he has failed to learn to make delivery of the club head consistently to the ball.

I have explained that the true golf swing is a coordinated series of actions enabling the player to take up a number of poised and balanced positions with the object of generating and retaining the power and feel in the hands all the time. The hands are like an electric battery. They must be charged and kept charged by the actions of other parts of the mechanism. These actions are blended into a smooth rhythmic overall movement by TIMING.

If the timing from one position to the next is rushed as, for instance, in the case of the player who cannot wait to get back to the ball from the top of the swing, the power and feel depart from the hands and an effective delivery at the ball is imperiled almost beyond salvation.

This is why those struggling golfers whose swing is blacked out after the initial stage of the movement back from the ball hit many more bad shots than good ones. Their successful shots are more or less accidental and cannot be repeated with any degree of consistency because the hit is bound to be released too early in the downswing.

I cannot stress too strongly the imperative need to give yourself TIME AND ROOM in which to swing the club-head and deliver it to the back of the ball.

Now recall what I said earlier in this book that the good and experienced golfer senses the downswing even as he approaches the top of the backswing.

What exactly do I mean by this? It brings us back once again to the hands. As the club is carried to the top of the backswing on upper-arm-leverage the accomplished golfer begins to feel the power and control building up in the hands and wrists and along the left forearm. This power he is going to apply in the later part of the downswing.

In order to effect a smooth transition from the backswing into the downswing the hand-action, never hurried, must be slowed down still more in the final stages of the backswing. The hands and the club head are going to be put into reverse and the operation must be done as smoothly as a skilled driver reverses his car.

The necessary slowing down of the action can be achieved only by feeling the build-up of power in the hands, wrists and left forearm. This feeling, in fact, helps to give you that almost imperceptible pause at the top of the backswing as the hands begin to change direction. There will be no tendency to snatch once you master this.

You have been told how the downswing starts with a slow downward drive of the hands and left arm across the body and the lateral shift of the lower part of the body with the club-shaft retained behind the hands. This most important lateral shift enables the good player to retain the power in the hands which he began to feel as he approached the top of the swing. And it gives the hands room in which to do their work in the delivery, that part of the action which is going to apply the club-face squarely and with sustained power to the back of the ball.

The club head is released into the delivery when the hands have descended to a point almost level with the ball, at which point the club head is still lagging, POINTING TO EIGHT O'CLOCK, maybe even higher but certainly not lower (Fig. 19).

My experience is that pupils generally find this eight o'clock position of the club head one of the most difficult features of the swing to achieve. But how worthwhile it is to strive for. The hall-mark of the outstanding player is one who lets the club head go into the same hitting area and maintains the club-line through the ball consistently with each shot. It makes for constant accuracy with the various clubs.

Let me put it this way. Take a fairish golfer with a good-looking shape to his swing but with an unsure delivery. Inferior timing and hand-control cause him to vary the position of the club head as it comes in for release into the hitting area.

There he is with three balls lined up to be struck from the same spot with, say, his seven iron to the green. With his inconsistent delivery the landing area for these three balls is liable to be extensive. He is likely to pitch one on the back of the green, one on the front, and the third probably short. This takes no account of any deviation from the line which may occur.

Work and train yourself to give the hands time and room to bring the club into the eight o'clock position from which you will be poised to make that carpet-beater action at and through the ball such as I described in the preceding chapter.

Now do you see why the shaped swing must be harnessed to a shaped delivery? Let me repeat that the way to train your hands to give you this eight o'clock position is to give them time. Wait for it before you let the power pour into the back of the ball.

This takes us to the next stage, into the "apex" of the swing as I like to call it.

The apex of the swing is that vital section from impact into the follow-through during which the club head stays on the line of flight, anything from ten inches to a foot past the point of impact, the longer the better. When the club head leaves the line of flight as it must in due course, it comes out of the apex of the swing. Maintaining the apex without any temptation to make a bodily lurch forward is yet one more sign of the top-class player.

Stand behind four-times' Open Champion Peter Thomson and watch his club head in the hitting area. Note how squarely it is applied to the ball, giving an impression of a "lot of club-face" making solid and prolonged contact with a "lot of ball". Thomson's club-line is prolonged along the line after impact thus sustaining the forward drive of the ball imparted by the club head.

I was by no means surprised when a few years ago the Americans came out with five agreed basic principles of the golf technique. The most significant of the five was the one which laid down that the club head is driven "INTO AND ALONG A LINE". I had been teaching on this principle for years and still do. It is certainly not the same as "in to out".

Here I will make my one solitary reference to the torment of socketing with iron clubs and "heeling" the ball with the woods. I have an unusual but instantly effective cure.

The socket arises from one of two movements either (a) an exaggerated "in to out" action or (b) the most common  the shoulders turning too early in the downswing and the right hand rolling over the left.

In effect I treat the victim by administering his own poison.

I TELL HIM TO ADDRESS THE BALL TOWARDS THE HEEL OF THE

CLUB! This instinctively leads the player to bring the hands and club head inside on the downswing as distinct from the dangerous throwing out of the arms from the body. It also encourages the essential lateral movement into the ball bringing the shoulders square at impact.

If you are afflicted by socketing or striking the ball with the heel of the woods, if you find difficulty in tracing a club-line straight through the ball, adopt this method of address BUT TAKE CARE NOT TO MOVE YOUR FEET NEARER TO THE BALL IN DOING SO.
This is no gimmick. I have already made it clear that gimmicks and golf do not go together and I would be the last to foist one upon a pupil. It is simply a slight, but permissible, exaggeration which gives the correct movement into the ball.

Two outstanding players who habitually addressed the ball in this way were former Open Champion, Dick Burton, and the American Densmore Shute. I do not quarrel with it at all. Far better address the ball towards the heel than towards the toe of the club.

The art of making a delivery of the club head within the framework of a shaped swing is not one to be learned overnight. I have outlined what you must strive after, and why. The answer is to be found in that all-important eight o'clock position of the club head as the hands arrive almost at ball level.

There is an exercise which I have proved can help enormously, though you will not find it easy to perform at first. This is the swinging of the club head down into the impact position and stopping, otherwise known as "hitting and stopping''.

The object is to increase hand-control of the club head. To allow you to stop it at impact the hands must retain control in the downswing with the back of the left hand in line with the forearm as the club head comes into the impact position.

If you find persistent difficulty in stopping the club head it can only be because the club head has been allowed to overtake the hands too early. Remember that while you are aiming to stop at impact the club must still be SWUNG down. Work on this exercise and train yourself and your hands to master it. Utilise all the phases of the movement I have outlined in the backswing and the downswing and when you bring the club head to a stop, check that your impact position left hand in line with forearm and square to the line of flight, left shoulder up, right knee folding in ... is precisely the posed position we arrived at in the chapter on the downswing.

You will not be able to perform this exercise unless you keep firmly in your mind the need to WAIT FOR IT, and to keep the movement from the top smooth and unhurried.

But master it and perform it repeatedly. When you feel your hands and forearms aching as you persevere with this invaluable exercise you will know you are really achieving something.

You will be training the hands to do their work, gaining control over the shoulder-action (remember what I wrote in the chapter on the backswing?) and consolidating the delivery of the club head.

Furthermore it will help to keep the head steady. "Head up", as rife in golf as the common cold in everyday life, is caused by hitting too early. Bear in mind the phrase, "Hit early, look early". Better still make it the positive maxim, "Hit late, look late".

And look at the back of the ball with BOTH eyes. You have two. Use them.

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