Chapter 11 - How To Practise

Make it objective Errors to avoid Use of a mirror  The aim of practice Those tiny putts

I have taken you through the whole of the mechanics of stroke-play. By now you should have acquired a clear idea of the advantages to be gained from a shaped swing. If you have read and studied the preceding chapters thoroughly with a golf club close at hand, you will have already built into your action a sounder shape and at least the semblance of a delivery.

The beginner will have laid the first foundations of a consistent and respectable game within his own limitations. The more advanced player, while incorporating some better features into his movement, will have automatically eradicated a good deal of the bad. The shape is taking effect and a delivery is being built into it. Maybe in practice and play on the course you have thus early derived some benefit.

Now, in the concluding stages of this book I want to guide you in applying what you have learned.

You would be well advised to add a large mirror to your equipment. Any old Victorian relic, if large enough, will do, and it matters little if it is cracked. Any second-hand furniture dealer should be able to meet your requirements, and when you have found what you want set it up against the wall of your garage or box-room.

Swinging in front of this mirror, you can take stock of your position at different stages of the movement and clarify still more the mental picture of the shaped swing you are creating.

Let me assume you have such a mirror. Take your five iron and go through the whole operation as I have described it in this book, checking on the points which matter most.

Bear in mind at all times that you must give your hands time and room in which to swing the club head, and that every movement, every position taken up is directed to generating and retaining power in the hands.

With the correct grip and the poised stance, you move into the initial stage of the backswing using the hands and arms alone, until the body joins in with the chest turning above the retracted stomach.

You will keep the left arm passively extended and make no attempt to alter the square set of the club-face by manipulating it opened or closed. Keep it square.

As the backswing progresses with the left shoulder UP and the right knee flexed, you will feel the leverage in the upper left arm developing, and you will feel power building up through the hands and left forearm. You will feel the short left thumb supporting the shaft at the top of the swing and the left shoulder, having completed a 900 turn, will be up under the chin. The head has not gone down to meet the shoulder.

You have moved slowly into the final stage of the backswing. You will be similarly unhurried as the downswing commences with the return of the left heel to the ground at the same time as you drive gently down and across the chest with the hands and left forearm and move into the lateral shift of the lower part of the body which is so vital to the maintenance of power in the hands.

You will unleash this power in the hitting area and will note, by a glance in the mirror, that with the hands almost level with the ball spot your club head is in that all-important eight o'clock position.

As you employ the carpet-beater action at and through the ball, the back of the left hand will be kept in line with the forearm as the club is swept into the follow-through.

The right knee folding in, "K" fashion, towards the left, helps to carry your club head through into the "apex" of the swing, straight along the line after the ball until at last it comes off that line into the relaxed finish which is held from the waist, a perfectly balanced position with the weight concentrated on the outside of the left foot.

From this high finish into which the hands have been carried, to a point not lower than the level of the left ear, drop the hands and club head in the recoil action in front of the body. Hold it and check on the club-face which should be square in the manner I have described.

If you find difficulty in achieving any of these positions go back to the start and proceed in slow motion sequence, getting the feel at each stage until you trace where you have gone astray.
This may seem a laborious business but, as I have emphasize d, there is no short cut to success at this game. You must be prepared to accept slow but definite progress.

You may quickly assimilate certain of the principles I have advocated and make marked improvement up to a point. If you are accustomed to struggling round in the 90s you may well drop down into the 80s. If you are an 80-plus shooter, you may, with an improved but still incomplete shape to your swing, invade the high 70s on your best days, but if you are already a reasonably good player determined to become better, with the occasional breaking of 70 as your target, you must check back on each phase of the movement until you find which part is letting you down.

This book offers the opportunity for golfers of all classes to build or rebuild their game on a sound basis, to know what they are attempting, and what they need to achieve to strike the ball well. And it enables them to find just where their individual weaknesses are and how to work on them.

So now to the practice ground, with a bag of balls at least a dozen.

First of all you must decide your practice objective. It is useless to walk out on to the grass and blaze away with abandon, hitting ball after ball vaguely into the blue. There must be a defined purpose behind every swing you make.

Never hit your practice shots diagonally from the right edge of the fairway over to the left. Play along a defined line to a defined target, aiming to group as many balls as possible in a restricted area (Fig. 36). Hitting diagonally across a practice ground or fairway leaves you open to a dangerous tendency which is difficult to describe in terms which the inexperienced will readily appreciate. But you can take my word for it.

Briefly what happens is this. As you play ball after ball the set of the shot played across a defined line will eventually lead to the body turning across from the shoulders with a resultant distortion of the club-line (Fig. 37).

Maintenance of the club-line is the whole object of the shaped golf swing, and to facilitate this you must hit parallel to the defined line of the practice ground or fairway. The beginner will find that a useful additional aid to this is the to placing of a spare club outside the ball and parallel to the line.

If, through lack of a practice ground, you have to Practice on the course, as good a spot as any to choose is one of the mown paths cut from the tee through the rough. Playing straight down the path you will have a clearly defined line, and you will be doing no damage to the playing area.
When Ben Hogan was at Wentworth for the Canada Cup some years ago I noted that when he went on to the practice ground he took aim parallel to a line of trees. Not for him the diagonal hitting that satisfied so many of the competitors! He wanted a defined line.

Commence your practice by playing short pitches with the wedge. Then proceed to the eight or seven and into the medium irons and then into the bigger clubs. Always come into that relaxed finish from which you can check on the position of the club-face.

If you find yourself playing a wooden club or a long iron poorly, don't persist with the club. Discard it temporarily and turn to one of the medium irons and work at the delivery. Then try again with the club which was giving you difficulty.

I would warn you against one of the most common errors into which your practice will lead unless you take care to avoid it. Resist the temptation to reel off one shot after another in quick-fire style. You are not operating a machine-gun set on fixed lines.

You have in your hand a golf club, not a machine, and as you hit ball after ball in practice the danger is that your swing, without your realizing it, will become faster and faster with destructive results to the timing.

This brings us back yet again to the essential need to keep your swing smooth and unhurried at all times. Take your time between each shot and relax a full minute or even more between each half-dozen shots.

Figure 36

The correct way to Practice  along a defined line.

You should not worry about the bad strokes you play in your practice session. There are no penalties to be incurred on the practice ground. You are out there not so much to prevent bad shots as to create good ones. That is the positive approach which you can only pursue by carrying on with the swing-shape pictured in your mind.

Figure 37

This shows what creeps in when shots are played repeatedly across a line. In due course round comes the right shoulder.

When the good shots start to flow, as they will if you resist the inclination to steer the ball after one or two failures, take note of the "feels" you experience.

Let me repeat that the object is to produce the good shot, not to manipulate the club head out of the swing-shape in a mistaken attempt to avoid repeating a bad one.

I will illustrate the point by recalling the calamitous experience of the great American golfer, Arnold Palmer, who failed to qualify in the first tournament of 1961 through taking 12 at the eighteenth hole.

Palmer sent two balls out of bounds on one side of the course, then two more out of bounds the other side at this disastrous hole. Afterwards he admitted that he must have "over-corrected" after the second one went out and this "over-correction" brought him a similar penalty on the other side of the course.

This great player, day in, day out, relies implicitly on his swing. For once it let him down badly at a vital hole in a tournament. Yet it seems that after the first ball flew out of bounds he still made no effort to correct it in any way. After the second failure he felt compelled to try something with his chances in the tournament slipping away. What happened? In his own words he "over-corrected".

Palmer, of course, did not panic or try to alter his swing. He was quickly back in the old groove in the next tournament and the next. I am certain that had these shots gone astray on the practice ground, and not at a crucial stage of a big money tournament, he would have made no attempt at correction leading to over-correction. He would have set to work on his delivery until the good shots were flowing again.

Your practice at all times should be aimed at consolidating the shape of the swing and the delivery you are building into it. First the shape, then the delivery.

It is not unusual to find a man with an ugly action playing better golf than a rival with a good-looking swing. The reason is that the first man, for all his faults, has a better delivery than the second.

But if the second player were to succeed in fitting as good a delivery to HIS superior swing he would put himself way ahead of the other fellow and would remain a good player far longer. And the better the shape the better chance you have of giving yourself a good delivery.

One more warning to note in working out your practice routine. Never flog yourself into a state of exhaustion. Forcing your limbs and muscles to carry on under the strain of fatigue is sheer misplaced enthusiasm, more harmful than beneficial. A little and often is preferable to driving yourself on to your knees in one long prolonged bout. Pack up when you feel the first signs of weariness.

There remains something to be said about putting practice. Of course, it is one thing to knock the ball into the hole on the practice green and quite a different matter doing likewise under pressure out on the course.

No one in the game dare underrate the exacting standard of putting demanded in America where their methods are soundly conceived and put to the test without doubts and inhibitions breaking in on the player's concentration. The Americans, be it noted, are demons for practice. If the putter is not working well they frequently go straight from the eighteenth green on to the practice green and settle down seriously to sorting out the trouble.

That is what an American Ryder Cup golfer, Bill Collins, did when he three-putted five greens in the first round of the 1961 U.S. Masters. After finishing in 74, he spent the rest of the afternoon with a liberal supply of balls on the practice green. Later he holed the course in 67, lowest score for one round in the event, and he had ten one-putt greens in the process.

It is on the practice green that you work out your method of getting the ball into the hole, and it is there that you consolidate that method and acquire the initial confidence from striking the ball effectively with the putter-blade.

Practice putts of all lengths, but give your main attention to those from ten feet down. Don't putt a succession of balls from the same spot. Vary the line by moving round the hole. You will find, too, that this way of going about the task is far less back-aching.

And before you go out on a serious round of golf, Practice a few "tap-ins". Yes, take your time and putt the ball into the hole from two feet to eighteen inches or even less.

Eighteen inches or less? Certainly. If you laugh this off now, you will soon be changing your attitude when you have missed one or two tiddlers with a card and pencil in your pocket.

I have a pupil who would have been a very fine golfer indeed had he been more confident with his putter. This player has putting inconsistencies which throw a considerable strain on his play through the greens, and he once confessed to me the origin of his trouble. Coming into the game towards the end of the war when there was no competitive golf and sociable four-ball matches comprised almost the entire golfing diet, he was never asked to knock the ball into the hole from twelve or eighteen inches. These putts were invariably conceded. Then after the war came his first club competition. "Just a minor affair", he said, "but at the very first hole I suddenly found myself bending down to knock the ball into the hole from twelve inches. I couldn't remember the last time did it. Suddenly I was scared I might miss. Sure enough did." Similar short putts are being missed by other golfers today and every day.

They must not be regarded as a mere formality. Practice them and be sure you are slow back from the ball, deliberate on the return movement, and that you make a point of seeing the right forearm pass the spot where the ball lay.

This last is all-important. It maintains the putter-blade square and on line through the ball and stops you looking up too soon.

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