Chapter 13 - Teaching (1)

Some observations The teacher and the tournament Pro  My Maiden Clinic

You may have noticed, indeed I hope you have, that there has been quite a lot of repetition in this book.

This has been intentional. Certain simple truths about the technique require emphasis through repetition. I have found, in the course of thirty years' teaching experience, that I can tell a pupil to do this or that, but while I know he has heard what I have said, it is by no means sure that his mind has retained it.

The penny may not drop the first, second or even the third time. Often I have had a pupil suddenly recall a piece of advice I gave him some time back. He will say: "You know, I didn't attach much importance to it at the time. Recently I've recalled it and I've been playing better since."

In many cases the once unconsidered trifle has been the means of filling a gap in the mental picture of the swing-shape so far as that particular pupil is concerned.

I do not want to leave you with an incomplete picture of the swing-shape I have outlined. Therefore, I propose to conclude this endeavor to put over in print the principles which make for the effective and consistent striking of the golf ball by telling you something of my teaching experience and the way I teach when in personal contact with the pupil in my school.

It may serve to fill any gap which remains.

But first relax for a page or two and take a few minutes off from technical analysis while I make a few observations based on my teaching experiences.

First, let me answer those critics and they include some of my fellow-professionals who assert that golf cannot be properly taught in the confined space of a net.

Their argument is that the instructor cannot see where the ball goes. I have a ready retort. The teaching professional should never have to wait until the ball lands before deciding what needs to be done to the pupil's action. To work on the basis of what happens to the ball implies that the instructor, in order to counteract a slice which he has seen on the open practice ground, is going to suggest a correction which may lead to a hook or at best prove only a temporary remedy.

This is an attitude which I condemned in the opening paragraph of this book.

Now I have a pupil, who came to me shortly after having one single lesson from another instructor. Long before the end of that one lesson he had lost confidence in the man who was advising him.

What happened was this. The pupil hit a few shots up the practice ground, shots which, as far as he could see, were straight though he (the pupil) was not entirely satisfied with the way they were struck.

Yet the instructor kept on describing them as "cut", a comment which puzzled the player. In due course he really hooked one and at once the instructor exclaimed "That's a lot better. That was a good shot."

"But I hooked it badly," protested the pupil. Whereupon a discussion ensued which revealed that the pupil was aiming at one particular landmark in the distance while the instructor had believed him to be aiming at another well to the left!

Had the instructor been correct in his assumption, then it naturally follows that the man striking the shot must have been lined up wrongly in the first place.

Can you wonder that the pupil came away feeling that this particular teacher couldn't tell a good shot from a bad one?

In my net I was soon able to re-shape this pupil's swing where it was needed. Today he is still my pupil paying periodical visits for a check-up.

The teaching of golf boils down to the one essential fact that the behavior of the ball in flight is dictated by the club-line at and through the ball, by what happens in the hitting area, at impact and through into the apex of the swing. True, out on the course there is the wind to be accounted for, but a well-struck shot played with due regard to the strength and direction of the wind will not go astray.

I am concerned with the player's swing and his club-line in the delivery.

And one thing is certain. If the advice imparted by me in the confines of my net (which happens to be a converted squash racquets court) failed to work out on the course my pupils would soon be going elsewhere. Instead of more and more past, present and prospective pupils waiting for a vacant space in my appointments book, the entries would dwindle to the point where I would be sitting around waiting for someone to turn up.

Of course it needs a knowledgeable teacher to instruct in a net, one who can detect club-line errors at and through the ball. Anyone who needs to await the final result of the shot before coming up with a stock diagnosis would obviously be at some considerable disadvantage in a net. Moreover the instruction can be carried out in a net under conditions which are not hostile to the pupil. By that I mean that the weather, whatever the time of year, cannot mar or ruin the lesson.

How can teacher and pupil properly get down to work when the former's teeth are chattering and the latter's hands and limbs are chilled to the bone out in the open on a bitterly cold day? It is asking altogether too much of human endurance.

In some cases, regrettably too few, the professional has a teaching shed at his club, which is all to his own and the members' advantage. My advice to young professionals and assistants taking a club post is that they should insist on a suitable teaching shed being provided.

I foresee the day, not far distant, when the jobs of teaching pro and tournament pro will be very sharply defined. That has been the development in America where the sizzling crucible of their fiercely competitive tournament circuit demands the fullest concentration of the man who aims to make a reasonable living at it, not to mention the select few at the top who take the major share of the dollars.

A similar trend is beginning to show in this country. With the number of British tournaments and the prize money increasing yearly it reached a record figure of over £70,000 in 1961 the tournament player must give himself more and more fully to this side of the game to stand any chance of getting near the top and staying there.

The pros are realizing this. Already several young and ambitious professionals have given up normal club duties to become attached as playing professionals at a course where they will have no administrative worries, no teaching, and all the time and facilities they require to get their own game in order and to keep it that way.

I anticipate that this already marked trend will develop broadly, and as it does so the duties of the teaching pro and the tournament player respectively will become more distinctly specialized.

This must come to pass, for it is becoming impossible for a modern professional to do himself justice in both fields.

Although I have been a teaching specialist for thirty years I set out originally to be a tournament player until circumstances took a hand.

I was already in some considerable demand for lessons and the day came when, following a heavy week of teaching, I found myself so jaded and playing so poorly in a tournament at Fulwell that the issue was more or less resolved then and there.

It was then the realization was forced upon me that, even in those days, to spread my concentration and my time and effort over the two sides of professional golf was asking too much. From that time on I devoted myself to teaching.

The rewards of the successful teacher mature more slowly than those of the correspondingly successful tournament player, and it takes far longer for the former to establish his name.

But there need be no rivalry or jealousy between these two types of professional. Both make a necessary contribution to the game.

The tournament pro comprises the shop window of golf. The performances of players like Cotton, Rees, O'Connor, Brown, Alliss and Weetman attract the galleries. The onlooker senses the thrill to be gained from a cleanly struck shot, or a spectacular recovery from Weetman's repertoire. He feels an urge to go back to his own course and hit at least one or two shots in his round like they do.

His enthusiasm is re-kindled and he decides to go to a teaching pro for help in improving his own performance. If the teacher can give him a fresh interest, a new target to aim at, and, in the case of the newcomer to golf, set him on the right path, then he, too, is making an important contribution to golf.

The able teacher can also help the professional and the good amateur with his problems. Many such come to me for a periodical check-up or to discuss a tendency which they find creeping into their play.

I was able to help a number of young professionals and assistants, some from distant parts, at a fortnightly clinic which I conducted for two and a half years from 1948 when I was professional at Maiden Golf Club, Surrey.

Incidentally it was the overall duties of club professional on top of continual teaching which eventually led me to give up club duties and open my school in London where I am able to concentrate solely on teaching with the minimum of administrative distractions and no fear of the weather causing bookings to be cancelled.

I formed the idea of the Maiden Clinic, the first of its kind in this country, because so many of the young professionals and assistants who sought my advice had such poorly shaped swings and only a vague knowledge of the fundamentals of the game.

The war years had been a critical period in the golfing careers of some of these young men, and I decided to try to help them make up the years that had been lost.

Many of them had not had the opportunities during their formative years of studying the methods of the better players.

Boys and youths coming into the game full of enthusiasm and with a keenness to emulate their elders may or may not be lucky enough to have a good model on which to base their own particular style.

A player like Dai Rees, who developed a fine swing early, a swing which has stood the test of the years and kept him at the top for so long, obviously had a good model to imitate in those early impressionable days.

Others are not so fortunate as I discovered after the war. Sometimes at this fortnightly clinic there were as many as forty, most of whom were scoring in the 80 to 85 bracket in those tournaments that they entered.

One young assistant travelled sixty miles every other week on his day off to attend the clinic. To earn the money for his fare and his lunch he gave up his evenings after the professional's shop closed at seven-thirty and went off to pick apples for cash.

He soon became know to us as the "apple-picker". I am happy to say that his keenness at that time duly brought its reward. Today he is a full professional, nicely settled at a small but good club and doing an excellent job.

Some of these young men who passed through my hands at my Maiden Clinic had it in them to do really well in tournaments.

One, Ken Redford, from Stanmore, Middlesex, went to South Africa and won the South African Open Championship soon after his arrival there. Others were Eddie Ward, who finished well up in a number of tournaments after attending the clinic, Arnold Stickley, who won the P.G.A. Close Championship in i960, and Peter Loxley.

These and others had the makings of really good tournament golfers. Some chose the club professional's career, and I must confess I was more than a little disappointed that a few of them were not prepared to strive for that little bit extra which might have established them in the tournament field.

But I never regretted the time I gave to this clinic throughout the two and a half years of its existence. I have the satisfaction of knowing that the clinic brought marked improvement to a number of young men at a crucial stage in their careers. Today they are better off, and their club members better served as a result.

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