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Acknowledgements - I wish to acknowledge the invaluable assistance given by Sydney Spicer, Golf Correspondent of the Sunday Express, in preparing this book for the publishers. Incidentally, he has been a pupil of mine for several years and I was able to help him become a scratch golfer.

My thanks also to Mr. G. Critchlow who drew the illustrations and to Mr. P. Cooper for photographic assistance.

Foreword - By Charles Lawrie

Captain of the British Walker Cup Team, 1961, 1963

Captain of the British Team for the Eisenhower Trophy, i960, 1962

Member of the British Amateur Selection Committee since 19 59

Almost every golfer in the world intensely wants to play the game better. This must be largely due to the fact that the better one plays, the more enjoyment there is to be had from it.

01. Objective - What is the point of curing a slice by planting the germ of a hook which erupts within the next few days? The wretched golfer, overjoyed at losing his slice, is soon in despair again as he struggles on the left-hand side of the course instead of the right.

Solving one problem by creating another simply adds to the pupil's confusion and depresses his morale. It is NEGATIVE teaching which can never lead to lasting progress.

02. The Grip - The role of the hands in the operation of sending the ball to its objective is a subject of endless argument. The importance I attach to the hands may be gauged in the first place by what I have to say about the grip. I want to deal with it at some length and in considerable detail.

03. The Hands - Strong hands, wrists and fingers are essential to the retention of a correct and constant grip in every detail and the development of the feeling that it is fitted snugly to the shaft.

You may well ask why this emphasis on strength in view of my warning against a vice-like grip of the club. After all, a golf club only weighs between twelve and fifteen-and-a-half ounces.

04. Stance + Address - 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.

05. Backswing - You are now properly set up alongside the ball in a position from which to commence the first operation in swinging the club (in this instance a driver, although when giving personal instruction I like to start a pupil with a five iron.)

Obviously if you are gripping the club correctly and standing ideally to the ball you are giving yourself a real chance at the outset to shape a sound backswing. That being so, try not to rush into this chapter.

06. More Backswing - Here are two exercises which will help you to master the main essentials of the backswing.

The whole art of swinging the club back from the ball to a position in which you are poised to deliver a solid and powerful blow is largely governed by a system of control running diagonally down the body from the left shoulder to the right foot.

07. The Drownsing - The backswing has prepared us for the next phase the action of bringing the club head back to the ball with the full uninhibited release of controlled power.

I do not propose, at this stage, to deal further with the crucial transition which takes place at the top of the swing. You have learned from a preceding chapter that the feeling of a slight pause helps in affecting the change of direction, but you must beware in making this pause not to turn the back-swing and the downswing into two entirely separate actions. I am no believer in prefabricated golf swings.

08. Follow-Through - The follow-through and finish I regard as integral parts of the swing which do not entirely look after themselves even though the backswing and downswing have been well carried out.

Remember that the ball at impact spreads on the face of the club as it is compressed by the momentum of the club at AND AFTER impact. Therefore any deviation or impediment of the club head in the follow-through must affect the flight of the ball, when it does part company with the club-face.

09. Making A Delivery - 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.

10. Short Game - Unlike many books of golf instruction this one contains no sections confined to the playing of wooden clubs and the various irons. There is no need. The same swing principles are applied in the playing of all clubs from the driver down to the wedges.

Adjustments to lie, loft of club-face and length of shaft which have been made in the factory before the clubs reach you will steepen the arc or widen it according to the club selected for the stroke.

11. Practice - 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.

12. Mental Side - Here and there in the course of my analysis of the technique reference has been made to the mental side of golf a game which will always attack your nerves and exploit your imagination if you allow it to.

Various estimates of the extent to which golf is mental as distinct from the purely physical have been expounded in locker-room and in print. Some pundits, amateur and professional, have even maintained that golf is as much as seventy-five per cent mental.

13. Teaching (1) - 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.

14. Teaching (2) - There is nothing unorthodox about the method I teach. It is based upon simple, sound and well-tried principles and does not ask the player to force himself into contortions in the belief that the club-face is being kept square when in fact it is being shut.

You will have realize d by now that I offer no gimmicks in an attempt to by-pass one fundamental or another.

THE END

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