RIVIERA GOLF, AND WHAT MIGHT BE LEARNED FROM LADIES, WITH A
CONSIDERATION OF THE OVERLAPPING GRIP.
One who will only play on summer days is a little less than half a
golfer after all. Golf at the full demands resource, good heart, some
courage, and a settled nerve, and it is of its principle that in the
matter of places, times, and weather the game shall be taken as it is
found. Hence the real golfer should not only tolerate the play in the
bad seasons when there are howling winds and drenching rains, and much
of life seems damp and sad, but he might be expected even to feel some
occasional satisfaction in it. One who can hold himself up to the big
wind and drive a ball that whistles through it to the full drive length,
then play a good second and all with fine allowance and good wind work
with his irons, so that the game works out well enough for any day, is
one whose contentment is a state to be envied. Rarely does one feel the
thrills of the golfing life better than when playing well in a lashing
wind, with clothes that soak and stick; the sense of mastery is
magnificent. Yet of such luxuries of winter golf one may sometimes tire.
The strong would be gentle again; and sunshine comes well after storms
and leaden skies. Swearing in December that this winter shall see us
stay at home the season through, playing on our east coast links
throughout, January finds us hesitate, and in February, if we wait till
then, there is a journey being made away through France to the sweetness
of life by the blue Mediterranean Sea. It is an unforgettable change. We
have spoken wrongly when sometimes after, at the end of a winter season,
we have declared we tired of it. Never.
We have returned to London weary at the end of a January day from
Sunningdale or Walton Heath, or it may have been just back along on the
underground from the Mid-Surrey course at Richmond, which seems as well
in winter as any, and much better than most others. But London is murky
and dirty. It is cold, it is windy, there is a drizzling rain, and the
streets are very dirty. It will be three-quarters of an hour before we
may be seated at the dinner table. Oh, we become a little tired of this!
Troubles never come singly, and probably on such a day a match or
matches have been lost. Those who are not of the community do not
understand what worries make up the full agony of this game, and that is
why the loss of two matches was considered by the gentle lady with her
friend at tea to be the cause complete of the horrid din as of breaking
furniture in the hall, the barely-stifled awful words, the yelping and
limping of the little dog that suggested some sudden and unexpected
injury, and the general impression that was conveyed throughout the
household of havoc and disaster. "It is nothing," said gentle Fanny of
the perfect understanding as, with her toes in pink satin on the fender,
she poured another cup for Mrs. Larcombe. "Really, it is only George,
who, I can tell, has lost _both_ his matches, dear!"
But it was not the matches only. It was the waiting lone and weary for
Marmaduke at the beginning of the day; it was the lame excuse of
Marmaduke for his tardiness; it was the aggravating manner of the man
throughout and the stupidity of the caddie; it was the stickiness of the
greens; it was something wrong with the fateful golfer's lunch that made
it all worse in the afternoon; the slicing that was more frequent and
farther into the rough; the pitch shots that were topped still more; and
the putts that ever lipped and stayed outside. It was the luck that went
viler all the time, the cruelty of circumstance, the misery of it all;
and after the twin defeat the sad discovery and reflection that if one
little thing--perhaps only the pressure of a finger--had been remembered
about some big things that were wrongly done, it might all have been
avoided. It is realised again that of all the sad thoughts the saddest
is: "It might have been." It is then that the agony of golf is
experienced; it is then that the golfer is not happy. And it is then, on
the retreat to town, that one may seem to hear the Mediterranean call,
and see a vision of a sun glistening on a flowered and song-laden land
where golf is played. Take the chance, unhappy man; make the change then
if you can.
The strongest emotions often arise from the widest and most sudden
contrasts. Our beautiful English summer comes to us too slowly and
gradually through the vicissitudes of spring for the fullest delight.
One may step out from the mist and drizzle of a London street into the
greater darkness of a theatre, and it is all blank and gloom and
nothingness, but there is a quick expectancy. A few moments, and there
is the tinkling of a bell, the curtain is rolled up, and there is a
blaze of light with a pretty picture, perhaps, of summer with a full
suggestion of Arcadia. Music and song, love and gladness, and younger
again is the heart in years. Thus for a while the load is lightened. It
is like that when one wanders to the Riviera for golf in the depth of
England's winter. We leave London when it rains and is cold and heavily
depressing; the spirit is weary from the trials of the season. Charing
Cross--the Channel--Paris, hardly less gloomy than her sister
Londres,--the plunge into the rumbling darkness of the fast train on the
P. L. M.--sleep and dreams. And in the morning the bell rings and the
curtain of the new and sunny world rolls up, and it is glorious summer.
Nothing in the way of change of scene is quite so good as this. Those
who do not know the Riviera may try to imagine it, but in the clearest
vision they cannot approach the grand reality of this sudden change.
Marseilles--Toulon--Hyeres--Costebelle; and there is the sunshine, the
flowers, and the game. A rest of a day, quiet slumber through the night,
and in the morning drowsily one hears a beat, beat, beat upon the
window-panes, and, not being then awake to Hyeres, or Costebelle, it
seems perhaps but the dismal tapping of the London rain. But later it is
discovered to be the tapping of the leaves and rosebuds on the glass.
Breakfast on the terrace, the contenting cigar whose smoke rises
wreathingly through a still atmosphere upwards to the blue, and then an
effort to lift oneself from a summer languor. Clubs in possession again,
a walk for a little way along a rose-fringed road, and then a plunge
through a coppice along a broken stony path that thousands of golfers
have trod before. Through a field of narcissi, through the planted
violets, past a little vineyard on to the plain below--there the golf
course is. Then play the game all day, and mount to the hotel again when
the afternoon is nearly spent. But in the earlier afternoon at
Costebelle I would rather climb back through the little wood after my
single round, enjoy this perfect illusion of summer, and read and rest
in laziness. Tints of lemon and citron come into the sky when the sun
falls to its setting. Out beyond the plain is the sea and then the Iles
de Hyeres, or the Iles d'Or as they have been called, because the sun
will shine upon them when it has left the mainland for the
day--Porquerolles, Portcros, Titan, Bagaud, and Roubaud--a
pearly-coloured group. You may make a short journey to them, to the blue
Mediterranean which is so very blue. There is the delicate blue of the
sapphire, and the richer blue of the turquoise. There is the wide blue
of the Italian skies, and a wonderful blue in some women's eyes. But
there is no blue that is so deep, so glorious, so soulful as that of the
Mediterranean Sea, as in fancy I see it now. We gaze upon it and are
content. All is so peaceful and pleasant. Over the hills comes a booming
sound; it must be naval gunnery at Toulon. Grim realities of life and
strife press even into this sweet scene. Yet they are French guns, and
they are not meant for England either. I love Costebelle. For the simple
sunny happiness of the life that is led there it is incomparable.
* * * * *
And this happiness in scene and sun, be sure, is the greater part of the
golf on the French and Italian Riviera. There is often much doubt by
those who have not been there upon the quality of Riviera golf. It
varies. It once was poor; it was bad. It is now much improved, and it is
improving still as the demand for it has quickened, as the people of
southern France who depend so much upon their British visitors have come
to realise the full meaning of "the golf boom" and the education and
bettered tastes of the golfing people who leave Britain in the winter
time. It is now, as golf of the inland kind, quite tolerably good, which
is to say that in degree it might rank fairly well up in the second
class of British inland golf. It is no better than that; it is
sometimes not so good. Climatic difficulties on the Riviera are somewhat
desperate. In the summer there is a continuous baking heat, and this is
followed by days of warmth and nights of frost, and in such confusion of
temperatures the golf courses have to be grown afresh for every season.
Until recent times the putting greens needed to be newly sown and
cultivated for every winter season, and I believe that it was at Nice
that Mr. Hay-Gordon, secretary of courage and discernment as he is,
first gave battle to the destructive climate and determined he would
hold his putting greens--which at Nice are better than at almost any
other place in southern Europe--right through the suns of summer and
keep them on from one season to another. At Nice, again, thanks to gold,
and thought, and enterprise, they have what the guardians of other
Riviera courses do much envy, a magnificent supply of water, and this is
lavished upon the turf through the dry time when the golfers are back at
their homelands. The experiment of Nice, which was a fateful one, proved
successful, and since then it has been copied by other clubs out that
way, and greens are kept on and are much the better for it. In the old
days it was a painful thing, as I remember it, to tread upon those
tender new-born blades of grass, thin and scarce they were, and unfit
for such usage as golfers give. It is far better now. Then also the
construction of the courses has been much improved; but it must be
remembered again that conditions and circumstances do not encourage or
even agree with ideas of length and bunkering as we of Britain entertain
them. Yet these things do not matter. We need no six thousand yards and
no bottle-neck approaches when we wander southwards to the sun. Life
shall be taken simply then; the press of existence shall be relieved,
the game shall be made a little gentler than at other times, the nerves
shall not be unduly tried. So we discover that there is a virtue in what
is little more than five thousand yards, a generous amplitude of short
holes, and enough to satisfy of those that can be done with a driver and
an iron of sorts. In a mood of ease and languor, when even strong men
who like the game find joy in a mixed foursome, we come to admire the
Riviera system; and we may find men at nights hard in argument upon the
points and delicacies of the fifth hole or the fifteenth, the
aggravations of the sixth and the sixteenth, when they would disdain to
think of such like in their golfing life at home. That comes of the
influence of the sun; it soothes and satisfies, and it makes
contentment.
Then there is this good thing to be said for the Riviera golfing way,
that it yields a very full variety, and it might well be advertised that
it embraces something to suit all tastes. Not only does it vary in the
kind of course, but in the way of life that is attached to it. The
manner of living at Hyeres and Costebelle is more of the English country
kind and more sporting healthily open-air, with less of the flummery of
fashion, than it is at other Riviera places, not meaning by that that
there is not enough of good music and social entertainment for evening
hours. The sea is a distance off, and there is next to nothing of
promenading. Here we live well and are happy, and the sun is very warm.
R. L. S. lived at "La Solitude" at Hyeres, and he loved it. The golf in
some respects is as good as elsewhere on the littoral; in some ways it
is even a little better. There is the course of Hyeres flanking one side
of the quaint old town, and there is Costebelle with the chief hotel on
the hillside on the other, and its golf course on the plain below.
Hyeres is a gentle course, pretty, smooth and nice, and much improved
in recent times. The turf is good for southern France, and some of the
holes are remembered, as where we play through an avenue of trees with
silver bark. Golf is younger at Costebelle and it is quite different,
but if one were led to make comparisons, as from which we shall refrain,
it might be said that often youth is no harmful thing. Golf architecture
had already advanced to a science when this course was first made, the
first planning being done by Willie Park, and such as Mr. John Low have
advised upon its improvement since, while M. Peyron has lavished much
money and attention upon it too. Even if there are still some rawnesses
apparent, golf at Costebelle comes near to being the real thing. Then it
is a good point in favour of this end of the Riviera that here we have
the golf almost at the door of our hotel as it is scarcely to be had at
any other place. It is something to walk down to the first tee, and
pluck a rose by the wayside as we go.
* * * * *
That of Cannes is a pretty course. The Grand Duke Michael has done much
for it and here he is a king. Society is high at Cannes, the people come
along to La Napoule, six or seven miles from the town, in their
motor-cars in a long procession, and it is the proper place for the
luncheon party and such social entertainments as go well with a
verandah, sunshine, and the flowers. One would go to the golf club at La
Napoule even though one did not golf; many do--perhaps too many. Those
who eat and chatter, kiss hands and smile, but never take a divot are
losers of something that is heartening. A river runs through this
golfing land, and twice we cross it by a famous ferry worked by hands
upon a rope that is stretched across the stream. On one side of the
river there are twelve holes laid and on the other there are six; but
the six may be considered to be better than the twelve for the pleasure
that they yield. First we play three of the batch of twelve, and then we
are floated to the precious six. Here there are big sand bunkers of a
natural kind, and they are nicely placed. The fairway is tolerably good,
and there are putting greens in pretty places.
If this were all it would be good; but the course of Cannes gains a
splendid charm from its magnificent situation which cannot be ignored.
There is a promise of beauties to come when we approach the club-house
by that long avenue of golden mimosa; later there are glimpses of almost
heavenly scenes. If the golf at these continental places is gentler than
at home, such things as scenery may count for a little more. I have
never had full sympathy with the suggestion that the golfer cares
nothing for scenery or sparkling air except when he is off his game and
then falls back upon them for compensation. There is not only hypocrisy
in this, but in suggesting the player to be scarcely above the savage it
is unfair to a healthy taste that has had some training in appreciation
of natural beauties. One does not dwell upon cloud effects nor let the
mind loose upon a panorama when the strokes are being done and there is
a man to beat, but sunlight and sweet scenes have always their strong
effect subconsciously, and it would be a pity if they had not. I shall
not place the course of Cannes at La Napoule in that warring and jealous
company, many clubs strong they are, each of which claims that it is the
most beautifully situated in the world. I have played upon three or four
of such courses, and indeed their claims have appeared to be strong. It
is enough that Cannes is very beautiful. It will be well if there are a
few moments for waiting caused by a slow-going match in front when your
ball has been placed on its little pinnacle of sand on the fourth teeing
ground, for spread out in the distance there is a glorious panorama of
the snow-capped Maritime Alps, on whose last spur there lies glistening
white in the sunshine the little town of Grasse where sweet perfumes are
distilled and where, as they say, twelve tons of roses are crushed to
make a quart of essence. Grasse rests on that hillside like a linen
sheet dropped there by the gods. When we have done this hole and face
about, there are the pearly-tinted Esterels ahead. Hereabouts the holes
are chiefly laid out through avenues of fir trees, and here and there,
especially when one is approaching the eighth green, the picture is one
that bears some suggestion of an Italian charm. Elsewhere in the round
the Mediterranean is presented, as once when we look across the bay in
which Cannes is placed to Cap d' Antibes at the opposite corner from La
Napoule. By comparison some of the concluding holes are a little dull in
looks; but when we play them in the afternoon the sun is setting behind
the Esterels in front, and then there is indeed a sunset to be seen.
Again, the course of the Nice club is at Cagnes some miles out from the
town. It is different from the others of the Riviera, and it has its
special advantages. I recall an example of one of them which was the
more impressive since it was made on the occasion of my first visit to
the course. That was years ago, and we had been held up at Nice for five
days and five nights by continuous and heavy rain during the whole of
that long time, and it was in February too. Such a spell of Riviera wet
seems almost incredible, but it happened, the oldest inhabitants, for
the credit of their country, declaring that such a thing had never been
before since the world as they knew it had begun. When this kind of
thing happens on the Riviera there is only one thing to do, and that is
go to the casinos; and it was bad for us in every way that this rain
came down like that even if it was good for the Casino Municipal and
the others at Nice and for M. Blanc at the adjacent Monte Carlo. When
the five days and five nights had been endured, when the heart had grown
sick of what happened at the tables, when our thoughts had turned to
Sicily and Egypt--for during this period of the flood I had made one
voyage (we should call it a voyage though the journey was done by
motor-car along that glorious Grand Corniche) to the Riviera of Italy,
and there at Bordighera and San Remo (and what a pretty little course it
is at Arma di Taggia) found it to be raining still--the sun came out
again and the question of golf arose to life. But surely, it seemed,
golf would be impossible for some time; courses would need to dry.
However, we argued that a stroke with a driving mashie is better than no
play, and so we took the car at the Place Massena and soon were out at
Cagnes, and there we played on a course that was as dry as any course
need ever be though the rain had been pelting down to within three or
four hours before. In one or two hollow places there were little pools
of casual water, but otherwise the state of things was such that we
might sit upon the grass when the opposition was badly bunkered and
needed time for his recovery. Others knew that Nice recovers quickly,
for when we were out in the middle of the course we espied some figures
a couple of long holes away, and about the attitude of one of them there
was something strangely familiar. There was a manner of walking on the
course not so much stiff as small and quite precise, and there was a
club being carried vertically, head high up as if it were a gun and the
carrier were one of a line of infantry. I can recall only one man who
sometimes walks with his club like this--not that there is anything
against it--and, knowing him, I still regret that opponent had not
courage to accept a wager of anything from five francs to fifty that I
could name the man at that distance of seven hundred yards, having no
knowledge that he I had in mind was on the Riviera at all. It was Mr.
Arthur Balfour, ex-Prime Minister, who, chafing for lack of golf after
his own five days' shutting up, had motored over from Cannes at the
moment that the rain held up.
There is a certain plainness about many of the holes at Nice, but others
are interesting. The first is appetising, the eighth is a mashie shot
over a belt of trees, and the ninth is one of the longest I know, quoted
on the cards at 605 yards and stretching away to the west, parallel with
the sea-shore, and quite close to it so that a highly extravagant slice
might deliver one's ball to the Mediterranean. However, we get there
very quickly, and the hole is not so long as figures make it seem, for
there is much run on the ball at Cagnes. One of the prettiest holes
follows this one. The sociabilities here are excellent, and Nice itself,
being rather a place of tumultuous excitement and very much within the
Monte Carlo zone and influence, you may find it a beneficial thing in
many ways to get out to the golf club as frequently as you can.
In recent times they have effected a great improvement to the course at
St. Raphael, and up at La Turbie, overlooking Monte Carlo, and in one of
the finest situations conceivable, they have made a new one with
considerable luxury of appointment. The climatic difficulties which they
had to encounter here, at a height of nearly two thousand feet, were
such that they had not dreamt of, much less reckoned upon, and for a
time an appreciable portion of the money was being lost on the greens
that was being gained through the reds and blacks in the casino down
below, the two organisations not being without association with each
other. The construction of this course stands out as one of the great
engineering feats of golf. The top of the mountain on which it was
determined that it should be made was a bare rocky waste. There was not
even the necessary soil to grow the grass on. It was determined to take
up the soil from a neighbouring valley, and three hundred men were
employed to do the work. There was no railway, no horse or mule traction
would get the stuff properly up that hillside, and so it was carried in
baskets on the backs of those three hundred men. Next, rocks were
blasted, the soil was spread, seeds were sown, and a result was awaited
with anxiety. Then came down some tremendous rains, and down the
hillside that soil was washed away, and most of the carrying up had to
be done all over again. But labour and perseverance conquered, and at
last the grass was made to grow, and the plain truth is that here now
they have a course that for the Riviera is quite passably good, and most
extraordinarily beautiful in its situation, the Alps being in the
picture on three sides of it, and the Mediterranean down below on the
fourth. On a fine day Corsica can just be seen. Now it is clearly
indicated that the man who would demonstrate a perfect alliance with
happy fortune must accomplish a grand double event. He should break the
bank at Monte Carlo in the morning, and he should hole in one at La
Turbie in the afternoon.
This course and that of Sospel are a new and separate feature of Riviera
golf. Formerly the whole strength of the golf of the littoral lay at its
western end, and it was down near to the level of the sea. Now Monte
Carlo and Sospel, chiefly Sospel, have moved the balance a little nearer
to the east. Sospel is agreeable; and here again the construction of the
course and its improvement to its present good state stand for a great
triumph of skill and perseverance. Sospel is some thirteen miles behind
Mentone in a valley of the Alpes Maritimes, and it is a quaint old
place. If one never golfed at all, the journey there with all its
thrills and excitements, and the picturesque little town that is at the
end of it, are well worth a day of the time of any man. That journey may
be made by motor-car, or now by tram, and one may safely say that there
is no other golfing journey of its kind that can compare with it. As to
the course, it possesses turf which is as good as anything to be found
in the vicinity of the Mediterranean, and though the round is only a
trifle over five thousand yards, and there is no hole of so much as four
hundred, it is nice golf for all that, and the wooden club is needed
frequently for the second shots.
Here and there by this Mediterranean sea new courses are being made.
They have one at Grasse. There will be others soon. The truth is that
dawdling on the Riviera has gone quite out of fashion, and it has come
to be understood at last that this wine-like air and the golden sunshine
are better than the dim light and dank atmosphere of the gaming rooms. A
few persons who go to the Riviera in the winter seem to be nervously
afraid of giving up much of their time to golf. I have heard them say to
themselves and others: "Is not the golf of London better than anything
by the Mediterranean, and why then do we pay hundreds of francs to come
here merely to play golf, and almost forget that we are in the south of
France?" You will not forget that you are by the blue sea to the south
of Europe. Not only is the glory of this part of the world in winter
better understood and better appreciated by those who golf than by those
who don't, but by far the most is made of their time by the players of
the game. I do not see what is the use of going to the Riviera unless
one golfs.
* * * * *
It may seem a strange reflection, but it is the truth, that when at the
Riviera for any length of time in the winter, and especially when at
such a place as Hyeres, one is inclined more to a thorough overhauling
of one's game, a study of its weaknesses and a determination upon
certain improvements, than at any other time. A good explanation is,
however, possible. At holiday time like this one has the play
continually. One is detached from all the workaday considerations of
life at home. And then again one is thrown among new golfing friends
from all parts of the world, people of infinite golfing variety and all
charged with their own new ideas. We see every kind of style and every
degree of skill, and if much of the style is bad and the skill is often
deficient, there is something always to be learned or suggested. And it
has been found as a matter of practical experience that at such places
the majority of people fall to thinking of their ways of driving, often
because their driving at the beginning out there is very bad, and that
in turn is often due to the difficulty at first of sighting the ball
properly in the pellucid atmosphere. But the whole system of driving is
overhauled, and one would dare to suggest that proportionately to the
number of players involved there are more conversions made from the
plain grip to the overlapping on the Riviera in the season than anywhere
else. Only this very morning as I write--a bitter cold morning when I
shiver in proximity to an east coast links, and sigh for the passing of
a few days more when the Channel shall be crossed and a glad journey
south made on the P. L. M.--a letter comes up to me from a friend at
Hyeres demanding that all possible information printed and otherwise
shall be transmitted on the subject of the grip, for there is a drastic
revolution to be made in the case of one anxious golfer! In this matter,
one of the most important in all practical golf as it surely is, there
is a suggestion of great value to be made.
The advantages of this grip as they are being discovered by more
converts than ever before, are greater driving power owing to wrist work
being easier, and also the fact that the left arm and hand pull the club
through better and drive the ball as it ought to be driven, the
overlapping reducing the right hand to a low subjection. No matter how
good and careful the player may be, he who uses the two-V grip is
certain sometimes to be in trouble with his right hand, which will
constantly attempt to establish a lordship over the left, which when
done is fatal to the good swing and the straight ball. Straight driving
along a good, low trajectory, getting a ball with plenty of run on it,
might almost be said to be characteristic of the overlappers, who are
certainly off their drive less frequently than their brethren. These
being the advantages of overlapping, how is it to be gained by those who
have all along been addicted to the plain two-V way of gripping, and now
find it impossible after many trials to convert themselves, these trials
having been made in the most obvious way by hard practice on the teeing
ground and with a brassey through the green? This is a good question to
ask, but the answer is too often disappointing. Those who have started
their golfing lives as old-fashioned two-V men seem fated to remain as
such. As it happens, I believe I have come by the simplest and most
effectual way of making the conversion; at all events, it is one that
has never failed, though it has been tried in very many cases. It is
simplicity itself. Nearly every man who tries to adopt this grip does so
with his driver. It is natural, because it is for the driving that he
most wants the grip, and he never thinks about it for anything else. In
these experiments, however, he feels in constant danger of missing the
ball--and sometimes does miss it--is most extremely uncomfortable,
entirely lacking in confidence, and sooner or later comes to the
conclusion that the overlapping grip, whatever its merits, is not for
him. The sure and certain way is to begin with the putter, which is easy
and also valuable, because the experience of the best players is that
the overlapping grip improves one's putting at least as much as it does
one's driving. You may become accustomed enough to this way of gripping
the putter on the first day to try it in the most important match or
competition. After two or three weeks of this way of putting, let the
grip be tried for short running-up approaches, which will be
satisfactorily accomplished after a very little practice, and then,
after another week or two, let it be used for short lofted shots. The
crisis comes when a swing of such length has to be made that the head of
the club has to be raised more than elbow-high. A difficulty will be
experienced at this stage, but it will soon be overcome, and when it is
the way to overlapping with the driver is opened. Within a week the man
is a complete and happy convert.
On the general question of grips and gripping, which is high in the
minds of golfers preparing for their season's campaign and setting their
bags in order, one does feel that points of detail are not generally
considered as they should be. In many cases the grip has really more to
do with the effectiveness of a club than the head thereof, and yet
perhaps not more than one golfer in four is properly suited. In general
the grips are too short, too thick, and their thickness is too uniform.
A very thick grip tends to take weight from the head, to spoil the feel
and balance of the club, and to reduce the sense of control over it,
but thickness in moderation is good for weak hands and fingers. Thin
grips throw the weight into the head, give extra control, and improve
the feel, but in excess need strong hands and fingers. The professionals
nearly all use quite thin grips, their hands and fingers being very
strong. But remember that the right hand and its fingers are stronger
than the others, and also that that hand has less work to do in
gripping, while as it is mainly concerned with steadying and guiding it
is best suited by thinness of grip. Clearly, then, the grip should be
thicker for the left hand than for the right, should, in fact, taper.
This morsel of theory is overwhelmingly justified in practice, and that
is what we mean when we say that most grips are too uniform in
thickness, for they are nearly as thick for the right hand as for the
left, and end suddenly with a kind of step just beyond the place where
the right forefinger is applied. For hands of moderate strength let the
circumference at the top for the left hand be 2-11/16 in. in diameter,
and at the place where the right forefinger holds on let it be 2-1/2 in.
From this point let it taper off gradually for about 4 in. until the
leather has nothing underneath it, and then half an inch of wrapping on
the bare stick brings the grip, as it were, to fade away into nothing.
The full length of a grip of this kind may be about 12-1/2 in., and the
tapering conduces greatly to the improved feel of the club and to a look
that somehow makes for confidence. In the case of iron clubs the length
and the decreased thickness towards the bottom are very good when taking
a short grip of the club.
* * * * *
Matters appertaining to ladies' golf also come more prominently before
the average male player of the game when he is on the Riviera with the
sun than they do at other times. He sees more of it for the reason that
his home exclusiveness cannot be tolerated there, and he sees much to
make him think, even though the best lady players of the game do not
often go that way. After watching a ladies' championship for the first
time I left the place with some deep reflections. The idea that men have
anything whatever to learn from ladies in regard to golf may seem
preposterous, but it is not so. There may be a thousand times as many
good men golfers as there are lady golfers who are as good, but there
are just a few of the latter who are very good indeed, far better than
they are generally supposed to be, and their style and methods are very
well worth studying. When great events are stirring in golf the leading
Scottish newspapers regularly print leading articles upon them, of so
much general importance are they considered. After the ladies'
championship in question, I read a leading article in a Glasgow daily
newspaper, and it said that it was evident that if Miss Ravenscroft and
Miss Cecil Leitch were to enter for the Amateur Championship and were to
maintain their best Turnberry form the result would be disconcerting to
those who hold that the scratch man can give the equally competent woman
golfer half a stroke or thereabouts. With this I agree. The game of
girls who can drive 250 yards, who can win 330-yard holes in threes to
other girls' fours, who can do nine holes in 37, and so forth, needs to
be taken quite seriously. The real importance of the matter is just
this, that the best of these girls have arrived at a result which is
superior to that attained by the average man golfer, and they have
reached it by a system and a method which are practised by comparatively
few male players. Their golfing principles and styles are quite
different. Is there nothing we can copy from them? Surely.
Now we hear very much about 300-yard drives, which one is half given to
understand have become the regular thing with the most modern balls; but
we know, as a matter of fact, that the average man does not drive
anything like this distance, and that he would give a part of his income
to be able to drive as far as some of the very best girls do at the
championships. They achieve their distance not at all by hard hitting,
for they hit quite gently, but by long, free swinging, perfect timing,
and especially by full following through, that is to say, they swing in
just the same way as it was necessary for the best men players to swing
in the days of the gutty ball. They finish their swings with the club
head and shaft right round their backs and their hands well up; I saw
some of them who made nearly as perfect models of the golf swing as
Harry Vardon does in the picture made of him by Mr. George Beldam and in
the statuette by Mr. Hal Ludlow. Their style was most excellent and it
was a fine thing to see. Necessity has caused it. These girls have not
the strength of arm, wrist, and fingers to get a good length in the same
way that men get, or try to get it now; the rubber-cored ball has not
made the game so easy for them that they can dispense with an inch of
the fullest swing that they can make. They seem to use their wrists but
little, and all their movements are as smooth and harmonious as they can
be. In this way they drive many yards farther than the average man
golfer does. In the Amateur Championship you will not see one man in
three drive the ball in this way now. Short swinging, imperfect
following through, and a jerky, snappy kind of hitting have become
almost general now that the balls can be so easily driven by the
exercise of mere wrist power. The result is that good style in driving
has become very rare among men. From the point of view of results
obtained this is well enough for men who play in championships; they
drive much farther than the best girls do, though I do not think that
they are generally so straight. But the average golfer, consciously or
unconsciously, copies his superiors, and most of them have now no style
and do not know the sensuous pleasure that is obtained from a full
swing, a clean hit, and the complete finish which seems to give a thrill
to every nerve in the system. Then, if these men with all their jerks
and wrist strain still do not get that length to which they may think
they are entitled--as most of them do not--would it not be worth while
to go back to the old way of better style and practise most assiduously
at the full swing until they get it right? The very best girls show
evidence of fine schooling in this matter. They hit the ball with
marvellous cleanness. In a large proportion of cases the advice to male
players in these days to swing short and hit hard is sound so far as
mere results are concerned. But all men are not so strong in the forearm
as they may think, and they do not get the length they seek, while
another thing to remember is that the long complete swing when once
mastered is less frequently thrown out of gear than the short one, which
is a very difficult thing to keep in order.
Then there is something to notice also in the preliminaries to the drive
as the really good girls go through them. Not all players suspect what a
deep influence the preliminary waggling of the club has on the
subsequent swing. The influence is enormous, and the way that the
majority of male players waggle is one that directly encourages jerky
hitting. You will find that they tighten their wrists as they lay the
club to the ball and move the head of the club back in two or three
short, quick movements, rarely letting the head go forward over the
ball. This is strongly conducive to a fast back-swing, a fast on-swing,
and no follow through. It makes for the hard hit pure and simple. Now
many girls who get long balls by big swings keep their wrists very loose
in the waggling and allow the head of the club to swing easily backwards
and forwards like a pendulum two or three times, four or five feet in
front of and behind the ball each time, so that when the real swing is
entered upon it is almost a continuation of the waggle and is made at
much the same pace. This is a direct encouragement to the long swing,
long follow through, and smooth rhythm of the entire movement. Between
the man's waggle and his swing when done in the manner described there
is no sort of connection whatever, and the driving is always much the
poorer for the fact.
Again, in the putting the ladies' play is full of morals for men. I do
not hesitate to say, after an immense amount of observation, that the
putting of many of the girls at their championship is quite as good as
most of that we see in the men's Amateur Championship. They are deadly
with the short putts up to two yards, and they hole the long ones with
astonishing frequency. They come to their conclusions speedily as to
what is the proper thing to do, and, having done so, they make their
strokes with no further hesitation. We see very little tedious and
laborious examination of the line, and, we may be sure, that they are
the gainers for it. In the men's Amateur Championship the wearisome ways
of some of the competitors are notorious. They study the line
meditatively from north, south, east, and west, convince themselves of
the existence of influences which do not in reality exist at all, next
they hang over the ball with their putter addressed to it until one
suspects them of having fallen into a cataleptic state, and then they
miss the putt. The girls putt with a great confidence and accuracy. Of
course these eulogiums refer only to the best of the lady golfers;
between them and the others there is a very big gap, and it would be
ridiculous to pretend that the average championship girl is yet within
miles, as it were, of the corresponding man. But she has ways that the
average man might often copy to advantage. Miss Cecil Leitch, who is
surely the finest mistress of golfing method and style that her sex has
ever yielded to the game, and is splendidly worthy of the championship
that at last, after much waiting, she won at Hunstanton in the summer of
1914, comes as near to being a perfect model as any one I can think of.
She has graced a masculine way in golf with some feminine delicacy, and
there is art, there is science, and there is rhythm in all her golfing
movements. And she is splendidly accurate. Her iron play is a thing to
be admired, and one might say of her as one cannot of all players who
have been many years at the game, whatever may have been their success,
that she is indeed a golfer.
* * * * *
And whoever is the champion of any particular period may be interested
to know that at no time and place is he ever so much appreciated as away
from his own country during the time when it is so wet and cold at home
that people play comparatively little--less perhaps than they should do.
As masters indeed they are properly regarded, and most dissectingly
discussed are the champions when their disciples are abroad; and it is a
good thing too, for if there must be influences on the game of humble
players, let them come from the heights. In this matter many of us have
always regarded John Henry Taylor as quite one of the best of models,
despite what any one may say about a lack of beauty in his style.
Taylor, five times champion, is indeed a very great master of this game,
and he has special advantages as a model in that first he is deeply
practical and can explain everything he does correctly (I know some of
the greatest players who explain, but incorrectly, that is, they do not
even know what they do themselves), can reason, and is almost, as one
might say, a medium between the inspired play of Vardon and the
mechanical way of Braid. He is one of the most thoroughly practical
golfers who have ever played, and perhaps he has taught more other
golfers than any one who has ever lived. I believe that to be the case.
Taylor plays his wooden clubs with a round swing, and to-day some great
authorities are disposed to condemn that style of swing utterly and
declare that only the upright one is the real thing. But what about
Hoylake in 1913? Then Taylor won his fifth championship, and he did it
chiefly, as I believe, by his magnificent driving, done in such
circumstances of terrible weather as would have made it next to
impossible for any ordinarily good player to drive at all. Above
everything, Taylor's golf is effective, and it is effectiveness we want.
Once he explained in an interesting way how he viewed his own driving
and how he gained the power that he does with his comparatively short
swing. He is what we may call an open-stancer, and he insists that
stance and character of swing must be adapted to each other in a special
way, that for the open stance only a round-the-body swing is suitable,
and that when a man plays an upright sort of swing with a square stance
his right elbow must inevitably leave his side, and that is one of the
worst and most frequent faults in driving, though one often little
suspected or appreciated. If he stood square, says the champion, he
feels he would lose direction; if his swing were upright he thinks he
would lose distance, and if his right elbow were allowed to leave his
side, then he is sure he would lose power; and direction, distance, and
power are the three essentials of good driving. So he is all for the
open stance and flat swing, and one of its chief merits and necessities
is that in the back-swing the wrists do not permit the head of the club
to move outwards and backwards in the line of flight behind the ball as
it has been preached they should do, but begin to circle the club round
at once, and by this means the right elbow is kept to the side. The
importance of this elbow movement is very great. It might be safe to say
that more than half the golfers of to-day do it wrongly and suffer
accordingly. Taylor urges, of course, that the initial turn of the
wrists at the very beginning of the swing is extremely important; and
then as to the arm movement, he emphasises that the right elbow should
be kept close to the side and should move round the side irrespective of
any movement of the body. That makes for a smooth flat swing, and a
sense of enormous gain in power is certainly the result. He says that he
feels a gain of half as much power again by this movement in comparison
with an upright swing. The initial wrist movement induces it. He warns
those who think of trying to flatten their swing, and so gain some of
the power which he certainly has, against allowing excessive body
movement to which they will be very liable.