THE WAY TO GOLF
The mistakes of the beginner--Too eager to play a round--Despair
that follows--A settling down to mediocrity--All men may excel--The
sorrows of a foozler--My advice--Three months' practice to begin
with--The makings of a player--Good golf is best--How Mr. Balfour
learned the game--A wise example--Go to the professional--The
importance of beginning well--Practise with each club
separately--Driver, brassy, cleek, iron, mashie, and putter--Into
the hole at last--Master of a bag of clubs--The first match--How
long drives are made--Why few good players are coming on--Golf is
learned too casually.
There are different ways of learning to play the great game of golf,
each of which enjoys its share of patronage. Here as elsewhere, there
are, of course, the two broad divisions into which the methods of doing
all things are in the first instance classed--the right way and the
wrong way--and, generally speaking, the wrong way has proved the more
popular and is accountable for much of the very bad golf that one sees
almost every day upon the links. There are two mistakes to which the
beginner is much addicted, and to them is due the unhappy circumstance
that in so many cases he never gets his club handicap down to single
figures. Before he has ever played golf in his life, but at that
interesting period when he has made up his mind to do so, and has bought
his first set of clubs, he is still inclined to make the same error that
is made by so many people who know nothing of the game, and loftily
remark that they do not want to know anything--that it is too absurdly
simple to demand serious thought or attention, and can surely need no
special pains in learning to play. Is not the ball quite still on the
tee before you, and all that is necessary being to hit it, surely the
rest is but a question of strength and accuracy of aim? Well, we need
not waste time in discussing the opinions of the scoffers outside, or in
submitting that there never was a game less easy to learn than golf. But
the man who has been converted to golf most frequently has a vestige of
this superstition of his heathen days lingering with him, and thus at
the outset he is not inclined to waste any time, as he would say, in
tuition, particularly as it happens that these new converts when quite
fresh are invariably most delightfully enthusiastic. They have promised
themselves a new sensation, and they are eager to get on to the links
and see how much further than the two hundred yards that they have heard
about they can drive at the first attempt or two. Then comes the
inevitable disappointment, the despair, the inclination to give it up,
and finally the utter abject despondency which represents the most
miserable state on earth of the golfer, in which he must be closely
watched lest he should commit murder upon the beautiful set of clubs of
which at the beginning he was so proud, and which he spent his evenings
in brightening to the degree that they resembled the family plate. Then
after this passage through purgatory come the first gleams of hope, when
two holes in succession have been done in only one over bogey, and a 24
handicap man has actually been beaten by 3 up and 2 to play--a conquest
which, if it is the first one, is rarely forgotten in the golfer's
lifetime. After that there is a steady settling down to mediocrity.
There is afterwards only an occasional fit of despair, the game is for
the most part thoroughly enjoyed, there are times when, after a round in
which driving and putting have been rather better than usual, the golfer
encourages himself over his cup of tea with the fancy that after all he
may some day win a medal and become a senior; but in the main the
conviction forces itself upon him that it is impossible that he can ever
become a really fine player. He argues that this is not at all his own
fault. He points out to himself that circumstances are too strong for
him. He considers that he is not very young--at least not so young as
many of the experts of his club who have been golfing ever since they
were boys. His limbs have not that suppleness which makes the scratch
player. His eye is not so keen as theirs. Besides, he is a business man
who has to give up so much of his time to the earning of his daily bread
that it is impossible he should ever devote himself to the game with
that single-mindedness which alone can ensure proficiency. He must take
himself as he finds himself, and be satisfied with his 18 handicap.
These are the somewhat pathetic excuses that he makes in this mood of
resignation. Of course he is wrong--wrong from the beginning to the
end--but there is little satisfaction in that for the earnest lover of
the game who would see all men excel, and who knows only too well that
this failure is but a specimen of hundreds of his kind--good golfing
lives thrown away, so to speak. If a man is not a cripple, if he suffers
from no physical defect, there is no reason why he should not learn to
play a good game of golf if he goes about it in the right way. There is
indeed a one-armed golfer who plays a very fair game, and one may admit
all these things without in any way suggesting that golf is not a game
for the muscles and the nerves and all the best physical qualities of a
well-grown man. No great amount of brute force is necessary, and
fleetness of foot, which men lose as they grow old, is never wanted; but
still golf is a game for manly men, and when they take it up they should
strive to play it as it deserves to be played.
Now I know what severe temptation there will be to all beginners to
disregard the advice that I am about to offer them; but before
proceeding any further I will invite them to take the opinion of any old
golfer who, chiefly through a careless beginning (he knows that this is
the cause), has missed his way in the golfer's life, and is still
plodding away as near the limit handicap as he was at the beginning.
The beginner may perhaps be disposed to rely more upon the statement of
this man of experience and disappointment than on that of the
professional, who is too often suspected of having his own ends in view
whenever he gives advice. Let the simple question be put to him whether,
if he could be given the chance of doing it all over again from the
beginning, he would not sacrifice the first three or six months of play
to diligent study of the principles of the game, and the obtaining of
some sort of mastery over each individual shot under the careful
guidance of a skilled tutor, not attempting during this time a single
complete round with all his clubs in action, and refusing all
temptations to play a single match--whether he would not undergo this
slow and perhaps somewhat tedious period of learning if he could be
almost certain of being able at the end of it to play a really good game
of golf, and now at this later period of his career to have a handicap
much nearer the scratch mark than his existing one is to the border-line
between the senior and the junior? I am confident that in the great
majority of cases, looking back on his misspent golfing youth, he would
answer that he would cheerfully do all this learning if he could begin
again at the beginning. Now, of course, it is too late, for what is once
learned can only with extreme difficulty be unlearned, and it is almost
impossible to reform the bad style and the bad habits which have taken
root and been cultivated in the course of many years; and if it were
possible it would be far more difficult than it would have been to learn
the game properly at the beginning.
My earnest advice to the beginner is to undergo this slow process of
tuition for nothing less than three months, and preferably more. It is a
very long time, I know, and it may seem painfully tedious work, simply
knocking a ball backwards and forwards for all those months; but if he
does not accept my suggestion he will have harder things to try his
patience during many years afterwards, while, if he takes my advice, he
may be down very near to scratch at the end of his first year, and he
will be very thankful that he spent the period of probation as he did.
He will constantly be giving a half to players who have been playing for
more years than he has months, and he will be holding his own in the
very best golfing company. He will be getting the finest delight out of
the game that it is possible to get. It is said that the long handicap
man gets as much pleasure out of the game as the short handicap man. As
the former has never been a short handicap man he is evidently not
qualified to judge. The scratch man, who has been through it all, would
never change his scratch play for that of his old long-handicap days--at
least I have never yet met the scratch man who would. No doubt the noble
army of foozlers derive an immense amount of enjoyment from the practice
of their game, and it is my earnest prayer that they may long continue
to do so. It is one of the glorious advantages of golf that all, the
skilled and the unskilled, can revel in its fascinations and mysteries;
but there is no golfing delight so splendid as that which is obtained
from playing the perfect game, or one which nearly approaches it. The
next best thing to it is playing what one knows to be an improving game,
however bad, and the golfer whose play has been incorrectly established
has not often even the knowledge that his game is improving. He declares
more often than not that it gets worse, and one is frequently inclined
to believe him.
Now the middle-aged man may say that he is too old to go in for this
sort of thing, that all he wants is a little fresh air and exercise, and
as much enjoyment as he can get out of playing the game in just the same
sort of way that the "other old crocks" do. He would rather play well,
of course, if it were not too late to begin; but it is too late, and
there is an end of it. That is the way in which he puts it. So large a
proportion of our new converts to golf belong to this middle-aged class,
that it is worth while giving a few special words of advice to them. Mr.
Forty and Mr. Forty-Five, you are not a day too old, and I might even
make scratch men of you, if I were to take you in hand and you did all
the things I told you to do and for as long as I told you. Given fair
circumstances, there is no reason why any man should despair of becoming
either a scratch player or one who is somewhere very near it, and it is
as easy to learn to play well as it is to learn to play badly.
So I advise every golfer to get hold of the game stroke by stroke, and
never be too ambitious at the commencement. I have heard it stated on
very good authority that when Mr. Balfour first began to play he
submitted himself to very much the same process of tuition as that which
I am about to advise, and that under the guidance of Tom Dunn he
actually spent a miserable fortnight in bunkers only, learning how to
get out of them from every possible position. The right honourable
gentleman must have saved hundreds of strokes since then as the result
of that splendid experience, trying as it must have been. He is in these
days a very good and steady player, and he might be still better if
parliamentary cares did not weigh so heavily upon him. I may humbly
suggest that the way in which he began to play golf was characteristic
of his wisdom.
Therefore, when the golfer has become possessed of his first set of
clubs, let him proceed to the shop of a good professional
player--presumably it will be the shop where he bought his clubs--and
let him place himself unreservedly in the hands of this expert in the
game. Most professionals are good players and good teachers, and the
golfer cannot go far wrong in this matter if he allows himself to be
guided by his own instincts. I say that he should place himself
unreservedly in this man's hands; but in case it should be necessary I
would make one exception to this stipulation. If he thinks well of my
advice and desires to do the thing with the utmost thoroughness from the
beginning, he may request that for the first lesson or two no ball may
be put upon the ground at which to practise swings. The professional is
sure to agree that this is the best way, though he encounters so few
beginners who are prepared to make all the sacrifices that I have
suggested, that he might have hesitated in recommending this course of
procedure himself.
A golfer's swing is often made for good or ill in the first week of his
experience. His first two days of practice may be of the greatest
importance in fashioning his style. If, when he takes his first lesson
or two and makes his first few swings, he has a ball on the ground
before him which he is trying to hit, all his thoughts will be
concentrated on what appears to him to be the necessity of hitting
it--hitting it at any cost. No matter what he has been told about the
way to swing, he will forget it all in this moment of anxiety, and swing
anyhow. In such circumstances a really natural and proper swing is
rarely accomplished, and, before the golfer is aware of the frightful
injustice he has done himself, his future prospects will probably have
been damaged. But if he has no ball before him he will surely learn to
swing his club in exactly the way in which it ought to be swung. His
whole mind will be concentrated upon getting every detail of the action
properly regulated and fixed according to the advice of his tutor, and
by the time he has had two lessons in this way he will have got so
thoroughly into the natural swing, that when he comes to have a ball
teed up in front of him he will unconsciously swing at it in the same
manner as he did when it was absent, or nearly so. The natural swing, or
some of its best features, will probably be there, although very likely
they will be considerably distorted.
At the same time the young golfer must not imagine because he has
mastered the proper swing when there is no ball before him, that he has
overcome any considerable portion of the difficulties of golf, for even
some of the very best players find that they can swing very much better
without a ball than with one. However, he may now taste the sweet
pleasure of driving a ball from the tee, or of doing his best with that
object in view. His initial attempts may not be brilliant; it is more
than likely that they will be sadly disappointing. He may take comfort
from the fact that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred they are so.
But by and by a certain confidence will come, he will cease, under the
wise advice of his tutor, to be so desperately anxious to hit the ball
anyhow so long as he hits it, and then in due course the correctness of
swing which he was taught in his first two days will assert itself, and
the good clean-hit drives will come. There will be duffings and toppings
and slicings, but one day there will be a long straight drive right away
down the course, and the tyro will be told that the professional himself
could not have done it better. This is one of the most pleasurable
moments in life.
His system of practice thereafter should be upon the following lines. He
should continue to practise diligently with his driver until he gets
these good, long balls nearly every time, sternly resisting the
temptation even to so much as look at any of the other nice new clubs
that he has got in his bag, and whose mysteries he is exceedingly
curious to investigate. It may take him a week or a fortnight or a month
to master the driver; but he should do it before he gives a thought to
any other club. When he can use the driver with confidence, he may take
out his new brassy and go through the same process with that, until he
feels that on a majority of occasions, from a fairly decent lie, he
could depend upon making a respectable brassy shot. He will find
unsuspected difficulties in the brassy, and in doing his best to
overcome them he will probably lose to some extent the facility for
driving which he had acquired. Therefore, when he has become a player
with his brassy, he should devote a short space of time to getting back
on to his drive. It will not take him long, and then he should take out
both the clubs he has been practising with and hammer away at the two
of them together, until after a large amount of extra practice he finds
that he is fairly reliable in driving a ball from the tee to begin with,
and putting in a creditable second shot with his brassy from the lie
upon which he found his ball.
During this second stage of learning he must deny himself the pleasure
of trying his iron clubs just as rigorously as he restrained himself
from the brassy when he was practising drives only; but when the driver
and the brassy are doing well, he may go forward with the cleek. He will
not find this learning such dull work after all. There will be something
new in store for him every week, and each new club as it is taken out of
the bag will afford an entirely new set of experiences. After the driver
and the brassy it will be like a new game when he comes to try cleek
shots, and in the same way he will persevere with the cleek until it is
evident that he really knows how to use it. The driver, the brassy, and
the cleek may then be practised with on the same occasion, and if he has
made the best use of his time and is an apt pupil, he will find himself
now and then, with these three shots taken in turn, getting beyond the
green at some of the longest holes. Next it will be the turn of the
iron, and so in due season he will be able to practise with the driver,
the brassy, the cleek, and the iron. The mashie will follow, and then
the five of them together, and at last he may have an afternoon on the
green trying his skill with a putter, and listening for the first time
to the music of the ball--no such music as this to the golfer's ear,
though it consists of but a single note--as it drops into the tin and is
holed out at last.
He is at work now with all the clubs that are usually necessary to play
a hole; but at the risk of seeming over careful I would warn him once
more against going along too fast, and thinking that even at this stage
he is able to embark on match play with all the days of studentship left
behind. When he takes out his full set of clubs, he will find, in using
them as occasion demands, that he is strangely erratic all of a sudden
with one or two of them. Let him have half an hour's practice once more
alone with these troublesome fellows until the old order of things has
been restored. Let him treat all other offenders in the same manner. He
must be determined that there shall not be a club in his bag that shall
be allowed to play these tricks with him. Let one day's hard labour be
the invariable penalty, until at last they are all obedient in his
hands, and the joyful day comes when he feels that he can pick any tool
out of his golfing bag and use it skilfully and well, and that after
examining a ball in any lie, at any distance from the hole, or with any
hazard before him, he knows exactly how it should be played, and feels
that he has a very reasonable chance of playing it in that way and
achieving the success that such a shot deserves. Such a stroke will not
be brought off correctly every time; the golfer has not yet been born
who always does the right thing in the right way. But the more one
practises the more frequently will he succeed. Following Mr. Balfour's
good example, the beginner may do worse than spend a few days trying the
most difficult strokes he can discover on his links, for in actual play
he will find himself in these difficult places often enough to begin
with, and a little special study of such shots at the outset will prove
a very valuable investment of time. The ball should be thrown down
carelessly at different places, and should be played from the spot at
which it settles, however uninviting that spot may be.
When he has secured a fair command over all his clubs, from the driver
to the niblick, the golf student may play a round of the links; but he
should do so only under the watchful eye of the professional, for he
will find that in thus marching on from hole to hole, and perhaps
getting a little excited now and then when he plays a hole more than
usually well, it is only too easy to forget all the good methods in
which he has been so carefully trained, and all the wise maxims he
knows so well by heart that he could almost utter them in his sleep. Let
him play a few rounds in this way, and in between them devote himself as
assiduously as ever to practise with individual clubs, before he thinks
of playing his first match. He must settle his game on a secure
foundation before he measures his strength against an opponent, for
unless it is thus safeguarded it is all too likely that it will crumble
to ruins when the enemy is going strongly, and the novice feels, with a
sense of dismay, that he is not by any means doing himself justice. Of
course I am not suggesting that he should wait until he has advanced far
towards perfection before he engages in his first match. When he has
thoroughly grasped the principles and practice of the game, there is
nothing like match play for proving his quality, but he should not be in
haste thus to indulge himself. Any time from three to six months from
the day when he first took a club in hand will be quite soon enough, and
if he has been a careful student, and is in his first match not overcome
with nerves, he should render a good account of himself and bring
astonishment to the mind of his adversary when the latter is told that
this is the first match of a lifetime.
During the preparatory period the golfer will be wise to limit his
practices to three or four days a week. More than this will only tire
him and will not be good for his game. I have only now to warn him
against a constant attempt, natural but very harmful, to drive a much
longer ball every time than was driven at the previous stroke. He must
bring himself to understand that length comes only with experience, and
that it is due to the swing becoming gradually more natural and more
certain. He may see players on the links driving thirty or forty yards
further than he has ever driven, and, wondering why, he is seized with a
determination to hit harder, and then the old, old story of the foozled
drive is told again. He forgets that these players are more experienced
than he is, that their swing is more natural to them, and that they are
more certain of it. In these circumstances the extra power which they
put into their stroke is natural also. To give him an exact idea of what
it is that he ought to be well satisfied with, I may say that the
learner who finds that he is putting just two or three yards on to his
drive every second week, may cease to worry about the future, for as
surely as anything he will be a long driver in good time.
In the course of this volume there are several chapters describing the
way in which the various strokes should be played, but I am no believer
in learning golf from books alone. I do not think it likely that the
professional teacher who is giving the pupil lessons will disagree with
any of the chief points of the methods that I explain, and, read in
conjunction with his frequent lessons at the beginning of his golfing
career, and later on studied perhaps a little more closely and
critically, I have hope that they will prove beneficial. At all events,
as I have already suggested, in the following pages I teach the system
which has won Championships for me, and I teach that system only.
It is perhaps too much to hope, after all, that any very large
proportion of my readers will make up their minds to the
self-sacrificing thoroughness which I have advocated, and undertake a
careful preparation of from three to six months' duration before really
attempting to play golf. If they all did so we should have some fine new
players. It is because they do not learn to play in this way that so few
good players are coming to the fore in these days. One is sometimes
inclined to think that no new golfer of the first class has come forward
during the last few years. In my opinion it is all due to the fact that
nowadays they learn their game too casually.