The Soul of Golf Part 5

There are many refinements in the art of putting which go somewhat beyond the fundamental principles laid down in this chapter, in that they call for cut of a particular kind; but for about ninety-five per cent of the puts which one has to play, practically nothing more need be known by the golfer than is here set out.

I am not here going to describe the method in which one cuts round a stymie, for I have done that very fully elsewhere; and, moreover, this does not so completely come within the scope of this work, for it enters much more into the region of practical stroke play than do the matters which I have treated of and which I intend to treat of in this book.

There is, however, one stroke which is played on the putting-green, yet is not truly, of course, a put. It is a stroke which I myself introduced into the game several years ago. This is the stroke which is now known as the Vaile Stymie Stroke. It is unique among golf strokes in that it is not an arc. Every known golf stroke before I introduced this stroke into the game was an arc of a more or less irregular shape, but it was an arc. The essence of my stroke is that it is produced in practically a straight line. For all ordinary stymies it is without doubt the most delicate and accurate stroke which can possibly be played, and the manner of playing it, after a golfer has once conquered the force of habit which tends to make him raise his club from the earth immediately he leaves his ball, is very simple. The mas.h.i.+e is drawn back from the ball in a perfectly straight line, and with the sole of it practically brus.h.i.+ng, or no more than just clearing the green. It is then moved sharply forward, but instead of coming up with the ball after it has. .h.i.t it, it pa.s.ses clean forward down the intended line of flight in a perfectly horizontal line, provided always, of course, that the green is level, so that it finishes some inches down the line to the hole and practically touching the green. No attempt must be made to strike the ball or to take turf. The idea in one's mind should be to divide the ball from the green with the front edge of the sole.

Many mas.h.i.+es are not suitable for this shot, because the sole is not cut away enough on the back edge, as indeed the sole of every mas.h.i.+e should be; so it will frequently be found that the best club for negotiating stymies is the niblick, for its sole being cut away so much enables the front edge of the club to get well in underneath the ball. This is a matter of the very greatest importance in playing stymies, for the simple reason that it enables the player to put so much more of his force into elevation than is possible when the front edge of his mas.h.i.+e is c.o.c.ked up, as it frequently is, by the breadth of the sole of the mas.h.i.+e; for in many cases when one is trying to play a stymie the rear edge of the sole of the club makes contact with the green first and tilts up the front edge, so that it is at least a quarter of an inch higher than it should be, and instead of striking the ball almost at the point where it is resting on the turf, it gets it fully a quarter of an inch to half an inch higher up. The consequence of this is that too much of the force of the blow goes into propulsion instead of elevation.

This means that if the stymie is close to the hole and there is only a very short run after the ball has got over the obstacle, the player invariably finds that with his imperfectly constructed mas.h.i.+e he cannot put enough stop on the ball, nor play the shot delicately enough to give it a chance to get into the hole, because the run is in many cases far too strong. Every golfer who desires to play a stymie well should see to it that he has a mas.h.i.+e with a very fine front edge, and that the sole is not flat in any part, but begins to curve away immediately it leaves the front edge. With the mas.h.i.+e constructed on these lines all ordinary stymies absolutely lose their terror if the shot is played as described.

The delicacy and accuracy of this stroke are remarkable. The direction is an astonis.h.i.+ng ill.u.s.tration of the importance of the rule for putting which I have laid down, of keeping the front edge of the putter at a right angle to the line of run to the hole, both before and after impact. As the whole essence of playing this stymie stroke correctly consists of the straight movement of the face of the club sharply down the intended line of flight and run to the hole, the wrists have naturally to follow the head of the club in a line parallel with that made by the head of the club, and so accurate is the result that in any ordinary stymie if a wire were stuck on the top of the intervening ball, I would guarantee to hit the wire every time.

This stroke was a revelation to me of the importance of the principles which I am now enunciating, although, of course, I was well aware of their soundness before I discovered this stroke.

The usefulness of this stroke is not confined merely to playing stymies, but it makes a magnificent and accurate chip shot; or if one has a bad portion of green to put over one can, with this stroke, rely upon going as straight through the air as one can in the ordinary course over the green.

Lest anyone should think that this is merely a theoretical stroke, let me tell how I came to introduce it into the game of golf. I had used the stroke myself for some time. One afternoon I was in the shop of George Duncan, the famous young Hanger Hill professional. It was raining heavily, and to pa.s.s the time I was knocking a ball about on the mat. Presently I set up a stymie and said to Duncan:

"Show me how you play your stymie, George."

"Oh, just in the usual way," said Duncan.

"Well, show me," I said.

Duncan took his mas.h.i.+e and played the stymie shot perfectly, "just in the usual way."

"There is a much better way of playing a stymie than that," I said, and I set up the shot and showed Duncan how I played it by my method.

Very few people can give George Duncan any points with the mas.h.i.+e. He got hold of the stroke at once, and he would hardly wait for the rain to stop before he went out on to the green to try it there. He plays the shot perfectly now, and maintains, as indeed I show in _Modern Golf_, that there is no stymie stroke to compare with it, and of that I have myself absolutely no doubt. In fact, so accurate is the stroke that if I found myself badly off my game with my putter, I should take my mas.h.i.+e and play this stroke, for as regards the fundamental principle of putting it is a wealth of instruction in itself.

Cutting round a stymie is nearly always included in the chapter on putting, but it is practically always a mas.h.i.+e stroke, and in the majority of cases is a very short pitch with a large amount of cut. On account of the loft of the mas.h.i.+e the club gets well in underneath the ball, and as the head of the club at the moment of impact is travelling in a line which runs at a fairly sharp angle across the intended line of flight and run of the ball it imparts a strong _side roll_ to the ball. The cut on a golf ball in such a stroke as I am now describing resembles almost exactly the off-break spin in cricket.

This means that the ball has a strong side-spin, so that the moment it hits the earth it endeavours to roll sideways, but the force of propulsion fights this tendency, and the resulting compromise is a curve which enables the ball to get round the intervening obstacle, and, if the stroke is well executed, to find the hole.

Almost all golf books instruct the player wrongly about this stroke.

He is told to draw his hands in towards him at the moment of impact, and in some cases, even where the author calls his book _Practical Golf_, he is told to draw his hands in after impact. Both of these instructions are utterly wrong. There must be no conscious drawing in of the hands at the moment when one is trying to cut a put. All the cut must be done by the natural swing of the club across the intended line of run of the ball: in other words, the cut is a continuous process from the time that the club begins its swing until the time that it ends it. The fact that the ball is in the way of the face of the club as it crosses the intended line of run to the hole may be said to be merely an incident in the pa.s.sage of the club head. Any attempt whatever to interfere with the natural swing of the club or to juggle with the ball during impact, or, more futile still, after impact, must result in irretrievably ruining the stroke.

The stymie shot which I have described will also be found of use a little farther from the green, and by means of it an excellent run-up shot, with most accurate direction, can be played. There is another way of negotiating a stymie which I have never seen described. It is pulling round a stymie. It will be obvious to any one acquainted with the game that cutting round a stymie is merely another form of slice; although of course the run of the ball is obtained in a different manner from the curve of the slice in the air, yet the method of production of the stroke is practically similar. So is it with pulling a put. There is no doubt that this can be done; but I think there is also no doubt that it is the most difficult method of negotiating a stymie which there is. The stroke is played, to all intents and purposes, as is the pulled drive. Some people imagine that it may be obtained by turning over the wrist at the moment of impact. This is quite an error, and is absolutely destructive of accuracy. As, in the cut put, the head of the club is travelling from outside the line across it, towards the player's side of the line at the moment of impact, so, in the pull, the head of the club must be travelling from the player's side of the line across and away to the far side of the line at the moment of impact. That is the secret of the pull either in the drive or the put.

I cannot refrain from quoting Vardon again. He says on page 148:

There should be no sharp hit and no jerk in the swing, which should have the even gentle motion of a pendulum. In the backward swing, the length of which, as in all other strokes in golf, is regulated by the distance it is desired to make the ball travel, the head of the putter should be kept exactly in the line of the putt. Accuracy will be impossible if it is brought round at all. There should be a short follow-through after impact, varying, of course, according to the length of the putt. In the case of a long one, the club will go through much further, and then the arms would naturally be more extended.

This is wisdom as regards the put. There can be no doubt whatever about this being practical golf of the highest order, but Vardon rather spoils it by the following sentence in which he says, "In the follow-through the putter should be kept well down, the bottom edge sc.r.a.ping the edge of the gra.s.s for some inches."

Now, if that means anything at all, it means that although Vardon's conception of the put and its execution in many ways is excellent, yet he has been making for years the error which made James Braid a bad putter--in other words, he has been putting with drag. It is well known that for a very long time Vardon's weakness was his putting; and I firmly believe that the secret of his bad putting was this low follow-through with his put. I think that Vardon's follow-through in his put is now not so low as it was, and the consequence is that his putting has improved.

Vardon continues:

It is easy to understand how much more this course of procedure will tend towards the accuracy and delicacy of the stroke than the reverse method, in which the blade of the putter would be c.o.c.ked up as soon as the ball had left it.

What is more natural, then, than that the blade of the putter should be c.o.c.ked up immediately after the ball has left it? That is exactly what should happen in the perfectly played put. Vardon has already told us that the put is to be played with the "even gentle motion of a pendulum." Let us suppose for a moment that it was the weight of the pendulum turned side-wise which had struck the golf ball. It stands to reason that immediately the weight, which in this case answers to the face of the golf club, has struck the ball and sent it on its way to the hole, the face begins to "be c.o.c.ked up."

Vardon here makes a totally erroneous claim. He claims greater delicacy and accuracy for the put played with drag as against that played as Braid now plays his puts. There can be no shadow of doubt that the put played with drag, or with a low follow-through "sc.r.a.ping the top of the gra.s.s for some inches," partakes much more of the nature of a tap than does the put which is played with top or a perfectly horizontal blow. If Vardon has not completely realised this, as I think he has, he will, ere long, do so, as James Braid already has done.

I need not here deal with complicated puts; that is to say, puts of such a nature that one has to traverse one, two, or more slopes on the way to the hole. These puts do not, in themselves, contain any of the fundamental principles of golf. Each one stands entirely by itself, and these are absolutely matters in which nothing but practice on the green can be of any use. It will be obvious to any schoolboy that if he has to run across five little hills on his way to the hole, and that three of these slant one way and two the other; and if we say for the sake of example that they are all practically equal in their width and slope, that it will be a case of four of them cancelling out on the good old plus and minus system of our schoolboy days, and we shall then be left practically to calculate how much we will have to allow for putting across the incline of one slope. This is not a case which I should think of giving myself. I merely give it because I came across such an ill.u.s.tration given in a book which is supposed to cater for those who desire the higher knowledge of golf, but as a matter of practical golf these situations but seldom occur.

Allowing for the drop in a green when one is putting across the slope, requires a lot of practice, and is most absolutely and emphatically not a thing that can be learned in an arm-chair, or in any golf school. It must be learned on the green itself.

Although James Braid has remodelled his putting with such success, he still, to a certain extent, clings to his own idea of putting with drag. On page 154 of _Advanced Golf_ he says:

For general use I am a strong believer in a putter having just a little loft. I know that some players like one with a perfectly straight face which does not impart the slightest drag to the ball, their theory being that such putters are capable of more delicate work than others, and that the ball answers more readily to the most delicate tap from them.

There may be considerable truth in this, though, obviously, great skill and confidence on the part of the player are taken for granted.

And again he says:

The strength of long putts can generally be more accurately regulated with a lofted putter than with a straight-faced one.

He continues:

This is the kind of putter that I might recommend for what might be called a medium or average green, if there can be said to be such a thing; but I wish to point out that the putter that is the best suited to such a green is not so well suited to either a very fast green or a very slow one, and that in each of the latter cases the club best adapted to the circ.u.mstances is one with considerably more loft on it.

On page 56 he says:

Now in both these cases, when the greens are very slow and when they are extremely fast, the best putter for them is one with very considerable loft on the face, and it will often be found that there is nothing better than a fairly straight-faced iron, or an ordinary cleek, if it is big enough in the face to suit the player. With this club and its great dragging power, the effect seems to be practically to reduce the distance between the ball and the hole. Such is the drag that the ball is simply pushed over a considerable part of the way, and it is only when it is quite near to the hole that it begins, as it were, to run in the usual way. The fact is that for the first part of the journey the ball does not revolve regularly upon its axis, as it does when approaching the hole, but simply skates over the turf, and it will be found that with a little practice the point at which it will stop skating can be determined with very considerable exactness. When it does so stop there is still so much drag on it that it is very quickly brought to a standstill. Thus in both cases, of the very fast and the very slow green, the ball can be played without fear right up to the hole when the putter is so well lofted as I have recommended.

Here we are told that the ball "simply skates over the turf." As I have shown before, this is one of the greatest fallacies in golf. It is impossible to obtain any results by drag in a long put, which are not better obtained by simply rolling the ball up. Braid says that "with a little practice the point at which it will stop skating can be determined with very considerable exactness," and he goes on to say that "when it does so stop there is still so much drag on it that it is very quickly brought to a standstill."

This is obviously nonsense. It is the drag on the ball which makes it do any skating which may take place. It is obvious that when the skating has ceased the drag has stopped exerting its influence. How, then, is it going to stop the ball from rolling in a natural manner?

We see here the mistake of importing into golf the well-known phenomena of billiards, but one would have thought that the experience of the billiard-table would have been sufficient to show the fallacy of this statement. The billiard player uses drag to enable him to play his ball fast and accurately, and there is no doubt that by means of this drag he does obtain very considerable accuracy, but directly the ball has ceased to "skate" he knows that that is the time when the drag has entirely departed from it, and that the momentum has conquered the friction caused by the back-spin; in other words, the drag having accomplished its work has gone out of business, and all the run that is on the ball is derived from the remains of the momentum imparted to it.

I cannot say too emphatically that in my opinion this idea of putting with drag, or with any club having a loft more than that which barely enables one to see the face of it when it is properly soled, is dangerous and calculated to produce bad putting on the part of anyone who attempts it, even as it did in the case of James Braid himself.

There is one remark which James Braid makes about stymies which I should like to refer to here. Braid says: "Given complete confidence, the successful negotiation of a stymie is a much less difficult matter than it is imagined to be, though in the nature of things it can never be very easy." I must say that I differ entirely from Braid in this respect. I maintain that in the nature of things most ordinary stymies, when played in the manner which I advocate, are very easy.

The difficulty of the stymie, provided one's club is properly built--and later on I shall refer to the construction of the mas.h.i.+e--is much exaggerated. Eight of ten stymies should present no more difficulty than an ordinary put. The only time a stymie should present a difficulty to the golfer is when the intervening ball is much nearer to the hole than to the ball which is stymied, so that the force required to get over the obstacle is so much that the player, after landing on the far side of the stymie, has too much power in his ball to give it a chance to settle in the hole, but even such a stymie as this may, if the ground be suitable, be overcome by lofting one's ball so as to drop on the hither side of the stymie, bound over it on its first bound, and continue on its way to the hole. This, probably, is one of the most difficult ways of negotiating a stymie; but as showing that it is eminently a matter of practical golf, I may say that I was ill.u.s.trating the shot one day to a man who had practically just started golf. I showed him how to obtain the shot, and he did it at his first attempt. I advised him not to try again that day.

Braid continues:

I need not say that the pitching method is only practicable--and then it is generally the only shot that is practicable--when both b.a.l.l.s are near the hole, and are so situated in relation to each other and to the hole that the ball can reach the latter as the result of such a stroke as enabled it to clear the opponent's ball.

Braid is, I think, referring to a clean pitch into the hole, although the photograph leaves this open to doubt. The pitching method is practicable when one is stymied in almost any position on the green, provided always, as I have said, that one has any chance whatever of pulling up in time to get into the hole after having got over the stymie. Let me give an example:--Supposing my ball were fifteen yards from the hole, that the green was absolutely level, and that I had a stymie ten inches or ten feet in front of me. I should not hesitate for a moment to use the shot which I have described as the best stymie stroke in the game. The ball in front of me, so far from being an obstruction, or in any way whatever putting me off, would, if anything, serve as a good line to the hole. I am aware that to many golfers who do not know this stroke, and comparatively few do, this will sound like exaggeration. I am prepared at any time to demonstrate the practical nature of what I am writing to any one of my readers who cannot obtain the results which I get with this stroke.

At the time that I introduced this stroke there was much controversy about it, and it was claimed that it was not a new stroke, but that it was exactly the same as the stroke played by all golfers when stymied.

This, however, is quite an error. Speaking of the stymie shot, James Braid says

... it is just an ordinary chip up, with a clean and quick rise, the fact being remembered that the green must not be damaged. To spare the latter the swing back should be low down and near to the surface, which will check the tendency to dig. The thing that will ensure the success of the shot, so far as the quick and clean rise is concerned--and often enough success depends entirely upon that--is the follow-through. Generally, if the club is taken through easily and cleanly, all will be well.

It is obvious from this description that the stroke in Braid's mind is totally different from my stymie stroke. With the stroke as I play it, it is an absolute impossibility to "dig" into the green. One has no need to have any anxiety whatever about the green, for as the club travels parallel with the surface of the green all the time, it is obvious that no damage can ensue. If there is any deflection whatever from the straight line, it would be at the moment of impact, but even here it stands to reason that there is practically no deflection whatever; for even in a stroke played, relatively speaking, so slowly as is this shot, any alteration of the line of the stroke after it has once been decided upon, is quite improbable, but the dominant idea in the player's mind must be to insert the front edge of his mas.h.i.+e between the ball and the gra.s.s, and above everything to keep his follow-through as straight and as low along the surface of the green as was his swing back. It is this straight and low follow-through which gives the ball its "quick and clean rise," as Braid calls it.

Curiously enough, the follow-through which Braid shows for his stymie shot, wherein the head of the club is raised from the green, will not give anything like so quick a rise or such delicacy of touch as will the stroke played in the manner which I have described, and, above everything, with the very low follow-through insisted upon by me.