PUTTING AT GOLF

Evening Star, Issue 18256, 21 April 1923, Page 14

PUTTING AT GOLF

THINGS TO AIM AT AND AVOID.

(Written by Harry Vardon for the ‘Evening Star.’] To write of putting is to deal with tho most delicate of all golfing subjects. Everybody in turn has boon- heard with rapt attention when explaining some golden method that he has discovered for striking the ball effectively on the green, and nobody has ever yet convinced hisfellows that his way is the best. To me the matter has its difficultiea, because I have only to read the newspapers to know that I am just about the most incorrigible misser of short putts that ever lived. The short putt, however, is n thing by itself in golf. Actually one can hardly call it a golf stroke—except that it counts as a stroke. 1 have long since come to the conclusion that no real skill, or at any rate only the irreducible minimum of skill, is required to hole a short putt. Tho main essential is confidence, or, as Andrew Kirkcaldy once said of a player who won a championship by never missing any of these' putts when his opponent did fail at them, “sheer impudence!” People tell me that there lis nothing wrong with my long putts, and, truth to tell, I am quite satisfied with the. aggregate of their results. And long experience has taught me that one strikes the bail truly on the, putting green only when one keeps the head and body absolutely still. The late Lieutenant F. G. Tail used to ask, when he was misjudging his putts : “ Am I moving my body? ’ Unquestionably ho know the secret of successful putting and the supreme cause of unsuccessful putting. A few famous players there may have been who could sway forward when striking the ball on the green and yet play the shot perfectly. Tbs late Tom Ball was one of the number.

For ninety-nine golfers out of every 100, however, the old-fashioned idea of the pendulum swing ie best. If, you keep the head and body perfectly still and let the arms swing the club like the pendulum of a clock you are on the right road to good putting. At least, this is my experience, for a professional, whether he has been doing a thing well or ill, generally carries out a process of_ self-analysis at tho finish in order to decide upon the cause of his efficiency or failing. There are certain precautions to be observed. ■STARTING BACK BADLY. Some time ago my long putts started to go awiy. For a long while I conk! not discover the reason. I was swinging the putter one day in my shop, which happens to have a boarded floor with planks which present a series of parallel lines. I noticed that, as I took the club back, it went out beyond the line on which it had started. Here was the explanation of all the trouble. If yon take the club back outside the line of the putt the result is nearly sure to bo fatal. It is essential in 'the back, swing to let the club follow for some distance an extended lino of the putt and then, if anything, to turn the club inside that line. In short, it is only the ordinary golf swing an miniature. You will notice that the best American putters—and they are very good, indeed, at the business “ usually stand with the feet Close together. lam far from agreeing that the Americans have a stereotyped manner of putting—the body almost erect, the heels more or lees touching, and the arms swinging as regularly as if they constituted a mechanical contrivance. They stand, some fairly upright and others stooping, but they do as a rule have their heels close together, if not almost touching; and that, I believe, is the best way to secure stability of stance for putting. , , , In my younger days I played every putt exactly after the manner of a push shot. I may not have appealed to the. people who worshipped tho principle ot tho smooth, easy-flowing way of striking the ball, but the heart was young, the confidence was there, and tho method succeeded. „ ~ , , I addressed the hall with the hands a trifle in'front of it. As I used a putting deck, its loft was reduced virtually to'nothing by this manner of address. It became,’ to’all intents and purposes, a strakdit-faced club. I came down on the back"of the ball, invested it in this way with back spin, and went every lime for the hole. The system prospered oxceed'"gly- THE “JUMPS.”

It must he confessed that this is a risky way of putting—at any rate in the light of 'experience. It is all right when confidence reigns supreme, hut it is pint so good when self-assurance takes wing. My own unhappiness in putting began with" tlm development of a nerve in the right arm. It left me alone whenever 1 was about to play a putt of any distance down to about sft, but at that stage it. began to assert itself, and the shorter the putt the more sensitive it beca,nie. When I was a foot from the hole it was at its worst. This mav seem foolish, but, as Sandy Herd said jo an amateur who had beaten him by holing putts from all parts of the green : “If you had to do tins for a living—well 1' you just wouldn’t do it 1 ” Whenever I was about to play a_ short putt I would wait for the nerve inpny arm to jump. J* could feel it coming. It was a desperately trying thing when championships depended upon it. I would fed it to bo immir.r-nt, and snatch Dio club at tho ball in the hope of finishing tho stroke before the jump beat me. That, of course, was sheer loss of confidence, and confidence is four-fifths of putting. :It is an interesting point that most good 1 putters have placed their putts with a 1 distinct degree of pull—a thing which, rightly or wrongly. I never did. They ; have addressed the ball more or less with 1 the too of the club, and swung at it with : a gentle, smooth action, producing a left itn right spin of the ball. There is no ! doubt' 1 that this method makes a ball run more evenly than any other. It runs ' over irregularities in the turf as a hall placed with the “cut" would never do. Willie Bark, the best putter I ever saw, played in this way. Arnaud Massy has the’ same characteristic. In fact, the only good cutter of putts I know is Jack White. This perhaps is a lesson in itself.