GOLFERS' IRON CLUBS

Evening Star, Issue 19310, 24 July 1926, Page 14

GOLFERS' IRON CLUBS

WHERE AMATEURS FAIL [Written by Harry Vardon, for tho ‘ Evening Star.’] There is an agreement of opinion that Mr Jesse Sweetser, of New York, owed his recent victory in the British amateur golf championship mainly to the power and accuracy of his iron shots—a department in which modern British amateurs are undoubtedly deficient. I have by me a criticism which Mr Harold Hilton, a great judge of the game, delivered some time ago on this subject. He had a very good word for Sir Ernest Holderness, and an even better one for W. I. Hunter, the amateur championship winner of 1921, who, however, is now a professional in America. Then Mr Hilton went on to remark: “Of other amateurs of the days since the conclusion of the war, I have nothing to say. On one day they can play _ mashie and controlled iron shots which are a delight to watch, and are worthy of John Ball, Vardon, and Taylor; on another day, it might perhaps be unkind to compare them with any player who has any pretensions to first-class form.” This may be a stern summing up, but it is not without its justification.

Duncan once said to tne: “ Show me the shafts of a man’s iron clubs, and I’ll tell you what kind of golfer he is without seeing him play a shot.” His lino of reasoning was that, in the case of a person who hit his iron shots properly—that is a descending blow to keep the ball low and impart back spin—the shafts of his clubs always developed a slight forward curve from tho constant strain of beating down on the ball. And he could find very few amateurs whose iron clubs disclosed this mark of the master. Particularly had he been put hard to it to discover any whose mashios or raashie-niblicks bore the silent but eloquent testimony of the slight curve. In the iands of amateurs tho shafts of those clubs nearly always remained perfectly straight—damning evidence that the players were merely cocking the ball up into the air instead of gaining control over it with the downward blow.

It seems to me that, in addition to Sir Ernest Holderness and Willie Hunter, there has been at least one modern British amateur whose outward and visible signs suggest the playing of iron shots just as it is done in the best circles. He is Mr Roger Wethered. It is true that Mr Wethered has his off days, as well as his on days, but, so far ns concerns method, he appears to have as nearly as possible the stamp of tho good iron player. His poise and distribution of weight throughout tho swing look exactly the correct thing. As every student of golf science must have read or heard by now, it is an essential detail of this so-oalled “ push shot ” to have most of the weight on the left leg and one-tbird on the right, without alteration from the address until the hit.

Mr Wethered seems to shape in precisely this way; he has the natural balance for the shot._ So has Sir Ernest Holderness. A distinguished judge of the game remarked to me the other day that whenever the former fails in his iron shots it is because he overdoes the theory of “ the straight left arm.” Mr Wethered is unquestionably keen on this theory. Even has he declared, if I remember rightly, that in the playing of iron shots the left arm should lie as straight as a poker, or as near to that condition as human beings con make, it. There are times when he appears to bo concentrating on practising this principle to the last degree. No doubt he knows what suits him, but it. is a truism that even a good thing can bo overdone, and the watcher of great golfers is certainly on safe ground when ho says that some of the finest iron players ever known have been by no means marked in their devotion to the “ straight left ” idea. They have bad firm—hut by no means straight—left arms in the back swing. Many amateurs handicap themselves in iron play by carrying an ill-assorted set of irons and too many irons, and also by constantly trying experiments with new clubs.

Personally, I used my stumpy-headed cleok and mongrel mashie—probably tho two most effective implements in the kit—for the best part of twenty years, without ever setting them aside, and only discarded them in the end because they had become so worn through constant use as to make their loss of weight irremediable. As to the oft-times ill-assorted nature of the amateur’s irons, the chief fault is that frequently you will see him with clubs, the lies of_ which do not harmonise—the Jie being the angle which the shaft makes with the ground’ when the club is solid in addressing tho ball.

Thus you will see a man with an upright mid-iron and a flat mashie, so that ho has to stand farther from the ball when he uses the mashie and swing more flatjy'with it than when ho uses tho ,mid-iron. That, according to all the ’tenets of golf learning, is utterly wrong. It is a first principle that he should stand nearer with the mashie than with'the mid-iron, and* swing in a more upright way.