ERRATIC DRIVING AT GOLF

Evening Star, Issue 19352, 11 September 1926, Page 22

ERRATIC DRIVING AT GOLF

A SUGGESTION FOB ITS GDBE [Written by Harry Pardon, for tho ‘ Evening Star.’J A who informs me that his handicap is 8, asks for advice as to tho best way of improving ius driving. ... “ I am tolerably good with the iron clubs and tho putter,” ho says, “hut verv uncertain in the matter of direction where driving is concerned. One shot goes straight, tho next to the left, tho next to tho right, and so on. Sometimes I feel toxipted to play all mv tee shots with an iron club, which I'am told was the practice of Mr Jerome Travers, tho former American champion. Ho you recommend this?” It is tmo that Mr Travers, who, in nis day won both tho amateur and open championships of the United States, made a good deal of use of his straightfaced iron from the tee, but it is not correct to suggest that ho shunned a driver altogether. Still, on the few occasions when I saw him use such a club, he was not very successful »ith it in tne matter of direction. _ Apart from the fact that the individual who constantly takes an iron club on the tee docs not look quite what a golfer ought to look, I doubt whether the policy pays over a long period of vears. It promotes a tendency to strain for distance, it lias a jarring effect on the joints and muscles, and the very monotony of tho thing breeds failure after a time. It may be successful for a season, but I never hoard of a player who maintained efficiency for a long while by means of the expedient. Even Mr Travers, a great natural hitter and a wonderful putter, had only a short career in first-class golf. RELIEF IN THE BRASSTE.

1 recommend my correspondent to cry driving with a brassio. _ On tile toeing ground this club is easier to use than a driver. The slight degree of loft on its face inspires confidence. And often it is lack of confidencewinch naturally arises when a club is constantly perverse—that causes the trouble. Tho brassie may entail a little loss of distance, but I know many players who, by taking to it, have overcome their crookedness in driving. Certainly straightness ought to bo cultivated as the first essential of skilful golf. The player who is renowned for keeping his shots straight is discussed by his fellows with solemn respect. “A wonderful old fellow!” yon will hear thorn say of a veteran of this kind. “Ho can’t drive tho_ ball 180yds, but he’s never off the line.” So it is throughout the whole strata of tho golfing community. The dashing young player, possibly a champion in tho making, who hits two or throo wildly erratic drives in nearly every round, causes ominous shakings of many beads. The young colter who has tho virtue of straight driving seemingly ingrained in him, carries the conviction of excellence into tho very souls of those who watch him. Lives there anywhere a player who does not feci aggricvcd_ when, after doing a holo correctly in 4, with a drive, an iron shot, and two putts, ho loses it to an opponent who drives into tho heather, bangs tho hall from there on to tho green, and then gets down his putt for a 3? It is as though something utterly preposterous had hanthis riding roughshod over perfection. , , The man who loses a holo through the utter unorthodoxy of his rival can bo certain of a sympathetic audience wherever ho explains the circumstances, and the fell person who wins it in this way never has tho effrontery to try to justify his success. Which only shows that accuracy of direction in golf, like honesty in everyday life, is regarded on all sides as a crowning quality, no matter how often or in what circumstances somebody gets the better of tho individual who practices it. MR TOLLEY’S WAT. Rather curiously, Mr C. J. H. Tolley won his only amateur championship at a time when ho was a decidedly erratic golfer. That was in the season of 1920, at Muirliold. A man who played immediately behind him in tho first two or three rounds came in at the end of each round with some such remark as: “I suppose Tolley was beaten? He’s been off tho coarse nearly ail tho way.” Far from being tho case, Mr Tolley kept on winning until ho defeated Mr Robert Gardner, of Chicago, in tho final. But hero is the moral: Towards the end ha adopted the expedient of driving with his spoon, the driver having convinced him of its intractableness. Among professionals Edward Ray is accepted as the arch example of successful golf pursued by devious routes. Professionals are rather more severe critics than amateurs in tho case of a man who does the proper figures in an unorthodox way, and Ray knows that, in this respect, he is tho despair of some of his rivals. In point of fact, ho docs not make nearly so many crooked shots as his reputation imputes, and his methods are in many respects a model that anybody might well imitate. But ho certainly can hit some hopelessly wild drives when the spirit moves him, and make some_ recoveries that border on the impossible. The records of tho game prove, however, that straightness is a first essential of success.