CHarlie Whiteombe ON GOLF

Evening Star, Issue 23325, 22 July 1939, Page 3 (Supplement)

CHarlie Whiteombe ON GOLF

Fourteenth of an Interesting Series by the famous British Ryder Cup Team Captain.

Long Shots From Close and Cuppy Lies Spoon or No. I Iron

The last place in my set of fourteen clubs I left vacant to be filled as circumstances might dictate, by the selection of a spare wood, or a blaster, or anything you like. I do not usually carry a blaster because, as I have already told you, I do not think it is of much use except when the sand is exceptionally dry and fine, and you seldom get that except on a seaside course, and I already carry two niblicks, a No. 8 and a No. 9, the No. 9 being a bit more lofted than the usual “ trouble club.” So I fancy that under ordinary conditions my fourteenth club is likely to be a second spoon, perhaps a trifle shallower in the face than the other, for use from close and cuppy lies.

The difficulty of all long second shots from awkward lies is very similar to the difficulty of the shots that have to be played into a head wind or through a cross-wind. It does not lie so much in the actual execution of the. shot as in the player’s mental reaction to the situation, and particularly to his reluctance to accept the loss of length which is the inevitable feature of it Take the case of a ball that has come to rest in. a divot mark or any similar cuppy lie. A player does not need to have a scratch handicap to know that he cannot possibly hit the hall as far from such a lie as he could if it were teed up on a peg. Yet the first impulse of the average long-han-dicap man. in such a situation is to take out his brassie and whale at the ball for all he is worth in a futile attempt to make up for the length he sees he is bound to lose. Even on the fairway you must not aspect always to find the ball sitting up for the shot. When you find a cuppy lie, the first thing you have got to do is to accept the fact that you must be content with something less than the length of your normal full second shot. The question is: what is the best way of making sure of getting as much length as possible? Well, with such a lie there is much more risk than usual of foozling the f shot by taking the ground before the ball. The obvious way to avoid that is to stand farther forward with the ball nearer your right foot than you would normally have it. so as to hit the ball on the down swing, and squeeze the ball out between the face of the club and the turf. In fact, although, you are trying to play a full shot with a wooden club, you must adopt the stance and swing which you would use for, say, a No. 2 iron shot

Unfortunately, In hitting down on the ball in this way you are bound also to reduce the loft of the club. From such a lie, therefore, the average player will probably fare better if he takes* his spoon rather than his brassie. Its extra loft makes up for the way in which he is “ hitting down on the ball,” and the fact that he has his spoon in his hand will perhaps help him to resist the temptation to press the shot.

Now-a-days the majority of players find the spoon an easier club to play than the No. 1 iron. Its smaller head fits more easdy into close or cuppy lies and altogether it is an easier club to play. But golfers of the old school who were brought up on a deck, still prefer the No. 1. It is a club which my brother Ernest, for instance, would never dream of leaving out of his bag, and I admit that he can tear the ball away with it from a close lie often with better effect than could be got with a spoon. Ernie, however, is an expert with this club. The difficulty ot it for the average player is that the long, narrow blade calls for such absolute accuracy of striking. Where the No. I iron is often more effective than the spoon, is in the sort of second shots you get to the holes like the fourth at Sandwich, where the ground slopes up to the front of a narrow plateau green. With the winci against you as you usually get it at this hole, it is well-nigh impossible to put a full brassie shot on to the narrow plateau and stop it there. A spoon shot that drops in the slope leading up to the front off the green will be apt to be stopped dead, because a shot from a wooden club, always tends to fly higher than from an iron of the same loft. But a low, raking shot with the No. 1, though it probably will not

ADVICE FOR SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF PAR

carry so far as either the brassie or the spoon, will run on up the face of the slope in a way that no shot from either of the wooden clubs would do. The low trajectory that you get with a No. 1 makes it a great deal easier to keep straight, and from a close lie the No. 1 can tear the ball away with a “ punch ” that you will never get from a wooden. club. The thing that makes the No. 1 so difficult for most players is that its email loft, as compared with the other irons, leaves very little margin between a good shot ana an absolutely disastrous one. For this reason it is essential that the swing should be absolutely smooth, with no jerk or sudden effort to “ put in the punch.”

Where many players, even firstclass players, go wrong when they try to play a No. 1 is that, because the club has an iron head, they get it into their minds that it ought to be played with a restricted pivot like any of the other irons. This is quite a wrong view of the uses of the No. 1. It is a distance club, and the swing with it should be much the same as for the other distance clubs, the driver and the brassie. As I have shown, it produces a different type of shot, but the method of playing the stroke is similar to that for the wooden clubs.

A point in which it is very easy to go wrong with all the long second shots through the green is in the .work of the shoulders. In these shots more than any others there is a temptation to drop the right shoulder too much or too quickly in an. effort to put a bit of extra power into the stroke. This doesn’t matter so much in the drive, where you have the ball toeu up for you, but in the long shots through the green it is sure to result in a tendency to dig into the turf behind the ball, and even the slightest contact of the club head with the turf even the merest fraction of a second before the ball is struck, can take a surprising amount off the power of the shot.