GOLF

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 82, 18 March 1933, Page 2

GOLF

FROM TEE TO GREEN HOW TO IMPROVE ONE'S HANDICAP. ' SUGGESTED PLAN. (By “Putter.”) With the beginning of a new season, the golfer is asking himhelf: “How can I improve my game so that at the end of 1933 I shall be in a position to show substantial progress in the one direction that really counts—my handicap?’’, To the vast army of double-figure golfers anxious to effect a reduction in their handicaps, I would suggest that they set themselves a more or less rigid standard of play for each and every hole on the course on which their handicaps are based. Every hole has a stroke value known as bogey, and it should be the aim of every player, consistent with his handicap allowance, to keep pace with this unalterable figure. Where the average player goes wrong is in trying to keep step with the low handicap man, forgetting that with the judicious use of his stroke allowance he will not only halve the hole, but sometimes win it, The usual procedure is to attempt capacity, generally with disastrous results. Strokes are piled up one on top of the other, and for medal purposes the card is ruined. Another opportunity has been lost, and his handicap remains the same. .

So the process goes on from week to week and month to month without the player properly realising the nature of the drags that are holding him down. It should be the object of the player to eliminate the disastrous holes, and the best way of accomplishing this is to set a standard in accordance with his known ability for each of the eighteen.

Supposing the course par is 74. For the sixteen handicap player it becomes ninety, which, for his purposes, is the scratch score of the course. At that figure he is without a handicap, consequently he has to distribute his ninety shots m accordance with a plan which will become his private bogey for each hole.

No doubt a strike will be picked up here and there, and these will go to balance losses at other holes. It will generally bo found that what is lost on the swings is made up on the roundabouts, and 1 feel sure 'that if players, despite their limitations in style, faithfully adopt this plan they will have no cause for disappointment.

The Ideal Golfer. The ideal golfer doesn’t necessarily go round in 70’s. He may even be well over 100. But he doesn’t waste time on tho course delaying other playerfs. He doesn’t walk up the sides of the bunkers, helping to tear them down: he replaces his divots. He doesn’t have an excuse for every missed stroke; he accepts a cuppy lie in the fairway, or a heel mark in the bunker, ns part of the game. Ho doesn’t kt a whisper wreck his nervous system.— “The American Golfer.” * a * ‘‘A Matter of Mentality.” Ted Hay, the celebrated English player, declares that “golf is largely a matter of temperament.” He thinks Abe Mitchell the greatest exponent of the game in the world, but that he “lacks the necessary amount of mentality to combat the American invasion.’” Mitchell—a good sport—laughed with the rest" at this criticism. « * « ‘‘Practice” That Spoils. There is a saying that “practice makes perfect,” but, unfortunately, that is only true of perfect practice, and I have no hesitation in asserting that the attempt at practising made by the average player who goes out to belt a dozen or 20 balls down the fairway is more likely to spoil his game than to improve it (comments H.C. in an Australian weekly). The usual object of solo practice is to get rid of a slice or a hook or a tendency to top shots, and it is interesting to experiment with new grips and stances, Hat swing, and upright swings, etc. Frequently the student has the satisfaction of finding that some trifling alteration of the relative position, say, of the feet or the hands,, makes all the difference, and he proceeds to hit a series of raking drives that Ivo Whitton himself would not disown. Thus his practice has been apparently successful, and he is filled with elation, which lasts probably until about tho third or fourth hole of his next match. At that stage his hitherto far and straight flying drive begins to show signs of slumping. A screw has worked loose somewhere, and soon the whole machinery of the swing falls to pieces, just as has happened innumerable times before. What has happened? There is, or used to be. a small detail of engine machinery called the “governor,” The governor, although looking to the layman more like an ornament than any useful part of the engine, yet exercised a steadying influence upon the general movement of the works that is of the utmost importance to their efficient operation. In the machinery of the golf swing there is also a “governor.” It is the golfer’s head, and when it gets displaced everything goes wrong with the swing and the clubhead performs all sorts of undesired evolutions, with disastrous results to the stroke. When the suppositious golfer referred to began to fall away from his previous driving grace tho odds were at least 96 to 1 that the reason for his backsliding concerned the irregular movement of the “governor.” 'The excitement of the match or tho intoxication of the several delightful drives he had struck, or probably a mixture of both onuses, impelled him prematurely to throw up his head. He Juul become over-anxious as to the result of the stroke, or overborne by a desire to admire the beautiful soaring flight of the little white ball, to tho displacement of the “governor” at the very moment it should have been performing jfs all-important function. So that is qjjat happened to check the «veu tenor of his towering tee allots.