ERRATIC DRIVING AT GOLF

Manawatu Times, Volume XLIX, Issue 3445, 6 September 1926, Page 9

ERRATIC DRIVING AT GOLF

A SUGGESTION FOR ITS CURE. (By Harry Vardon, Six Times Open Champion.) i A correspondent who informs me j that liis handicap is S asks for advice as to the best way of improving! his driving. i “I am tolerably good with the iron i clubs and the putter,” he says, “but; very uncertain in the matter of direc- 1 tion vyhore driving is concerned. One shot goes straight, the next to the left, the next to (he right, and so on. Sometimes I feel tempted to play all my Ice-shots with an iron club, which I am told was the practice of Mr Jerome Travers, the former American champion. Do you recommend this?” It is true that Mr Travers, who, in his day won both the amateur and open championships of the United States, made a good deal of use of his straight-faced iron from the tee, but it is not correct to suggest that ho shunned a driver altogether. Still, on the few occasions when T saw him' use such a club, ho was not very successful with it in the 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, T doubt whether the policy pays over a long period of years. It promotes a tendency to strain for distance, it has a jarring effect on the joints and muscles, and the very monotony of the thing breeds failure after a time. It may be successful for a season, but I never heard of a player who maintained efficiency for a long while by means of the expedient. Even Mr Travers, a groat natural hitter and a wonderful putter, had only a short career in first-class golf. Relief in the Brassie. I recommend my correspondent to try driving with a brassie. On the teeing 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 confidence—which naturally arises when a clue is constantly perverse—that causes the trouble. The brassie may entail a little loss of distance, but I know many players who. bytaking to it, have overcome their crookedness in driving.

Certainly straightness ought to be cultivated as the first ‘essential of skilful golf. The player who is renowned for keeping his shots straight is discussed by his follows with solemn respect. "A wonderful old fellow!” you will hear them say of a veteran of this kind. . “He can’t drive the ball 180 yards, but he's never, off the line!” So it is throughout the whole strata of tho gelling community. The dashing young player, possibly a champion in the making, who hits, two or three wildly erratic drives in nearly every round causes ominous shakings of many heads. Tho young golfer who has tho virtue of straight driving seemingly ingrained in him carries tho conviction of excellence into the very souls of those who watch him. hives there anywhere a player who does not fool aggrieved when, after doing a hole correctly in 4, with a drive, an iron shot, and two putts, he loses It to an opponent who drives into the heather, bangs tho ball from there on to tho green, and then gets down his putt for a 3? It is as though something utterly preposterous had happened, this riding roughshod over perfection. The man who loses a hole through tho utter unorthodoxy of his rival can be certain of a sympathetic audience wherever he explains the circumstances, and tho fell person who wins it in this way never has the 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 the individual who practices it. Mr Tolley'S Way. Kathcr curiously, Mr C. J. H. Tolley won his only amateur championship at a time when he was a decidedly erratic golfer. That was in tho season of. 1920 at Muirfleld. A man who played immediately behind him in tho first two or three rounds canio in at tho end of each round with some such remark as; “I suppose Tolley was beaten?. He’s been off the course nearly all tbo way." Far from being tbo case, Mr Tolley kept winning until ho defeated Mr Robert Gardner, of Chicago, in the final. -But here is the moral: Towards the end, he 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 the case of a man who docs the proper figures in an unorthodox way, and Ray knows that, in this respect., he is the despair of some of his rivals. In point of fact, he 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 1 wild drives when the spirit, moves ; him, and make some recoveries that border on the impossible. The re-jl cords of tho game prove, however, that straightness is a first essential! of success. I