GOLF REMEDIES

Northern Advocate, 6 February 1928, Page 8

GOLF REMEDIES

AN ANTIDOTE FOR SLICING,

(By Harry Vardon, Six Times Open Champion.)

(All Rights Reserved.)

Not long ago, I met a very good golfer in an ecstasy about his *"game — always a pleasant thing to do, because good golfers are apt to become miserable if they miss two or three drives In a round, whereas the ordinary mortal is deliriously happy if he hits two or three nice ones.

Tl.iis particular individual was effervescing with joy because he had just discovered a golden remedy for a long standing tendency to slice his shots. It consisted in turning the toes of his left foot inwards in the stance—just as a pigeon does —and lo! the effects were wonderful. He declared that this expedient braced up the left side of his body so strongly as to bring the club-face square to the ball at the impact and check a habit which he had developed of coming in too slackly for the blow and cutting across the ball. People are constantly lighting upon discoveries which, seizing the imagination, act temporarily as cures for ills to which the golfing flesh is heir. No doubt many of them depend largely upon faith for their effect, and, sooner or later, they are usually abandoned by their originators. The problem is to sort the good from the merely plausible. The scheme of standing pigeon-toed as an antidote for slicing may have something to recommend it. Mr Cyril Tolley was its pioneer. He introduced it several years ago, and for a time prospered exceedingly oh it. He adopted this stance when, in 1924, ho won the French open championship at A r ersailles with rounds of 73, 73, 71, and 73, beating Walter Hagen by three strokes. He has since forsaken it, but that does not mean that it is without its value as a transient remedy and confidence-reviver.

A PUTTING INSPIRATION. It is only from such experimentations that methods of definite and lasting value to the golfer are evolved. A case in point is the system of reversing the ordinary overlapping grip for putting. As every player knows —or ought to know —the normal overlapping grip is so arranged that the little finger of the right hand rests on the forefinger of the left. I think it was Mr W. J. Travis, of New York, winner of our amateur championship in 1904, who introduced the plan of reversing this order for the putting grip by placing the forefinger of the left hand on the little finger of the right. His theory was that the left hand thus became- a guide which enabled tic right— foand which actually made the stroke —to take the clubface back straight behind the ball and square all the while to the intended line of the putt. Wondrously though he putted, people were inclined for many years to regard Mr Travis's grip as a little eccentricity which made him a law unto himself, but it is the fact that nearly all the leading American golfers, beginning with Mr Bobby Jones, now have faith in it.

It is accepted by everybody who is in a position to judge that the Americans are more deadly and more consistent than the British at putting, and, since there must be some explanation of this of affairs, it is not unreasonable to suggest that the Americans may have the better system. Of that system one of the

most notable features is the adoption of the reversed overlapping grip for the putter. Yet it is almost unknown here. ,

The only other outstanding trait in the American way of holing out is to dispose the arms so that the elbows are pointing’ outwards, thus creating n condition in which the club can be swung to and fro, like a pendulum. This, being the more conspicuous feature, has a good many adherents in Britain; but it is at least possible that the unobtrusive peculiarity of grip has as much as anything to do with the success of the Americans in the most delicate department of the game, HAPPY-GO-LUCKY. It is one of the curious aspects of golf iu this country that there never has been any nationally accepted method of putting, nor any prescribed way of teaching it. For the drive, the iron shot, the mashie shot, 'niblick recovery from places of retribution —and, indeed, all the strokes up to the green—there haye been definitely established forms of instruction.

Putting has been left to look after itself. Hundreds of thousands of players have had their countless hours of instruction in drives and iron shots and approaches, but one might search far and long without finding anybody who had had one solid hour of teaching in the art of putting. The late Tom Ball, who was a remarkably good putter, did once tell me of a patron who engaged him to travel from London to St, Andrews to give throe lessons of an hour each, in his special line.

There is obviously something wrong in this state of affairs. Is it the lack of a national cult in pntting? Even the small, select band of champions and other first-class players are to be seen shaping in every ■conceivable position for their putto—some standing nearly bolt uprighjt, and others stooping with their nosies nearly touching.