A THINKER, GOLFER

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LVI, 7 March 1925, Page 8

A THINKER, GOLFER

MR IT. D. GILLIES AND HIS METHODS

(By Harry Ynrdon, Six Times Open Champion.)

Mr 11. D. Gillies has accomplished the first, big performance cf the year on the links by whining the annual tournament among members of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society at Rye. A very fine performance it was, too, to beat such players as Mr C. J. H. Tolley and Sir Ernest llolderness in the semi-final and final rounds.

Save when lie is amusing himself by trying sortie experiment or other in an endeavour to discover how many ways there are of hitting a ball —and that, I understand, is fairly often his ambition —Air Gillies is as good an example as I know among amateur golfers for the average player to watch and try and emulate. His style has no peculiarities. It is plain and sound down to the last detail.

Mr Gillies carries out the principle of keeping the head still during the swing with a thoroughness which few people equal. His power of concentration is complete. Without being slow, lie never begins the bark swing unless lie feels that lie is going to strike the ball exactly as he wishes. At any rate, tie conveys that impression more pronouncedly than any other amateur I have seen. The pace of his back swing is in inself worth studying, it is neither hurried nor funereal; it is just what we mean when we recommend the ancient, maxim. “Slow back.’’

I am told that, as a surgeon, he has worked out the science of the game very largely from an anatomical point of view, and evolved a theory as to why it is important to keep the head still as the body pivots althe hips during the swing. Air Gillies, it seems, puts forward the explanation that there are certain channels in the head filled with fluids, and that directly the head begins to move to- one side, these fluids are diverted into the wrong channels. Such a disturbance tends, lie says, to upset tlie equilibrium. We know full well that whether it- is the mental or the physical equilibrium that goes wrong, it is bad for our golf In any rase, the longer I live Hie more convinced I become that the preservation of a still head until after the ball has been struck is absolutely essential to good play.

THE IMPORTANCE OF WAITING A friend of his suggested to me, .the other day, a. novel reason as In why it is that. Mr Gillies is so marked an example of concentration on the links. Ho declared that. the. life of a surgeon was bound to develop tin's quality as few oilier careers would do because he had to be absolutely certain “before, making his stroke” that he could make it- in oreeiselv lhe. wav he intended, I dare say that Mr Gillies, like other mortals, is’liable to error at golf, whatever may he his infallibility in his profession,, but

9 *» «•**» i there is very likely something in the idea that a man’s everyday work lias a good deal to do with his temperamental attitude towards golf. ‘it may explain why certain types of people, who play a lot —let us say judges, professors, and actors—are usually very moderate golfers. They have 10 concentrate, hut they are too sensitive U'' distractions among those whom they seek to control or entertain to cultivate that fixed state of thought which produces the desired results in golf—and no doubt m a surgical operation. It happens so often that you see a man play a shot in a way which suggests that he is playing it the fraction of a second before lie feel?, ready for it. The -Americans seem to hi' blessed with a very happy temperament in this respect. On the whole, they have 1111 questionably ' speeded op their methods — which used to be slow--during the past ten or fifteen years, but. beiore taking the club back, they always look as though they had waited until they felt like playing the shut. I have heard over. George Duncan, re. now tied for hi? lightning ways on the links, extol the virtues of waiting just long enough. lie does it sometimes when he can restrain his natural desire to be up and doing instantly, and lie lias a way of holing a let o*i putts of about three yards when ho is in his more sedate mood. Mr Gillies is the very embodiment of the spirit of waiting for the shot to present itself—without waiting too long.

CONCERNING TEE? Last year, and also in the preceding season, lie attracted a lot of attention by persistently using tees from five to nine inches high, made of wooden sticks fitted into rubber tubing, on the tup of which lie poised the ball. I have no doubt that, 10 a man who could hit the ball properly, tins was something in the. nature of a good idea. Swinging the club in a flat arc and so making the 'nail fly low. one could add something to the length of the drive with the aid of so high a tee. If long handicap players had taken to it, I think that ultimately thev would have derived an even greater advantage from it. They would have found a ball raised higu in the air, comparatively easy to hit cnee they had adapted themselves to- a flat swing. We may be profoundly thankful, however, that they preferred to- remain true to constitutional methods. It was an eccentric tee. and, in the end, Mr Gillies abandoned it as ilie result of a little homily on abnormal aids which the Rule? of olf Committee published during last year's amateur championship.

It is a rather curious fac-t. however, that the popular tees of to-day are the little wooden pegs which constitute only a miniature imitation of those introduced by Mr Gillies. They are an imitation in the sense that, although they raise the ball only a quarter of an inch or so from the turf, they enable it to stand up clearly defined instead of being seated in a pile of sand. A sensible sandtee, made by taking a pinch of sand between the thumb and first two fingers, is all right,-, it is the semi-handful that causes the ball to lie heavily, even on the teeing ground.