GOLF DRIVING.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12523, 16 March 1904, Page 2 (Supplement)

GOLF DRIVING.

Muscle AND hand-Grip.

tits usual exercises that men take to develop their muscle do not have at all the result of making them drive further, but rather the reverse. 1 could instance Several caSes of men Who have gone through a course 6f " Sandow" mainly for the sake of their golf, and when they have come back to thegame they have been horrified to find that in Spite of the muscles, which looked like "bulgersj'' they could drive not oniy no further than before they put on the " bulge," but not bo far. They tried to'. explain it in a vague way by saying that they "had got muscle-bound. .' It was rather a "mindbound" kind of explanation, but none more explicit Seemed forthcoming. s And 1 distinctly remember poor Mr. Tait saying to nie, at thiS time that he Was military gymnastic instructor somewhere (at Glasgow, I think)—"l cannot make oiit how it is; I know I am stronger than 1 used to be, but 1 cannot drive as far as I could."

Is it that.as a man strengthens his muscles ha loses his lissomness — he develops the ..short fibres at the expense of the longer ones'? Could not Mr. Sandow himself, or some other of the professors of physical culture Who have thought these problems but, give us a light in the darkness of this mystery? If Mr. Sandow -set himself to work at the job, could he not evolve a system of exercises that really would enable a man to drive further? It is about the only thing for which the development of muscle is of the ' slightest use to nine out of every ten men.in modern life.

There is a very prevalent idea, which really does look as if it must be right, al-! though it is so prevalent, that strength of hand-grip must be a great factor in length of drive. It is a view that is shared by the professionals, for in commenting to one of them on the long driving of another of the profession, I was met with the response: " An'- what for should he no' be able to drive?—look at the haunds he has on him And they were something to look at. Yet we find that the men of those trades that should give a man a great power of grip, because of the constant hand work on the tool, do not as a matter of fact drive further on the average than other folk. In this connection may be mentioned a thing that "Old Tom" Morris has told me of his son, "Young Tommy," that when the latter had a big match in prospect he would never, if he could help it, do any work in the shop, because of a conviction that this manual labour blunted the delicate sensitiveness of hie fingers on the clubs, so that the clubs j did hot seem so responsive to his touch as j when he had not been working for a good many hours previously.Horace Hutchinson, in the Westminster Gazette.