COMMON FAULTS IN GOLF

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXV, Issue 23067, 18 June 1938, Page 15 (Supplement)

COMMON FAULTS IN GOLF

How to Topping Shots with a Brassie The G By ERNEST WHITCOMBE (Copyright). THE golfing world to-day is full of long drivers. Modern clubs and balls have made things so easy for the flayer that any athletic youngster can tee the ball up on a peg and hit it "out of sight." But how seldom do they get anything like the same sort of distance with the long shots through the green! Nowadays, you continually see handicap players forcing their iron clubs in an ineffectual attempt to get up to the green with their seconds, and often the reason is simply that they are afraid to take wood for any shot unless thw ball is absolutely sitting up. The great test of a good player of the wooden club is that he should be able to hit the ball just as far and as otraight from a reasonably good lie on turf as off a peg tee. For the player can do this, tne brassie is a great "conomist of strokes, because it continually gives him a chance to turn a P®r 5 hole into a 4 by cutting out the chip shot third. "Skim the Turf" .. The chief fault of the average golfer !n playing a brassie-shot is that, ho p annot get rid of the idea that h«> '"lit delve down into the turf in order" get the ball up into the air. If he Would only try to skim the turf, and leave it to the loft of the club to do Hs part of the work, he would find the shot presents no difficulty at :®"t as soon as the long handicap Pjflyer takes a brassie in his hand, he wenis to forget all about swinging at ne ball. He attempts to scoop the ball w ay, instead of standing up to it and ■tying to hit it as he would with the _river. Die result is that the club is "®'ng too sharply at the moment of ffiing jn contact with the ball. That fcitk i: erc are more topped shots club brassie than with any other .The best piece of advice I can give j Payers who are guilty of this fault of i . e P before their minds the idea i, playing through the ball, keeping ""head as low along the ground . iney possibly can after impact. Don't turf r ? Setting well down to the first bo sure you take the ball frilf«vJ ilie nfterwards, or you ton v °i. have much chance of getting "all away.

An idea that I have sometimes found useful in helping the handicap player to make his second shots fool-proof is the mental picture of "the wedge under the door." If the player can only bring himself to visualise the ball as a wooden wedge which is being driven in below a closed door and think of the driver as nothing more than a hammer, 1 believe he will rid himself of some of his misleading ideas about the nature of the stroke. Let him forget that the ball is a sphere and that his club has a more or Jess lofted face, and swing as if lie were hitting the square end of the wedge, with the square end of the hammer. If he can teach himself to do that, he will be far on the road toward Jearniug to strike the ball squarely, too. From Close Lies One way in which this idea of hittipg the ball continually makes itself evident is in a tendency- to keep' the weight back on the right foot at the moment of striking. This is particularly true of playing from close or cuppy Hps. In order to make sure of taking the ball cleanly you have to stand with the ball a triflo farther back toward your right foot than you would do if the ball were teed up. But having done this, there is a natural temptation- to compensate for it by keoping the weight back on the right foot so that the

hands will still be opposite the ball at the moment of striking. The remedy is a simple one. It is to make sure that the left heel comes on to the ground in good time. "Putting in the Weight" There are very few players who can put much power into their stroke without a certain amount of transference of weight from one foot to the other. As the club comes back the weight of the body is transferred more on tc the right foot and the left heel comes off the ground. On the down swing the weight of the bod.v swings forward on to ths loft foot again, arid the heel returns to the ground. If you wish, in the most literal sense of tho words, to "put your weight into the shot," you must make sure that the left heel is back in position . before the head of the club reaches the ball. The old idea—which I believe Imp done a considerable amount of harm—was that as a matter of correct timing the left heel should reach the ground and the head of the club jshould reach the ball at precisely the same instant. But the slow motion cinematograph has shown that in the case of the leading players there is no such coincidence. The left heel is on the ground and the left side is braced so as to give the right side something to hit against, well before the club meets the ball.