PUTTERS OF AMERICA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18754, 6 January 1923, Page 13

PUTTERS OF AMERICA

SECRETS OF SUCCESS. I have now been homo from America for three whole days, in tho course of which I have mot a number of golfing friends, writes Bernard Darwin in Tho Times. I have noticed a great similarity in their greetings. First, they ask rather perfunctorily, “Have you had; a good time;” and when I have reassured them on that point their eyes grow round and solemn, and they add in awe-stricken tones; “I say, do they really putt ns well as all that? Do they never miss short ones? Do they hole a great many long ones? What do they putt with? How do they putt? Why do they putt so much better than we do?” This sort of thing, although friendly and gratifying, is just tho least bit in the world exhausting. 1 heard once of a very tail gentleman who, whenever he saw a perfect stranger about to accost him In the street, remarked, “Slix feet ten inches.” and passed on his way. So I am rapidly acquiring the habit of saying, “How are you? Yes, they do—infernally well.” Possibly, however, I shall not nave to, say it quite so often if 1 take American putting ns my text for this discourse. Well, then, the amateurs of America are human like the rest of us, but they do putt very skilfully, and, moreover, they seem to putt well when they want most to do so. They do not regard an occasional off day on the green as something inevitable —“tho act of God or the Kind’s enemies ” They do on the average miss fewer short ones than we do, and they certainly hole more long ones. Indeed, grandee! that the greens, both lit tho National and Brookline, were beautifully good, tho way in which those long ones kept flying in at critical moments, to the accompaniment of rapturous clapping, was truly remarkable. I am not thinking merely of the very best putters—Mr Ouirnet. for example, or Mr Guilford, or Mr i ownes; taking a general view of tho play, the putting was up to a very high standard. Neither had the clubs anything to do with it. A certain number of players used clubs built on tho Schenectady principle, but most people played with tho common or garden aluminium putter or putting deck. Generally speaking, tho methods one saw oil tho green wore extremely and obviously sound. There was nothing of that caddie-boy method, with much knuckling of tho knees followed by a quick jab at tho ball. The American golfer has realised much more thoroughly than most of us have, that a day or two of brilliant putting in a radically unsound stylo can only be a flash in tho pan, and that there are general principles that cannot bo neglected with impunity. So they have set to work to stand still, to lake tho club back straight, and to strike the ball a smooth blow, and on the whole they have succeeded wonderfully well. Having tried to do them justice in this respect, I should like to add a little theory of my own, though not as an excuse for our own shortcomings. America is a country ! qf slow greens and windless weather. Consequently the golfer there need never, or hardly over, grow utterly ■terrified upon tho green. Everybody knows how unnerving an experience it is to putt for a week on end on fiery seaside greens, that, are continually swept by a gale of wind. For a day or two all may go reasonably well, but there comes a time when the long ones go slithering past just out of holing, and tho short ones fall away on the very lip. And then we grovel closer and closer to (ho ground, and our wrists grow more and more paralysed, and we peck and poke and jab at the ball in a truly dreadful manner. A nerve once lost on the green is hard to recover, a bad style once contracted hard to cure. The American golfer is never .likely to have this experience, and so he never grows frightened; he retains that fine, free, bold upstanding style whieh—all credit to him—ho has cultivated with so much assiduous practice and so much sound common sense. No two golfers, of course, putt exactly like each other, in America or anywhere else; but the members of the Massachusetts School of Putting have certain distinct traits in coipmon. Almost’ the last sight I had of" Mr Hooman,- who has stayed on a little longer in America, was of him working away on a carpet at the Massachusetts method under the instruction of three friendly and learned coaches. This method is derived, I take it. from the original genius! of Mr Francis Ouirnet. Mr Guilford is the greatest of his disciples. He was onco-yso I am told, but it is hard to believe—quite a poor putter. That was when ho used an aluminium club. Now, with his long and narrow-headed deck, ho is a truly magnificent putter, as good as his model, and therefore at least as good ns anyone in the world. Mr M'Phail. once a caddie at Brookline and an excellent player, has much the same method, and there are others, all more or less successful imitators. Tho principles appear to be these. Tho ch bis held at the very top of tho leather with a light, delicate, caressing grip. Both elbows. are a good deal bent, especially the left, which points almost straight at the hole, while the left wrist is bent back ns far ns it can go. Tho club is pushed back by the left hand. Once the hack swing is completed, the left hand’s work, save ns a guide, is over; th© actual hitting is done with tho right. Such is a bare description of what appears to be tho mechanism, but I cannot hope to convoy, any more than I can hope to aconire. the freedom of . wrist, the stillness of body, tho entire, smoothness of tho whole. One particularly noticeable feature is that tho club keeps ns close as possible to .the ground during the entire stroke.