GOLF

Taranaki Daily News, 23 June 1927, Page 4

GOLF

THE OLD WAYS IN GOLF LIVING AND RE-LEARNING. (By Harry Varden.—Copyright.) London, May 5. All the signs indicate that the ancient maxims of golf are returning to grace and glory. For a long while—at any rate, in this country—such once-sacred aphorisms as “Slow back,” “Hit with the left hand,” ami “Follow through” have drooped and 1.. their diminished heads before the widespread advance of new methods. Quick up-swings have been a feature of the ways of the younger generation; there has been a tendency to establish the right hand and the right side of the body as controlling factors; and an even more pronounced disposition to check the club-head immediately after the impact, as though the idea of the follow-through had been proved useless and played out. It has needed the loss of both the amateur and open championships of Britain to make people wonder whether new faiths are good faiths. Now there is a general rallying to the old ones —as striking a change as ever the game has ’:imwn in a short period. It has been remarked that the Americans instead of adopting the modern British system of hitting at the ball and stopping the club, swing the club-head through the position occupied by the ball, after the manner of the old-time players. The hit may produce a little extra length (or seem to do so because it is so strenuous), but it certainly does not promote the same accuracy of direction as the swing pure and simple. The view has latterly been set forth with vigour in a large number of places, but far and away the most interesting support of it was contained in an interview in which Mr. Bobby Jones analysed his own evolution and his own methods —an interview which he described as the only one he had ever given or probably ever would give, and which he communicated to the writer who is known as his Boswell. Mr. O. B. Keeler. THE OLD IDEA. Mr. Jones declared that, although he never had a lesson, he learnt to play golf from the ago of five onwards by watching Stewart Maiden, who had then just been appointed professional to the Atlanta Club, in Georgia. “Stewart Maiden,” said Mr. Jones, “had the finest and soundest style I have ever seen. Naturally, I did not know this at the time, but I grew up swinging like him.”

Maiden was a true type of the oldfashioned Scottish professional, with that freedom and fullness of swing which always marked the race until, in comparatively recent years, it developed the way of hitting at the ball and finishing with the club pointing straight ahead, instead of following through so smoothly as to bring the hands more or less to the level of the left ear. It is a rather curious reflection that Mr. Jones should have confessed that, living in a cottage on the fringe of the golf course, he built up his style on that of an old-time Scottish professional — one of the kind who in the past twenty years have gone out of fashion because their swings were supposed to be too long and flowing and generally out of date.

Apparently British golfers have tried to rrce ahead a little too fast without paying sufficient heed to the principles of paying sufficient heed to the principles of which their progenitors proved the value —at least to their own satisfaction. One of the outstanding traits in the methods of the Americans is the slowness of their back-swings as though they had only just heard the adage, “Slow back,” and were determined to pay respect to it, if simply as a duty. I suppose that, in this country, people heard it and read it so often that it lost its significance. None among the Americans has an up-swing of quite such rhythm and modulation as Mr. Jones; and, as if to complete the chain of evidence in favour of the old ways in golf, he remarks that there is one point which he is now just learning. The point is that the left hand should be regarded as the master hand in the swing. Here in truth is a belated but distinguished vindication of the almost forgotten proverb of the old professionals: “Give it the back of the left hand.” SEEKING TO IMPROVE. “I know,” says Mr. Jones, “that the right hand provides the punch, or most of it. But if I get to thinking about the right hand, or ignoring the left, the right seems to get in too soon, and all kinds of trouble are the result. By regarding the left as in control, I can get a sort of ‘feel’ in the stroke; and the right, no matter how ignored, comes iu at the proper juncture. At Sunningdale, where I had those rounds of 66 and 68 in the qualifying for the British open, I felt as if I were literally making the shots with my left hand. It seemed 1 could not get off the line. I felt as if I could spank that ball just anywhere- 1 wanted. I’m going to study this phase seriously in the next few months, and try to improve my game.” The situation is interesting. It has taken all this time to produce a man capable of winning the open titles of both America and Britain. in the same year, and so establishing himself as undisputed champion of the world. And yet he is just a simple interpreter of ancient maxims on modern links, and is now becoming highly interested in one of the oldest of all the golf aphorisms: “Give it the back of the left hand.”