GOLF

Taranaki Daily News, 15 October 1930, Page 4

GOLF

CONCENTRATION AT GOLF. PENALTIES OF OVERDOING IT. (By Harry Vardon. —Special io News.) Somebody suggested to me the other day that one of the commonest faults in golf is excessive concentration. Judging by the tense countenances and constricted physical conditions which one sees so often on courses, I should say that he is right. The exact degree of mental application that helps a player is as much a gift or cultivated art as his swing. In truth, the one makes the other. No rational person can bear with the individual who makes breezy remarks about a hundred-and-one topics all the way round, or keeps on telling you that h only plays for the fun of the thing and doesn’t mind whether he wins or loses. He is as bad as the chatterbox at the card-table. At the same time, concentration can unquestionably reach the stage where it overbalances, and converts calm determination into miserable apprehension. I sometimes think that its. perfect exemplar in golf was James Braid. He would walk along enveloped in concentration, and looking like nothing so much as a mute at a funeral. And yet it never made him anxious. I remember the occasion when lie won the open championship at Prestwick after having taken eight strokes at the third hole, which is known as the Cardinal’s Nob in token of the vast sand-hill which confronts the shot to the green. When Braid came to it in his next round, he was resolved not to repeat that disaster. A huge crowd was scurrying all over the slopes and their environs, and’ he waited exactly fourteen minutes until ■ everybody who could possibly affect his trend of thought had been moved out of the way. He looked as patient as if such an ordeal was only to be expected. I believe he would have, waited a day without becoming in the least degree perturbed. THE TIGHT GRIP. The lure ’ of golf, the supreme quality that makes it attractive to business men and brain-workers, is that it is positively much more difficult than anything else they attempt in life. Consequently, it diverts their minds completely from all the other problems. Durinn- the playing, it demands and exacts exclusive attention. There are a great many instances, however, in which it truly seems to assert itself a little too strongly as a solemn ritual. Players are so engrossed in the possibilities of improving that they bring upon themselves the tribulations of over-con-’entration, which are quite as bad in their effects as the pleasantries of under-concentration.

The symptoms of trying too hard are clear to anybody who has had a large measure of experience at the game. They begin with a long-drawn-out process' of waggling the club-head at the ball—a process which merely amounts to procrastination. It produces an affliction of its own; it promotes inevitably a tightening of all the muscles. And nobody can swing properly when his muscles are taut and his wrip of the club so, x tight that the %lood flees from his 'knuckles—a condition in which you may see many , people trying to hit shots. To this type of pupil, I always say: “You make too hard work of it. Don t try so hard; just swing th® club easily.” One man retorted that it was all very well for an ex-champion to give this sorjf of advices, but I suppose one has to make some sort of stand against the tendency towards over-concentration. Possibly, a few people of rare disposition manage to thrive on it. Lieu-tenant-Colonel J. Sherwood Kelly, a V.C. of the Great War, became a scratch player in the Seaford Links Club within four months of swinging a club fbr the first time—surely the most rapid progress that anybody has ever made at the game—and did it by devoting his mind entirely to golf as a rest-cure from the war. He played two rounds a day With the professional, starting very early so as to have a. clear course, and, whenever he made a mistake, he practised the shot again and again until he could accomplish it satisfactorily.. For four months he did nothing but this. And then, returning scores °for his handicap, he was placed at scratch. LIKE AN INDIAN. Bobby Jones declares that “the habit of grim concentration throughout the round is a mistake—for me, anyway. If I walk along like an Indian, concentrating on ■flie next shot with an eighth of a mile to tramp before reaching the ball, I am tired out when I stand Up to the shot. Lately I have found that a word or two with the man I am playing with, or the referee, or maybe some friend in the gallery, relieves the tension. Then, when I get to the ball, I can turn oti the concentration as hard as I need.”

In a large degree, everybody is a law unto himself in this matter. John Ball, the most successful British amateur that ever lived, was a very quick player, for whom, apparently, the game had no Cares or problems, but he certainly, wanted nobody to "speak to him during the round. At Hoylake he always engaged a caddie who happened to be deaf°and dumb. I am convinced that Ball was almost as accurate and skilful a striker of the ball, except in putting, as Jones is to-day.. He played very quickly —sometimes-it looked carelessly—and yet wrapped himself in such an atmosphere of concentration that nobody could think of talking to him during the round.