AN ESSENTIAL OF GOLF

Taranaki Daily News, 22 December 1931, Page 11

AN ESSENTIAL OF GOLF

SUCCESS WITH MASHIE-NIBLICK. NO SATISFACTORY SUBSTITUTE. (By Harry Vardon—Special to News.) With the exception of the rubbercored ball, no innovation of modern golf has served so much to simplify the game as the mashie-niblick. It has become indiepensable to every class of player. A person may be able to drive effectively with a brasuie and accomplish hie longshots through the green, as satisfactorily with a spoon as with an iron club; 'but he can cfind no complete substitute for a mashie-niblick when the concentrated approaching begins any more than he can select a ball equivalent to one with an interior of tightlywound rubber thread. These two implements of the game have done more than a combination of all the other latter-day circumstances to revolutionise it. When the ground ie hard in summer time and the ball is running far, the long-hitting golfer needs Ittle beyond his driver and his mashieniblick, save that he cannot very well do without a putter for that ritual which I once heard a contemptuous champion describe as “fiddling about round the hole.” But putting is a thing apart; a game within a game. In a large degree the mashie-niblick has supplanted the thoroughbred mashie, which—itself in its infancy when I first used it—was a club that called for some of the most scientific and fascinating shots in golf. There was a supreme joy in playing a cut-spin shot with a mashie by drawing the face of tire club across the ball at the impact and making the ball break from left to right as it pitched, clawing at the turf from the intensity of its side-spin and running only a yard or two—a joy which its successor cannot give in the same fulness. ■Still, it is conceivable that the plain mashie would not have been sufficiently potent in some conditions with the resilient ball which is now in use—a ball so lively that it has to be made to drop almost vertically on to a bard green if it is to stop reasonably near to its place of alignment. It is a coarse shot compared with the old. one, but it is an essential of the age. I know I would not bd without my mashie-niblick, and if there is any golfer who dispenses with one he ought to remedy the deficiency quickly. iPiIONEERS. Some years before the present type of approaching club was devised there were first-class players who usually selected the full-blooded niblick (intended primarily for use in .bunkers and other places of punishment where a kind of bludgeon w r as needed) for - their short pitches from fairway to hole-side. These were the pioneers, and I think that the leader of them was J. R. Gairdner, a well-known amateur of his day. Edward Ray chose it for a good deal more than short approaches when he won his open championship at Muirfield in 1912. He played all-carry shots of 100 yards or more with it. Personally, I often had recourse to it, and made the best shot of my whole life with such a club in a tournament at Northwood, Middlesex. The ball lay about four feet from the club house—a building of the bungalow type, which was directly in my path to the green, about 30 yards ahead. The obvious course was to play sideways, but as the club-house verandah was protected by wire-netting, I decided to attempt the task of making the ball rise almost straight into the air for 30 or 40 feet, and then carry forward over the building to the green. A niblick was obviously the only club for such an effort. To make a ball rise almost perpendicularly with it is not particularly difficult. It is lopped for the purpose. The carry-forward endeavour came to fruition by the application of top spin to the most forceful upward blow- that I could make. The ball finished a yard from the hole. Still, the niblick designed for bunkers was not a good club for the week-end player of average ability to take for his ordinary approach shots. The sharp edge of its sole, so essential for digging into a bad place behind, the ball, was ftpt to dig Mito the fairway, and then

the adventure was ruined. Gradually came the evolution of the sleek, smoothsoled niblick, with just the same loft of •face a<3 the niblick meant for navvies’ work (a considerably greater loft than that of the mashie) which has won recognition. as a sheet-anchor of the golfer’s equipment. think of your knees. I would say that the mashie-niblick shot, when it‘is played under-that perfect control which begets accuracy, depends largely upon the action of the

knees. To be sure, many people make almost a full swipe of it; but that is not the way to secure dependable effects from it. The greater the foot action, a certain degree of which has to enter into long shots, the. less controlled will be the mashie-niblick shot. The more definitely the pivoting of the body begins and ends at the knees, the better will be the results. In the stance, the body should be turned well towards the hole, with the ball almost opposite the left heel, the left foot pointing outwards, and the right foot well in front of the left. That

right foot should be nearer to the ball than it has been for any other shot, and parallel with the sole of the club. That is to say, they are both at right angles to the intended line of play. With the feet thus sufficiently close together to permit of a comfortable bending of the knees, the body turned towards the hole, the head still, and the feet planted securely on the ground, begin by stiffening the right knee. That promotes the pivot of' the hips. The left knee bends slightly in response. In the process most of the weight is transferred from the right leg to the left.

1 When the right knee is stiff, the up--1 swing is finished. The down-swing pont sists of returning the right knee to its s bent position, and stiffening the left so as to brace up the left side of the body e for a linn blow. And do not forget that e neither foot should leave the ground for 1 a shot worth attempting with the a mashie-niblick. , . , . =■ 1 1