PUTTING.
I.
Putting is probably the favorite feature of indoor golf, but very few persons who are practising it have any notion of what they are about. Statistics, especially those that are known as reliable (as George Birmingham says), show that of eighty-six longish putts, forty-one go to the right of the hole and thirty-nine to the left; the remaining six, by great good fortune, fall into the cup. The fortunate play is always heartily congratulated.
Champ or dub, pro or amateur, hardly any one putts accurately seven days in the week. For that reason a great mystery is made about it. It is said that putting, the simplest and most important part of the game, cannot be taught, and the statement is true to this extent, that a man cannot teach something that he hasn’t reasoned out and come to understand. Professional coachers scoff at “book learning” (that is, those who haven’t written books on the game); but all of consequence that is known in this world was learned from books. You don’t really know a thing until you have taken it apart and linked it together again. You can do this with any stroke in golf. And your stroke is as strong as its weakest link.
You remember that glorious Thursday (shall you or your friends ever forget it?) when you were putting in wonderful form; you holed a number of long ones and laid the others dead. But Friday! If the hole had been big enough to bury a dog in you would have missed it. Now, a happy-go-lucky method that embraces such a variation is no method at all. The difference between your Thursdays and Fridays should be a matter of inches, not a matter of feet. What you require is a method of taking the putter back and bringing it forward, that shall, on your bad days, keep the ball somewhere near the line. Your putt must be as nearly as possible automatic, not temperamental. If this cannot be taught the fault is with the instructor.
When you drive from the tee for a distant flag, it doesn’t matter if you are ten feet off the line, nor need your second shot give you too much concern. When you come to pitch or run up to the green the margin of error shrinks. Once on the green it disappears; accuracy is now demanded. Yet on every green one sees putts of a few inches fluffed, a putt of two feet is studied with great care, while a six foot putt is gone about as gravely as an operation for appendicitis, and much less expeditiously.
II.
Place the ball twelve inches from the hole. This putt has been missed, although I cannot understand how—unless the player was stricken with paralysis at the moment of moving his club, or was intoxicated, and, seeing two balls, played the wrong one. There are, of course, persons with so poor an eye that, when they try to throw coal into a furnace, they strike the outside of the furnace two inches below the fuel door. But paralytics, heavy drinkers, and cross-eyed persons will never become accurate putters, so we may dismiss them from consideration; we may also dismiss the twelve-inch putt as unmissable. Now place the ball two feet from the hole. This putt can be foozled, and the easiest way to achieve that absurdity is to putt with the arms. Many players putt with the arms, perfectly still, and putt very well—on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. On the alternate days they are what is called off their game, and in such cases it is usual to ascribe the unhappy conditions to an inscrutable providence and not to a fault in the method of taking back the club. It is agreed, I assume, that the putter should be taken straight back on the line of the hole, and it is difficult to do this with the arms, stiff or relaxed, as half an inch on either side of the line means inaccuracy. A man might learn to do this with practising constantly for ten years. But then he would have to spend fifteen years learning to bring the putter back in the same line, which is even more difficult. One can take a flat swing with the club around his right leg and run the ball to the hole—but only on Tuesday, Thursday or Saturday; and he might have to play a match on Friday.
There is no accounting for the tastes of golfers, and it may be that for many of them the very uncertainty in erratic putting may be one of the game’s attractions. Those persons are advised to putt with their arms, and if a wider margin of error is desired it can be obtained by letting the right hand turn over when the ball is tapped. If an even more brilliant result is wished for, the player may stand well back from the ball, with legs spread wide. In this attitude he can miss the rim of a cistern.
III.
Man’s arms have always been of great service to him. In the arboreal age they helped him swing from tree to tree. Later they were useful for transporting Christmas bundles, embracing the lady of his choice, making political speeches, and so on. But man’s arms were never designed for putting; this is work for the wrists. These are well-oiled hinges, easily controlled; they can be trained to work almost automatically; they can brush a ball a few inches or they can flick it a hundred yards; they can caress or smite. Even in the long drive it is the turn of the wrists that puts the pace on the ball. When professional coaches play they play with the wrists; when they instruct the novice they spend their time telling him how to wave his arms. There are a few exceptions.
Let us return to the ball, as the novelist “returns to his story.” We left it two feet from the hole. To propel it so that it will strike the back of the cup it is necessary to take the putter straight back. Stand as close to the ball as the lie of the putter allows. Face as you please; it pleases me to face along a line at an angle of forty-five degrees. Having soled the club, anchor your elbows to your body, and don’t weigh anchor for an instant. You can take the club back along the extension of the imaginary line between the ball and the hole by bending, not turning, the wrists, but there is lack of freedom. You can also take it back by turning the left wrist inward, as in the full iron shot, but the clubhead will leave the line. A third way remains—to violate one of the best rules of golf and turn the left wrist outward. The turn must be decided and it suffices to lift the putter and keep it on the line. Make the turn slowly and let the clubhead swing forward smoothly.
Concerning the putt of greater length than three or four feet, I am not disposed to be dogmatic or ride a theory to death; besides, I should inevitably collide with that nebular hypothesis of golf known as “the feel of the club.” But for a yard putt I don’t care how the club feels if I can keep the ball on a straight line to the hole. O’Neill refuses to subscribe entirely to my method. He flatters me by saying I can putt any fashion. Even if this were true, which it is not, I can putt best in the way indicated.
IV.
Don’t look at the ball! Nothing is more fatal to consistent accurate putting than the habit of looking at the ball. The fact that many persons who do look at it putt very well, and often brilliantly, merely proves that man is a patient and persistent animal, and can overcome almost any obstacle. I am aware that “keeping the eye on the ball” is regarded as a virtue; the agreement on this point is pathetic. But I have found in jogging through this world, that oftentimes a piece of advice works very well if it is turned upside down. I never could see any good reason for falling in a trance over a ball before putting it, and I suspect that this is one of the theories which work well when reversed.
To draw, freehand, a straight line from A to B do you look at A? No, you look at B. Does a billiard player look at the cue ball when making a shot? No: having taken his “stance” and made his calculations, he fixes his eye on the object ball. Billiards is played with the wrists, and the cue is taken back automatically, as a putter should be; and so you will never master the art of putting until you swing your club as unconsciously as you move your arm in tossing nuts to a squirrel, or pitching a quoit or doing a number of other things of a similar nature.
Looking up from the ball is fatal; your head moves. Looking at the hole is not; your head remains still. Take your line carefully and as deliberately as you please, and, having soled your club, fix your attention on the hole, and don’t look back at the ball.
V.
For the benefit of golfiacs who depend exclusively on this department for hope and inspiration we are “able to say” that poor putting is due, in great measure, to the foolish notion that “perfect golf” allows two putts to the green. A putt from any part of the green that does not sink is an unsuccessful putt, and no amount of self-delusion can make it otherwise. Hardly anybody tries to hole a long putt; the player is satisfied with “laying it dead”; if it stops within two feet of the hole he is tickled pink, and his companions congratulate him, saying, “Very good, Eddie! That’s laying ’em up!” He ought to know—and we take pleasure in telling him—that the only good putt is the putt that sinks, and that he will never, except by accident, sink a long putt if he continues to cherish the delusion that “laying ’em dead” is good putting.
In a word, an “approach” putt that fails to drop is really a re-proach. The word approach should be eliminated from the game and pin or hole substituted.
THE MASHIE.
I.
The difference between a putter and a mashie is that the face of one is straight and the face of the other is laid back. For short pitches you take the mashie back in the same way that you move the putter, and with a mere turn of the wrist you “chip” the ball toward the hole. It is assumed that tall grass or rough turf lies between, for no sensible person will run up over smooth turf with a mashie when he can use a midiron or cleek—unless he has deluded himself for years with the notion that the difference between one club and another is more than a difference of weight and loft. The over-use of the mashie is generally due to cowardice; the lofted face promises to get the ball up, and it frequently does.
This timidity is due to the moss-grown tradition that it is essential to “keep your eye on the ball.” Now when a man can repeatedly top a ball that he is looking steadily at, it ought eventually to dawn on him, as it dawned on me, that looking at the ball is one of the causes of topping. I don’t recall ever having topped a croquet ball, or ever having given a thought to the swing of the mallet. Having taken aim, one looks at the wicket and strikes the ball; that’s all there is to it. So in golf. When you want distance you look at the ball, because you are going to “soak” it; but when direction or delicacy of stroke are wanted, you look at the hole, or at that spot on the green where you design to drop the ball.
You stand very “open,” with your right foot well advanced and your right elbow anchored to your hip; you let the club swing on the hinge of your wrists—straight back and straight forward—and when you reach the ball you flick it sharply or gently, as the distance may require. A child that never pitched ball can do this. A man who has devoted years to glaring at the ball will have some difficulty at first, because perfect relaxation is possible only when your attention is on the flag.
II.
For straightaway work (and that is all that need concern the inexperienced player) the mashie can do nothing that the midiron cannot do, except to put the ball higher in the air and more at the mercy of the wind. Yet, when the average golfer gets within a hundred and fifty yards of a green out comes his mashie, and one of two things happens: if the ball is half topped it goes to perdition; if it is hit clean it drops short of the green. A lower flying ball would have reached the green or passed it. But “many are called and few get up.”
Of ten players, nine overswing with all the irons, and especially with the mashie. Now, a mashie, like a cheap piano, cannot be forced by the average player without disastrous results. A very skilful player can force a club in an emergency, but if he were to force it at all times he would soon cease to be a very skilful player. I know of no holes that call for a long shot with a mashie. If you find yourself one hundred and fifty or more yards from a green, and the ball has to be dropped dead, that is both your misfortune and your fault; your previous shots were short.
If, in the back-swing, your mashie passes the perpendicular, and your wrists are carried higher than your equator, you are forcing the stroke. Even if you are in the predicament referred to, and have to have a long ball, it is better to do the forcing with your wrists and forearms than to wrap the club around your neck. As to where you should look while executing the shot, I find that the pleasantest results are obtained by letting the eyes follow the ball. You don’t lift your head or shoulders to do this; you merely roll your head, and your eyes follow the entire flight of the ball. Nothing is gained, and something is risked, by staring at the ground after the bird has flown.
THE MIDIRON.
Before continuing these illuminating remarks on golf, it might be well to echo the warning of Andrew Lang in an introduction to an edition of Walton’s Angler. “If there are any facts in this book,” he said in effect, “they got in by accident.” This being understood, we may proceed to consider that indispensable tool, the midiron.
The most satisfying shot in golf would be the drive, if you drove well every day; but all the circumstances of this stroke are not always within your control; on the off days driving is something that, since it must be done, ’twere well it were done quickly. But the short shot with the iron, up to, say, seventy-five yards, is, next to putting (which is as simple as beanbag), the easiest thing to do imaginable. You need to keep but two things in mind: first, you must lay the right elbow against the side and take the club back with the wrists and forearms; second, you must finish the stroke with the knuckles of the right hand underneath. This in itself insures the clubhead being carried through on the line. When this has become automatic you may add the crowning touch—finishing with the clubhead very low, the blade laid flat, and your arms perfectly straight and pointed at the flag.
Don’t look at the ground after the ball is gone. Let everything follow it,—club, arms, eyes and body. A very good plan is to practise the shot with eyes on the flag. When you discover that you can hit a ball without looking at it you will have no trouble in looking at it when the occasion requires.
And this, in a word, is what I have been driving at, that you cannot play golf easily, gracefully and accurately until you have lost all fear of the ball and have got rid of the notion that keeping your eye on it is the fundamental principle of the game. Almost any professional will tell you that it is not looking at the ball that enables you to drive two hundred yards; it is keeping your shoulders in one plane throughout the stroke.