50 Years of Golfing Wisdom

50 Years of Golfing Wisdom John Jacobs John Jacobs is one of golf's all-time great teachers, a true legend of the game who has passed on his words of wisdom to thousands of amateurs as well as to some of the world's greatest players over the last 50 years. Now, for the first time ever, the pick of his collective wisdom has been brought together in one seminal volume.When the likes of Butch Harmon and David Leadbetter heap praise on your methods and credit you with having helped shape the way they learnt their craft and how they applied those teachings, you know that you must be one of the most important and influential figures in the world of golf.Not only a great teacher, John Jacobs was also good enough to play in the Ryder Cup and beat the best in the game. Those who witnessed his memorable victory over Grand Slam winner Gary Player in the final of the South African Matchplay Championship knew they were in the presence of someone special – a talent that was able to use all his experience as a top-level player and move seamlessly into the world of golf teaching.50 Years of Golfing Wisdom features all the lessons and advice that made Jacobs the original, and many say still the ultimate, golfing guru. Every department of the game receives the Jacobs treatment – from the fundamentals of grip and swing, to problem solving and curing your bad shots, to instruction on hitting every shot from the longest drive to the shortest putt, including everything in between.Simple, easy to understand, effective advice on how to maximize your potential and play your best golf – this may just be the only golf instruction book you'll ever need. Copyright (#ulink_c8fd14d7-74a0-55cf-bde4-8a96bb651e1b) HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 77–85 Fulham Palace Road Hammersmith, London W6 8JB www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/) First published in 2005 by Collins Willow Copyright © John Jacobs and Steve Newell 2005 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library John Jacobs asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work Illustrations by Rob Davies All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. 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Source ISBN 9780007193936 Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008118259 Version: 2014-10-02 Contents Cover (#u95ba6dd6-b143-5e0d-b4fa-753657d771ff) Title Page (#u1e784799-e5e4-57ae-a456-23ab118dbc9f) Copyright (#ulink_2d876c90-19ec-5209-a4b5-0b00a602e263) Foreword (#ulink_1c5c3635-6cae-5b77-9fde-8bc9d2846c81) A Lifetime’s Philosophy (#ulink_8a238ebb-e34b-563c-9008-df7e59cd912f) Chapter 1: Understanding Golf’s Fundamentals (#ulink_d1f1a2a0-b4f1-5e88-8597-b1978fe15774) Chapter 2: Building a Better Golf Swing (#ulink_92abd2a7-98e9-58e9-8546-11cf73d7304e) Chapter 3: The Short Game (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 4: The Art of Putting (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 5: How to Cure Golf’s Most Common Faults (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 6: Trouble Shooting (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 7: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 8: Golfing Greats (and what you can learn) (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 9: Playing the Game (#litres_trial_promo) Chapter 10: I Had Some Fun Along the Way! (#litres_trial_promo) Picture Section (#litres_trial_promo) Notes (#litres_trial_promo) About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) Foreword (#ulink_3da643d6-f085-5a53-9270-3794907fd2f5) Nothing meaningful in this life is ever achieved without hard work, but one always needs a little bit of luck. John Jacobs deserves his success in golf, because he invested plenty of the former and, as he freely admits, was blessed with a little of the latter, too. His talent took care of the rest. His journey is extraordinary. John started his professional golfing life in his father’s shop at Lindrick Golf Club in Yorkshire. He would stoke the fires in the grate on Monday mornings to burn out the snapped hickory shafts of clubs broken over the course of a weekend’s play. He grew up to become one of golf’s most influential figures – tournament winner, undefeated Ryder Cup player, captain of the Ryder Cup team, founder of the PGA Tour, OBE, past President of the PGA of Europe, a member of golf’s exclusive Hall of Fame and also the Teaching Hall of Fame (itself a rare double honour), and winner of the prestigious Geoffrey Dyson Award for Sporting Teaching Excellence in 2002. Most recently Jacobs was awarded honorary membership of the R&A. The list could go on further, were there space. Above all, though, John Jacobs is one of golf’s all-time great teachers – a true legend of the game who is in the unique position of having taught hundreds of thousands of amateurs around the world how to play better golf, in-between passing on his words of wisdom to the world’s greatest players of the last 50 years. No other coach has had more success in making the best even better. The same could be said for his influence on today’s leading coaches. John himself is far too modest to even suggest that a list of tributes from great players through the years be included in this book, but as his collaborator on this project I am happy to relieve him of this burden, for I think it is entirely appropriate that within the remit of this foreword there is scope for personal contributions which put in perspective John’s impact on the game of golf. ‘It is an unrelenting insistence on understanding and applying the fundamental objectives of the swing, plus his remarkable ability to explain them clearly, that makes John Jacobs such a great golf teacher. Because his logic is unarguable and his reasoning so understandable, his success rate with all levels of golfers from beginner to tournament player has been and continues to be outstanding.’ Jack Nicklaus ‘John Jacobs has been a friend of mine for many years. He is an outstanding teacher and has also been an excellent golfer and a fierce competitor on the course. However, of greatest importance for me is that he is a true gentleman and an asset to the game.’ Gary Player ‘John Jacobs has contributed a great deal to the game and he is considered one of golf’s premier teachers. In building my own career, he was certainly one of the instructors I studied and he has an outstanding ability to analyse golfers’ problems through their ball flight. He is one of the game’s real grandmasters.’ David Leadbetter ‘John is the nicest person I have met in my 25-year amateur and professional career. He really is a true friend. As a golf teacher he is without doubt The Master. Simplicity is the word I would use to describe his teaching. His theories on the golf swing and the lessons he gives are so crystal clear and understandable that he makes the game of golf seem easy. His advice helps bring better golf within everyone’s grasp.’ Jose Maria Olazabal ‘I was just 14 when I first saw John Jacobs on the practice ground at Dalmahoy. It was not his swing that caught my eye, or the way he addressed the ball, but rather the fact that he never had time to practise himself because so many of his colleagues kept asking for advice. As always it was given freely. John remains the supreme enthusiast gaining his pleasure from helping fellow pros and amateurs – thousands over the years – play the game better and enjoy it more. I seek out John two or three times a year to have a look at my swing and he has never let me down. Come to think of it, I’d question whether he has ever let anyone down.’ Bernard Gallacher ‘The two biggest influences are my dad and John Jacobs. I like the way John talks about the swing path all the time. The way he makes everything very simple and straightforward – that’s the way I like to teach.’ Butch Harmon ‘John’s achievements are endless as a player, teacher, writer, communicator, golf course designer, and executive director of the men’s European Tour. I can think of no better host, or better companion.’ Mickey Walker John Jacobs isn’t just a great teacher, though. He could play a bit himself and was, at times, good enough to beat the best. He competed in the Ryder Cup and won tournaments, including the Dutch Open in 1957 and a memorable victory over Grand Slam winner Gary Player, in the final of the South African Matchplay Championship. John had an equally significant influence on the administration of the game, having been instrumental in setting up what is now the European Tour. Indeed, John sees this as perhaps his greatest achievement, a view endorsed by Mark McCormack in his World of Professional Golf Annual in 1973. McCormack wrote of the haphazard affair that constituted the British Pro golf scene and the plan devised by John Jacobs to overcome the crisis situation. ‘The Jacobs plan worked. The crowds did come back. Public interest was reawakened. And the ultimate proof that golf was back in favour was that both the BBC and the independent companies returned coverage of PGA tournaments to their schedules. The outlook for pro golf, which had seemed so desolate twelve months previously, had taken a decided turn for the better. The mood among the players was buoyant. Golf had begun to believe in itself again. I for one do not doubt that 1972 was a year of high significance. It might be no more than slight exaggeration to say that these twelve months saw British golf progress by a quarter of a century. And that is quite a trick.’ John has also authored numerous bestselling books on how to play the game, many of which are still considered benchmark manuals, revered and studied decades after they first went into print. For the record, these include: Golf, first published in 1963, with a foreword by Laddie Lucas. This was made up of a collection of articles which first appeared in the pages of Golfing magazine during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Play Better Golf, published in 1969, based on the manuscripts from the hugely popular Yorkshire TV series of the same name. John made a series of thirteen 30-minute programmes, followed by two further series, during which time the director suggested he write a book to go with it. It went on to sell well over half-a-million copies. Practical Golf, first published in 1972 with a foreword by Tony Jacklin, went on to become a bestseller. John considers it ‘the most important book I wrote.’ It contained many articles from the first ten years of Golf World and was compiled by that magazine’s editor Ken Bowden, who later went on to edit Golf Digest in the US and write much of Jack Nicklaus’ published work. John Jacobs Analyses Golf’s Superstars, published in 1974, in collaboration with Ken Bowden. This was perhaps the first book of its type, focusing as it did on the swings of the leading players of the day, with analysis from John and words of wisdom to help the average golfer learn from the greats. Golf Doctor was first published in 1979 and entitled Curing Faults for Weekend Golfers in the US editions (a title which incidentally killed it from a sales perspective, because people thought it was simply a band-aid), with a foreword by Jack Nicklaus and co-written with Dick Aultman. John says he wrote this as much for the pro to teach, as for the pupils. However it is interpreted, there is no doubt that a quarter of a century after it first went into print, it remains golf’s ultimate ‘self help’ manual. The Golf Swing Simplified, first published in 1993 and again co-written by Ken Bowden, was a wonderfully succinct study of the golf swing, devoted to its most critical component: the action required to strike the ball most effectively from the tee and then on to the green. Golf in a Nutshell, first published in 1995, was written with the legendary golf journalist Peter Dobereiner. This project came about when Dobereiner wrote an article in Golf Digest magazine praising the talents of John Jacobs and highlighting the merits of Practical Golf, the bestselling golf book of all time until Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book. John suggested to Peter that they write their own little red book … and this was it. The 50 Greatest Golf Lessons of the 20th Century is John’s most recent book, published in 1999, which I had the pleasure of collaborating on. Rather in the style of John’s earlier book on golf’s superstars, this work featured a biography on the great golfers of the 20th century with insightful analysis from John on the way they played the game and how we mere mortals can benefit. This is an appropriate moment to go right back to the start, though, to John’s first ever instruction book, Golf, for it was in the foreword that John’s good friend and former Walker Cup captain Laddie Lucas wrote: ‘John teaches the skilled and the average, the illustrious and the humble, with a success which has earned him, deservedly, the pseudonym ‘Dr Golf’. I have a feeling that this substantial treatise is only the forerunner of what may flow from this fertile mind.’ How prophetic that statement proved to be. Now for the first time ever, the collective works of John’s books, as listed above, are brought together in this one volume – 50 Years of Golfing Wisdom. It’s the best of the best, in every sense. It represents an unmissable opportunity for golfers of all abilities to benefit from one of the keenest, wisest, most knowledgeable minds in golf. 50 Years of Golfing Wisdom includes all of the lessons and advice that made John the original, and many say still the ultimate, golfing guru. Where appropriate, we’ve even included contemporary drawings from the relevant book. Every department of the game receives the Jacobs treatment – in other words, simple, easy to understand, effective advice on how to maximize your potential and play your best golf. From the fundamentals, to problem solving, and curing your bad shots, to instruction on hitting every shot from the longest drive to the most testing putt, and everything in between. There are also studies of some of the great players in history and what you can learn from them. 50 Years of Golfing Wisdom is so comprehensive, so packed full of good advice, it may just be the only instruction book you’ll ever need. As Tony Jacklin said in the foreword to Practical Golf, ‘Putting golf technique down on paper is extremely difficult. I think Jacobs does it superbly. This book is a wonderful distillation of an exceptional man’s knowledge, and I don’t see how it can fail to help any golfer play better.’ My sentiments exactly. Steve Newell A Lifetime’s Philosophy (#ulink_737d998a-3e08-5107-b5b5-83c7b7154a03)* (#litres_trial_promo) Golf is what the ball does, which is totally dependent upon what the club is doing at impact. The variants at impact are: The clubface: which can be open, closed or square (strong or weak). The swing path: which can be in-to-out, out-to-in, or straight. The angle of attack: which can be too steep, too shallow, or correct for the individual club. The clubhead speed: to suit the shot in hand. These dimensions, the clubface, swing path, and angle of attack, all of which determine the flight of the ball, are very influenced by the set-up at address. The grip has a direct bearing on clubface control at impact. The clubface aim and body alignment has a direct bearing on the swing path at impact. The body posture at address has a direct bearing on the degree of shoulder tilt during the body turn, affecting the swing plane and therefore the angle of attack at impact. This does not mean that everyone will set up to the ball in exactly the same way. As teachers, prescribing the correct set-up for the individual is our greatest teaching tool. Turning to the swing itself, which is conditioned by the position of the ball relative to the player, which is to the side and on the ground. The fact that it is to the side requires the club to swing through the ball from the inside back to the inside with the swing path on line at impact, with the clubface square to that line. The correct body action facilitates this arc of swing. Since the ball is on the ground, at the same time as the body turns, the hands and arms swing the club up, down and up again in unison with the body action. The above, I believe, is applicable to every player, allowing for individual variations. The shape of a golf lesson would normally take the form of: diagnosis, explanation accompanied by demonstration and finally, correction. The pupil is best viewed down the line to facilitate this approach. The set-up to the target can be observed and the subsequent swing path through the ball can be clearly seen. The flight of the ball relative to the swing path will give a valid indication of the clubface at impact. This is not to say the side view for players of all levels is on occasion very appropriate. It is vital that the correct diagnosis is made and that the explanation and accompanying demonstration be fully understood by the pupil in order to encourage the necessary perseverance since any correction is likely to be, initially, uncomfortable. CHAPTER 1 (#ulink_f5d995da-b3fa-568b-80f2-bb2a9c401ab7) Understanding Golf’s Fundamentals (#ulink_f5d995da-b3fa-568b-80f2-bb2a9c401ab7) On reading golf One reason, I have always thought, why golf can become such a difficult game is simply because there are so many different ways of playing it correctly; and that one secret, for any golfer striving to improve, is to decide first which is his or her own correct way. It is my sincere hope that this book will help any reader to do just that. The correct way, I’m firmly convinced, is invariably the simplest. What may prove simple to one, though, may not necessarily be simple to another. One of the difficulties in studying golf in books lies in learning to select from other people’s experiences, ideas and theories, and adapt them to your own personal needs. I think I have found truth in almost every book or article I have read on golf! Yet, in spite of that fact, there is often one thing or another in any particular book which, read by the wrong person, could cause a real setback in his or her game. As an illustration of this I remember two ladies, both good performers around 8-handicap, who arrived for tuition. Both were accustomed to playing together. One lady hooked her shots, the other sliced. Here were two ladies with faults that I must tell each other to copy! I wanted each to try to do precisely what was wrong in the other! In other words, my instruction was of a completely contradictory nature. It had to go even further than that, though. Needing contrasting advice, it followed that since they were both avid readers on golf, they also needed different advice on what to read. I told Lady No.1 with her too-flat swing and hook, to read Byron Nelson’s book, because he was an upright swinger; and Lady No.2, with her too-upright swing and slice, to read Ben Hogan’s, because he was a rounded swinger. This was 50 years ago, of course. Today, I might replace these two role models with, say, Colin Montgomerie (upright) and Ian Woosnam (rounded). The point I’m trying to make is that it is as well to appreciate what we are doing wrong before we seek remedies by reading, from no matter how impeccable a source. The golfing public has been saturated with golf books, most of which have been very good, in many ways. I feel, however, that the titles have been wrong. Most of them should have been called How I Play Golf – and how the writer of each book plays golf may not be the easiest way to teach each of his readers. I sincerely hope that this book will make it easier for you to decide which is your own best way of playing. As with every lesson I’ve given, I hope to teach people not just to hit the ball better but to understand why they’re hitting it better. Swing, or move from position to position? Should you really swing the club? Or should you merely move through a series of contrived postures, a pattern of carefully thought-out conscious movements, a set of deliberate muscle contortions? The question may seem silly but it is of prime importance, especially if you are new to the game or have never achieved the golfing prowess of which you feel yourself potentially capable. A Rolls Royce without an engine might look impressive, but it’s never going to get out of the garage. In exactly the same way, a golf swing without an engine, however beautifully contoured each part might be, is never going to move the ball very far out of your shadow. To do that, your swing, whatever else it lacks, must have power, motivation. It must be a swing. In the simplest of golfing terms, you must ‘hit the ball’. Am I stating the obvious? I think not. Most of the great golfers up to the early 1960s learned the game as caddies. They watched the people they carried for and tried to copy those who played well. They were copying an action, a fluid movement. It would never have occurred to them, even if they had known how, to break the swing down into parts and study it segment by segment in static form. Golf was action, and was learned as such. Now the camera plays an increasingly large part in the exploration of golf technique, with the result that today a great many people tend to learn golf as a ‘static’ game rather than as a game of movement. Instead of watching good players in the flesh, and trying to emulate the action of a good golf swing, they study static pictures and try to copy the positions in which the camera has frozen the players. They are learning positions which, in themselves, without the essential motivating force of swinging, are almost useless. This does not mean to say that the very excellent action photographs published in golf magazines and books are of no value in learning the game. But undoubtedly the biggest danger in static golf, in learning from still pictures, is that body action becomes overemphasized. Photographs cannot show motion, but they show very well how the body changes position during the golf swing. It is these positional impressions that the beginner and the poor golfer is apt to copy and frequently overdo. Body action is important in golf, but is complementary to the swinging of the clubhead, not the dominating factor of the swing. The body movement must be in sympathy with the clubhead as controlled by the hands, not try to take over from the clubhead as the function of striking the ball. For the club to swing down and forward at over 100 mph, the arms must swing. Arm and hand action also promote feel, and this too can only be learned by swinging. The grip takes care of the blade The first thing to understand is that there is no such thing as one single grip, correct for everybody. Men and women with many different grips have all played winning golf. What I try to do is to put a man or woman on to the easiest grip to use with his or her natural swing tendencies. Any grip that provides for the player to connect with the ball with the blade square to the target at impact while simultaneously allowing for full use of the hands and arms, is correct. If the shots are curving in their flight, even when the stance and swing are right, then the trouble is usually in the grip. Generalizing (and taking no account of special cases), if the ball is curving in its flight through the air towards the left, then the hands are likely to be turned too far over to the right and the correction needed is to move the Vs between thumbs and forefingers inwards past his right shoulder; even, in some cases, until they both point towards his chin, but usually not as far as that. The converse goes for a man whose shots are curving to the right. Anywhere between chin and right shoulder can be correct for the Vs, if it works for the player. Experiment helps to find out precisely what is best in every individual case. Setting up your stance Most golfers ruin many of their shots before they even begin to swing, simply because they set themselves to the task in the wrong way. It really is absurd for an intelligent person to make no effort to get things right from the start. Yet most golfers don’t. And here is one simple way in which they could get a much better grip on their game. The set-up of a shot can be learnt consciously and without any great mental or physical effort. With a little care and application, any one of us can set up a good swing. Make the effort – and a good swing becomes a probability rather than an impossibility. a) Stance essentials 1 The first thing to aim is the club-blade, square to the target. 2 Then lines straight through the shoulders and feet should aim approximately parallel, across country, to the line through the clubface to the target. 3 The shoulders must be tilted: that is, the left shoulder must be higher than the right (or vice versa for left-handed golfers). 4 You should never be tense. Your stance should, though, be firm; there should be a feeling of power, almost of the feet trying to grip the ground. 5 The stance is wider for the longer shots than the short shots; approximately shoulder-width for woods, and progressively narrower down to approximately 12 inches for a 9-iron. 6 The way many people take up their stance they might just as well be sitting in a chair, for all the help they get from their feet and legs. The right stance gives one more of a feeling of resting on a tall shooting stick, with the back still fairly straight, and the leg muscles ready for action. b) Aim and the Shoulders To me, standing ‘open’ (body set to make it easier to hit to the left of the target) or ‘shut’ (to the right of the target) means much more whether the shoulders are open or shut, than whether the feet are. If the ball is in the wrong position, the shoulders are likely to be wrongly aligned, whether the feet are correct or not. If the ball is actually too far back, drawing the shoulders to the right, you will then aim to the right with the club as well. Contrarily, a ball too far forward makes you aim to the left. There, quite simply, you have one cause of hundreds of thousands of hooks and slices every weekend! Basic involuntary hooker’s position: ball back, shoulders closed, blade aiming right. Basic involuntary slicer’s position: ball forward, shoulders open, blade aiming left. Note the cause here of much baffled infuriation: the man who aligns himself to the left of target will then tend to swing across the ball – and slice it to the right! He may then try to correct this by consciously aiming further left; this will probably make him swing even more wildly across it and the ball will slice even more! The converse can just as easily happen to the man who aligns himself to the right of the target. c) Summing up At the address, the blade should face the line to the target exactly. The shoulders should be parallel to this line, with the left shoulder higher than the right. Too simple? Well, may I suggest you take a close look at the address position of the next three weekend golfers you play with. If more than one of them has just these three points of aim correct, then you are obviously playing in very good company! I’m not saying that the right stance will guarantee a good shot. It won’t, of course. But it will make it a great deal easier, just as a wrong stance will make it a great deal more difficult. After all, it is the stance that aims the swing. Getting it all on track Picturing a golfer standing on one track of a railway to hit a ball sitting on the other track is one of the most popular teaching analogies. It is used so often because it so perfectly conveys the ideal of aligning one’s body parallel to the target line. Such a set-up encourages swinging the clubhead through the ball along, rather than across, the target line. Also note the posture: the golfer bends from the waist with his back straight. His arms hang free and easy. His knees are slightly flexed. Overall, his posture conveys a sense of readiness and resilience. The alignment of the feet, hips and shoulders should be parallel to the aim of the clubface. Remember! The basic idea of the golf grip is that you should hold the club at address in the same way as you intend to apply it to the ball at impact. Let the aim of the clubface position the ball relative to the feet The important and often neglected matter of ball positioning in relation to the feet is greatly simplified by correct clubface aiming. Step up from behind the ball looking down your target line and set the clubface behind the ball. Looking squarely at your target you will notice that, by positioning the face of the club in this way, you also establish a particular alignment of its shaft, and thus also of its handle. It is important when positioning the clubface that the loft is maintained. Now, without changing that shaft and handle alignment, finalize your grip on the club and shuffle your feet into what feels like the best position to enable you hit the ball straight to your target. ‘Stand to the club’ correctly in this manner and you will find that the ball is automatically positioned correctly in relation to your feet with every club in the bag, including even the putter. Too simple? Well, give it a try. Particularly if you’re one of the many golfers who habitually position their feet before they aim the clubface, you’ll be delighted with the results. Check your posture Correct posture promotes a body pivot that swings the club on the proper in-to-in arc and in the proper plane, which is the only way to return the clubface to the ball squarely and at the correct angle of attack while completely releasing the clubhead. In the perfect posture (centre) your weight is evenly balanced. Grip the club, aim its face, align your body and position the ball correctly and you will automatically achieve most of the postural requirements of a fine set-up. Just to be sure, though, here are the important areas to check: To make room for your arms to swing freely past your body, you must lean over to the ball. Do so from your hips, keeping your back as straight as you comfortably can. Think of ‘head up’ rather than ‘head down’ and achieve it by keeping your chin high. Let your arms hang easily straight down from your shoulders, keeping your left arm straight but not stiff and your right arm relaxed at the elbow. Because your right hand is lower on the club than your left, your shoulders will tilt slightly to the right, which will encourage positioning of your head behind the ball. Go with the tendency, but don’t exaggerate it. Stay well balanced and ‘springy’ by setting your weight equally between the balls of both feet, with your knees slightly flexed. Short or tall Your precise posture at address will be influenced by your build. Tall golfers, of necessity, stand relatively close to the ball and thus fairly upright. Short golfers must stand farther away from the ball, and thus lean forward more from the waist. Seek comfort and good balance by avoiding extremes. A soft right arm At address, keep your right arm ‘soft’ and let it bend a bit at the elbow, which will point to your right hip. Jack’s pre-shot routine helps sharpen focus I think Jack Nicklaus summed up brilliantly the value of a pre-shot routine when he said: ‘Give your imagination free rein when you’re in a position to win and it can be the death of you.’ He is referring to the fact that if you let your mind wander, especially into the future, you’re in big trouble. A pre-shot routine stops this happening. It crystallizes your thoughts and helps you focus the mind on the things that are relevant, to the exclusion of everything else. My advice to you is develop a consistent pre-shot routine. It doesn’t need to be exactly the same as Jack’s, but I think it should incorporate certain elements from the great man. Firstly, picture the shot in your mind’s eye, from behind the line of play. This gets you mentally ‘into your shot’, so you’re thinking positively and constructively. Next, aim the clubhead over an intermediate target, a few feet in front of you between the ball and the flag. It’s far easier than aiming at a flag 250 yards away. Also, be very specific about what you aim at. This is relatively easy when the flag is your target. But when you’re driving off the tee, perhaps not so easy. Never aim just anywhere down the middle, because in my view if you aim vaguely you swing vaguely too – and that’s when you’re prone to making stupid mistakes. Work hard at perfecting your pre-shot routine when you’re at the driving range. This is the place where you develop the good habits that enable you to perform to a higher level in competition. Nobody ever practised as well as Jack did. In my opinion, amateur golfers hit too many shots on the range with too little thought. Try to get into the mindset of hitting fewer balls with more thought. Quality, not quantity – that’s what practising is all about. The ideal pre-shot routine: Visualise the shot, then aim the clubface, and finally build your stance. The golf swing’s only purpose The majority of the world’s 35 million golfers never play the game as well as they could because they have no idea, an incorrect idea, or an incomplete idea of what they are trying to do when they swing a golf club. The golf swing has only one purpose: to deliver the head of the club to the ball correctly. How that is done is immaterial, so long as the method permits correct impact to be achieved over and over and over again. Golf’s only secret The behaviour of the golf ball is determined solely by four impact factors interacting with each other. They are: 1 The direction in which the face of the club looks, or the clubface alignment. 2 The direction in which the clubhead travels, or the path of the swing. 3 The angle of inclination at which the clubhead arrives at the ball, or the angle of attack. 4 The speed of the clubhead. Everything you do in swinging a golf club should be related to these all-important impact factors. Getting them right is golf’s only secret Golfs four key impact factors determine the shape and quality of your shots. The flight of the ball tells all The behaviour of every golf shot is determined not by how the club is swung – by the form of bodily motions employed – but by how each swing delivers the clubface to the ball. However, everything is moving too fast for the golfer to see what is happening on impact. How, then, can he discover the alignment of the clubface, the path of the swing, the angle of attack, and the speed of the clubhead? The answer is: the flight of the ball. The single most important step in becoming a good golfer: knowing what you should be trying to do with the club by learning and accepting the game’s true fundamentals – the correct ‘geometry’ of impact. The next most important step is acquiring the knowledge that enables you to identify what’s happening at impact from the flight of your shots. Master those two mental disciplines and your eventual playing ability becomes solely a matter of how hard you are willing and able to work at golf. The ‘geometry’ of golf is set out in the following pages as clearly as I know how. If you gain nothing else from this book, learn it well and use it wisely. When the clubhead swings from out to in THE SLICE: ball starts left of target line then curves right. The swing path is from out to in across the target line. The clubface looks to the right of, or is open to, the swing path, resulting in an oblique or ‘cutting’ impact with the ball that creates clockwise sidespin. The flight of the ball reveals everything about your swing. As the ball’s forward momentum decreases, the clockwise sidespin curves the ball more and more to the right. The more open the clubface and/or the more out to in the swing path, the stronger the sidespin and the more pronounced the slice. Also, the more out to in the clubhead path, the steeper the angle of attack, thus the more oblique the impact in a perpendicular as well as horizontal plane. The combination of clockwise sidespin and additional backspin produced by the open clubface and/or the steep angle of attack makes this the weakest shot in golf, flying excessively high if the ball is contacted at the bottom of the arc, or excessively low if the bottom of the arc is sufficiently forward for the ball to be thinned or topped. THE PULL: ball flies straight but left of target. The swing path is from out-to-in across the target line. The clubface is square to the swing path, but closed to the target line. Because the clubhead path and clubface alignment ‘match’, the impact is flush rather than oblique. Thus good distance is obtained. THE PULLED HOOK: ball starts left of target line and then curves more left. The swing path is from out-to-in across the target line. The clubface looks to the left of, or is closed to, the swing path resulting in oblique impact with the ball that curves it even more in its starting direction, i.e., to the left. At its worst, this shot is literally ‘smothered’ to the extent that the ball fails to rise sufficiently off the ground to go any appreciable distance. When the clubhead swings from in to out THE PUSH: ball flies straight but right of target. The swing path is from in-to-out across the target line. The clubface is square to the swing path, but open to the target line. Because the clubhead path and clubface alignment match, the impact is flush rather than oblique and good distance is obtained. THE HOOK: ball starts right of target then curves left The swing path is from in-to-out across the target line. The clubface looks to the left of, or is closed to, the swing path resulting in an oblique contact with the ball that creates anticlockwise sidespin. As the ball’s forward momentum decreases, the anticlockwise sidespin curves the ball more and more to the left. The more closed the clubface and/or the more in to out the swing path, the stronger the sidespin and the more pronounced the hook. Also, the more in-to-out the clubhead path, the shallower the angle of attack, thus the greater the risk of the clubhead catching the ground before the ball, resulting in either fat or thin contact. Assuming clean back-of-the-ball impact, the combination of lower flight and additional roll resulting from a slightly closed clubface and slightly in to out clubhead path – i.e., a draw as opposed to a full-blooded hook – produces more distance for a given amount of clubhead speed than any other impact configuration. THE PUSHED SLICE: ball starts right of target then curves more right. The swing path is from in-to-out across the target line. The clubface looks to the right of, or is open to, the swing path resulting in oblique impact with the ball that curves it even further in its starting direction, i.e., to the right. The type of in-to-out swing path necessary to produce this impact geometry invariably results in reduced clubhead speed and, therefore, poor distance. It should be noted, as an aside, that today’s excessive fear of swinging ‘over the top’ makes this type of shot very common at most levels of the game. The cure lies in allowing the clubface to square automatically at impact by swinging the clubhead through the ball from in-to-in, relative to the target line. When the clubhead swings on target THE STRAIGHT SHOT: ball starts and continues on target line. The swing path at impact matches or exactly coincides with the target line. The clubface looks squarely or directly at the target. Because the clubhead path and the clubface alignment ‘match’ perfectly, i.e., there is no obliqueness, the impact is flush and the trajectory is correct, resulting in optimum carry and roll for the amount of clubhead speed delivered to the ball. THE FADE: ball starts slightly left of the target line then curves back to target towards end of flight. The clubhead path at impact is slightly across the target line from out to in. The clubface looks squarely at, or very slightly to the right of, the target. This slight mismatching or obliqueness of clubhead path and clubface alignment produces just enough clockwise sidespin to drift the ball to the right, while delivering the clubhead at a sufficiently shallow angle for the blow to be forcefully forward rather than weakly downward or upward, as in the slice. Extra height and fast stopping, for relatively little distance loss, make the fade a popular shot among stronger tournament-level golfers. THE DRAW: ball starts slightly right of target line then curves back to target towards end of flight. The clubhead path at impact is slightly across the target line from in to out. The clubface looks squarely at or very slightly to the left of the target. The slight mismatching or obliqueness of clubhead path and clubface alignment produces just enough anticlockwise sidespin to drift the ball gently to the left late in its flight, as the strong forward momentum resulting from the shallow angle of clubhead delivery diminishes. The lower flight and additional roll resulting from the slightly closed clubface make this the shot of choice for the majority of the world’s golfers. Indeed, repeatedly producing the impact geometry that draws the ball creates all the best set-up and swing habits and mechanics, from which players can then much more easily learn to play all the other ‘shapes’ of shot. Why knowing golf’s geometry is so important Being able to identify the ‘geometry’ of impact from the flight of the ball is fundamental to playing golf up to your maximum potential. Given that ability, everything you do in learning, building and maintaining a golf swing is directed towards achieving the game’s number one fundamental: correct impact. Without that ability, each swing lacks focus; occurs in a vacuum; is little more than a hit-and-hope experiment. Once you completely understand the ‘geometry’ of the game, all you have to do to analyse your swing – to decide how to correct it or improve it – is to think about the way the golf ball reacts when you hit it. And because that exercise is purely a mental one, you can do it anywhere: sitting at home, even, as well as on the golf course or driving range. Pupils are amazed that, once they have described their basic shot patterns to me, I can give them a lesson over the telephone. The reason is that the flight of the ball tells me everything I need to know, both to diagnose their swing faults and to formulate the cure. The flight of your shots will provide you with that information also, if only you will let it. And letting it will make golf a much easier game than you ever believed possible. Square your body to the clubface Because they can see their foot alignment but not how their upper bodies are aimed at address, many golfers find it easy to stand square but hard to align their shoulders parallel to the target line consistently. One way to check your body alignment is by ‘reading’ the first part of the ball’s flight when you hit practice shots, before sidespin affects its direction. Given solid understanding of golf’s impact ‘geometry’, shots consistently starting left tell you that you are probably aligned too much that way, or are too ‘open’ at address. Conversely, shots starting right indicate that you are aligned too far right, or are too ‘closed’, at address. Aim the gun Study the top professionals and you will see them constantly working with teachers or friends on their address angles. The reason is, of course, that a gun aimed incorrectly never hits the target. Pattern your grip thus … Exactly how the club nestles into your palm and fingers will depend on the size and flexibility of your hands. Seek a hold with the left hand in which your last three fingers can press the club firmly, but not rigidly, against the fleshy pad below your thumb. Every time you take your grip, remember that you must relate your hands to your target through the clubface. The club will naturally sit a little more in the fingers of your right hand than it does in your left, and you will probably secure the club most comfortably by holding it firmly, but not tightly, with your two middle fingers. ‘Wrap’ your right hand snugly against your left, so that the pad below your right thumb caresses the top of your left thumb. By more-or-less matching the direction of the Vs formed by your thumbs and forefingers, you set your hands parallel to each other, which encourages them to work as a unit during the swing. Aim the ‘Vs’ somewhere between your right eye and shoulder, experimenting to see what works best for you. … but experiment between these extremes to discover what works for you The correct grip for you is the one that delivers your clubface square to your direction of swing during impact. The grip pattern that does that for Jack Nicklaus or Lee Trevino may not do it for you, so face up to the need for some experiment. This will probably be uncomfortable at first, but if you skip it you can forget ever becoming a good golfer, because your repeated misalignment of the clubface at impact will consistently create faults in your set-up and swing. Take great care in forming your grip, so that it is repeatable. Start with your Vs pointing midway between your nose and your right shoulder. If the flight of your shots tells you that you are delivering the clubface to the ball looking to the right of your swing line, move both your hands gradually towards a strong position – i.e., so the Vs point more away from your nose and to the outside of your right shoulder. If your shots tell you that the clubface is arriving at the ball looking left of your swing path, move both your hands gradually towards a weak position – i.e., so the Vs point more at your nose. Your grip is right for you when your shots fly straight, even though you may be pulling the ball left or pushing the ball right of target. No curve on your shots shows that your clubface alignment and swing direction are matched. Hover the clubhead for a smooth start One distinctive feature of Greg Norman’s game is how he hovers the clubhead of his driver above the ground at address. It’s one of the things that he picked up as a young man from a Jack Nicklaus instruction book. Greg claims that it keeps tension out of his hands and arms, which promotes a smooth, wide one-piece takeaway and good overall rhythm in his swing. That makes sense. He also says it enables him to maintain a constant grip pressure, removing the tendency to re-grip the club at address. Again, sound advice, since a lot of club golfers have a habit of re-gripping which not only results in grip flaws, but also upsets the clubface alignment before the swing has even started. I think hovering the clubhead at address has another very important benefit. It encourages you to stand a little bit taller at address, rather than hunch over the ball, and that improvement in your posture helps promote a better turn. Simply Peter With his appointment as the professional at Sandy Lodge, I would sometimes practise with Peter Thomson. This was in the 1950s, when the Australian was picking up one Open Championship after another. He once went out to Sandy Lodge specifically to get me to look at his set-up – just that, his set up to the ball, nothing else. Satisfied that he was standing well to the ball, he then drove back into the centre of London. I draw an important lesson from this: ‘70 per cent of all the bad shots which are hit are due to a faulty set-up to the ball.’ Back to basics refresher The grip controls where the clubface looks at impact, which determines the final direction or curvature of the shot through its interaction with the path of the clubhead. The alignment of the body relative to the target line largely controls the direction in which the clubhead is swung through the ball, which determines the starting direction of the shot – and, if there is no curvature, also its final direction. If you’ve watched professionals on the practice tee at tournaments, you may have wondered why they spend so much time and effort checking their alignments at address – more in many cases, than working on actual swing moves. The above is the answer. Good golfers are good golfers largely because they have learned and accepted that, no matter how fine the gun’s firing action, unless it is aimed correctly it won’t deliver the missile to the target. Lesser golfers are so impatient to pull the trigger, or so wrapped up in the mechanics of the swing, they never master what comes before. CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_b96b5068-82de-5898-875a-cb673a0d9b98) Building a Better Golf Swing (#ulink_b96b5068-82de-5898-875a-cb673a0d9b98) How to start back ‘square’ A lot of rubbish has been talked and written about the way a golfer should swing the club back from the ball. There have been those who advocated rolling the wrists, those who advocated holding the clubface ‘square’ as long as possible, and those who swore by hooding the clubface during the takeaway. The ‘squares’ are the ones on the ball, but the trouble is that they don’t always define what is truly ‘square’. The golf swing combines an arc and a plane. How, then, do you get ‘square’? The answer is by swinging the club away from the ball in one coordinated movement – without any independent action of any part of the body, especially the hands and arms. Prove it for yourself as follows. Take your aim and set up correctly for a full shot. Now, without rotating your hands and arms or consciously cocking your wrists, but making the club as near as possible an extension of your left arm, turn and tilt your shoulders slightly and let your arms swing back in concert with this movement. The club will have moved back inside the target line – there is no other place it can go if you have set-up and turned properly. And the clubface – where will it point? Not at the sky – which would have happened if you had rolled your wrists clockwise. Not at the ground – which would have happened if you’d held the face down or hooded. It will be pointing more or less forward – at right angles to the arc of your swing. This is ‘square’, as you can very quickly prove by turning your shoulders back to their original position, when the clubface will return squarely behind the ball. And that is the correct takeaway. Turn your body, cock the wrists I had played golf from childhood – and had a club in my hand from the time I could stand up. I suppose, at 15 or 16, I could get round Lindrick on occasions in under 70, but at other times I would have to walk in from the course because I had run out of golf balls. I was gifted in the sense of being able to hit the ball because I had grown up with it and had the chance of watching fine players in the area – Arthur Lees, Frank Jowle, Johnny Fallon and, of course, my cousin Jack. So when Willie Wallis (my boss and the head professional at the Hallamshire where I got my first job as assistant) said to me: ‘You must turn your body and use your lumbar muscles and you must cock the wrists,’ I took notice of it. Today I will tell pupils they must turn the body because you have to do that to get the clubhead swinging from inside to inside, and you must cock the wrists otherwise the club will follow the body too much. What Willie was saying was similar to what I am saying today. The difference is that I explain it, whereas he didn’t. Keeping it simple You are now taking great care to pre-programme, as far as possible, correct impact through your grip, clubface aim, ball position, and body alignment and posture. All that remains for you to play the best golf of which you are capable is to swing the club on a plane and in a direction that transmits your address ‘geometry’ to the ball, while also generating sufficient clubhead speed to propel it the required distance. How do you do that? Because the ball is lying on the ground to the side of you, the answer is with an upward and downward swinging of the arms combined with a rotational motion of the body. How much swinging relative to how much body motion? How ‘steeply’ up and down should your arms swing relative to the ‘aroundness’ of your body motion? Which drives what – the arm swinging the body rotation, or the body rotation the arm swinging? Where does the power come from – the swinging motion of the arms or the rotating of the body? All of those questions, and all others like it, will quickly become moot if you will simply do as follows: Swing your left arm directly back from the ball, allowing it to move progressively upward and backward – i.e., to the inside of the target line – as a natural response to the rotation of your shoulders around the axis of your spine. Can the golf swing really be that simple? Well, if you ever reach the point of feeling that your chief golfing problem has become ‘paralysis by analysis’, forgetting everything but the above concept of backswing motion might delightfully surprise you. Wind up – don’t lift up When teaching, I get pupils to finish the backswing completely, before starting the downswing, by asking them to point the clubhead consciously at the target before starting down. This virtually ensures a full shoulder pivot and a complete wrist cock. Under and out of the way I have often asked myself what is common to all good strikers of a golf ball. The only thing I can find which they all seem to do is that they hit under. By that, I mean that the right side relaxes and swings under a taller left side through the ball. This means that in the hitting area the shoulders are tilted, and yet the left hip is turned to some extent towards the target so as to get the body out of the way sufficiently to allow the hands and arms room to hit through. Let me now try to define the downswing. To allow the right side to swing under, the first thing to do in the downswing is to move the hips laterally to the left. This can only be achieved by good leg action. This is the under part of the swing. The start down with the lower half of the body will have brought the hands and arms down to hip height, leaving the shoulders behind. From here we concentrate on the out of the way part as we cut loose with the hands and arms. The head, I hardly need to say, must remain still during all of this. Indeed, if there is a secret to hitting under and past the body it is to keep the head behind the ball until the ball is in its way. The classic golf swing requires little more than ‘two turns and a swish’. Note the spine angle remains constant. Don’t be a statue! Are we not getting far too position-conscious and forgetting the all-important thing – to swing the club? We have had in the recent past a spate of golf books, full of positions that dissect the golf swing. It is important to remember that the players shown in this way swing through the positions you see in the books, and I suppose never really feel the different positions you see when looking at the pictures. All too frequently we see potentially great golfers putting themselves into that late hitting position of a Hogan and a Snead (or today, an Els or a Woods). This sort of thing is of no value whatsoever! In fact, I would say it is harmful, in that anyone who tries to put himself into this position has so obviously missed the reason why the great players are able to swing this way. The wrists are not consciously held back in the downswing until the last moment. This really is too difficult to do. Learn to swing and swing correctly, and the wrists will uncock at the right time. I get the impression that many of our young players are making a conscious effort not to let the clubhead work in the hitting area. In other words, they are so keen on late hitting that they are never actually using the clubhead at all – despite the fact that hitting is surely the most natural thing to do with the clubhead, certainly more natural than trying to hold the clubhead back! Grip, stance and pivot should allow for the hand and wrist action to be absolutely natural, and not forced in any way. If you feel you have to consciously hold the clubhead back, then there is something wrong and you are certainly not swinging. In the past we have seen many unorthodox swingers playing great golf. The very fact that they have been swinging has helped them in the groove. I feel sure these players have never become too much bogged down by position. If you are in a wrong position, then certainly try to swing through a better one. But whatever you do, don’t try to put yourself into a better position. A golfer’s waggle usually gives the show away, proclaiming whether he is a swinger or not. The non-swinger is so stilted that we know he is going to go from one position to the next, and never swing the club at all. The top of the backswing and halfway down positions seem to be the most sought after. How often do we see a player admiring that late-hitting, halfway down position he has put himself into! He can feel where he should be. I venture to say that the finest players never feel this position; they feel a much more complete thing, that of swinging the clubhead through the ball to the target. We all freely discuss our golf swings but how many of us have swings, or have we just a set of many positions? Timing – the elusive quality Most modern books on golf have abundant and arresting action pictures, showing positions in the backswing, downswing, and followthrough. Perhaps it is this factor, as much as any other, which causes us to think of a swing in three distinct parts. To do that may be well enough, except that sometimes it can lead to the loss of that essential element in our swing known as timing. What an elusive word that is in relation to the golf swing! One hears, so often, ‘my timing was a little bit off today’ when some unfortunate has had a bad day; and, as it happens to so many of us, it is perhaps not a bad thing if we try to be more specific and pinpoint this gremlin of bad timing, which can strike at the best of swings. When it happens to me, I try to remember one thing, and often it helps; it is this: ‘Remember, I want my maximum speed at impact – not before’. If I can let this really penetrate my mind, it is the easiest way to cut out that quick snatch back from the ball, or the snatch from the top. When I see it in pupils, I find myself saying: ‘don’t forget it is the ball you are hitting, not the backswing.’ Put another way round, what I could say is: ‘wait for it’, but I think it is easier to wait for it if you know what you are waiting for! Distance is clubhead speed correctly applied Let me remind you that ‘correctly applied’ means: Clubface square to target at impact Clubhead path momentarily coinciding with target line at impact Angle of attack appropriate to club being used at impact. Never forget that no matter how high your clubhead speed, the greater the error in any one of those angles, the less useful distance you will gain. Straight enough The left arm is the radius of the swing arc and it must maintain that radius. To do this it need not be ramrod straight, in the sense that Harry Vardon meant when he said he loved playing against opponents with straight left arms. It must be straight enough, without being stiff. In any case, even if the left arm is slightly bent, it will be straightened out in the hitting area by centrifugal force. Hitting straight The beginner, and he who aims to improve his game, must have faith here. He must believe something quite simple; that there is no need to do any conscious squaring of the blade in the downswing, or in the hitting area, with the hands. The hands should be left free for hitting the ball. The correct downswing action from the top, in the correct sequence, will take care of the blade of the club as it swings through the ball. It really does all depend upon how the body is wound up and unwound. The hands and arms need to swing freely from the hub of the wind-up. Wind-up, then unwind, and swing the clubhead while you are doing this by a free use of the hands and arms. This type of action works for every club in the bag, allowing the loft on each to do the work as necessary. The right elbow Ninety-nine percent of floating right elbows – the ones that stick up or out like a chicken’s wing – are caused by an incorrect pivot. If you tilt your shoulders instead of partly turning them, and take your hands back ahead of the clubhead, then you will get a floating right elbow. Controlling the elbow won’t necessarily put the thing right, since it is caused by a combination of pivot and of wrist action following the pivot, which leaves the clubhead behind in the backswing. You cannot correct it by getting the clubhead on its way back first, so that it leads the elbow into the right position, which then feels strong while you turn. You could, of course, hit good golf shots with a floating right elbow, as long as the elbow gets into the right place to hit the ball. But only a right relationship between hands and body can put you into the right position in the easiest way. When teaching people, there is quite a simple general rule I follow: in both cases, floating right elbow and too-tight elbow, I use what sounds like a local independent variation merely to wipe another one out, in its effect when the player tries to do it. You tend to get a floating right elbow if you leave the clubhead behind your hands. If you then try to start back clubhead first, you often cure it. Other things being equal, of course, faults can come from both variations. If I drag the clubhead back, that’s when I float it; if I start the clubhead back too much ahead, I go flat. If you don’t get the clubhead moving on the way back, then you can’t get back to the top of the swing without moving the right elbow out from the body; and the delayed clubhead thus nearly always leads you to a steep position. You can easily spend five minutes explaining this to a player; and he can easily follow this and see how it all works. There are actually thousands of people with this sort of trouble, because those who have read about and studied the game have been told so much to ‘take the club back in one piece’. Trying to do just this, if it is misunderstood, can lead the player straight into a floating right elbow! With this particular fault, as with so many others in golf, we come back to just one basic thing. May I repeat myself once more and say it again: The relationship between your clubhead, your hands and your body is vital. If you get the right relationship between your clubhead, your hands and your body, you will never get a floating right elbow. Don’t forget your hands Nick Faldo’s swing changes in the 1980s centred around a few key elements. He widened his stance so that his legs would stabilize and support a more rotary body action. He then focused on winding his body over a more passive leg and hip action, which created resistance – in effect, energy – that he would then use to drive a more powerful downswing. The arms swung in response to the body motion, whereas in his swing of old the hands and arms dominated the action and the body just went along for the ride. Basically, Nick went from being a very handsy player to a more body-controlled, passive-hands player. That was just the ticket for Nick, but overemphasis on body action is dangerous territory for the average golfer because it assumes you have a great hand action and, to be frank, most club golfers suffer from a lack of hand action rather than too much. That’s why I often prefer to use the arc of the swing to get the body moving. Once you get the correct in-to-in picture of the swing path, your body will clear out of the way virtually automatically, creating the proper release of the hands and thus the clubhead through the ball. You ‘aim’ the clubhead at the top as well as at address If your clubshaft parallels your target line at the top of the backswing, the club is ideally ‘aimed’ to swing back through the ball along the target line. If your shaft is angled left of the target line at the top, there will be a tendency to swing the clubhead across the line from out-to-in and either slice or pull the shot. Conversely, if the shaft is angled right of the target line at the top, there will be a tendency to swing the clubhead from in to out across the target line and either hook or push the shot. Understanding swing plane … in simple terms! The plane on which you swing is established chiefly by your address position. As you stand to the ball comfortably and squarely, neither cramped nor reaching, your left arm and the club form a more-or-less continuous straight line. The angle of that line, relative to the vertical, is the ideal plane on which to swing the club up and down with your arms. What you are aiming to do, in golfing terms, is to shift your right side out of the way in the backswing and your left side out of the way in the throughswing, so that at the moment of impact the club is being swung freely by your arms with the clubhead moving straight through the ball, along the target line. More about swing plane! Numerous enlightening books and articles appear describing varying aspects of the golf swing. But there are some aspects that rarely find their way into print. Plane, for example. I intend here to single it out for the special attention it merits, if rarely attains. Why is plane so important? Because if the plane of your swing is correct, the angle of attack on the ball is correct. That sounds difficult. Let’s look closer. Generally speaking, a swing in the correct plane gives you a fairly flat bottom to the swing, which is what we want in order that the power we are unleashing will proceed directly through the ball. The same amount of power, or more power, applied more steeply or from an incorrect plane, cannot hope to hit the ball so far. My idea of a correct plane is one in which if, at the top of the backswing, we extend the line from the left hand to the left shoulder downwards, that line should then approximately aim at the ball. It is obvious, then, that the plane of the swing will vary with the distance one is standing from the ball. This in turn varies with whatever club we are playing. For example, one stands close with a 9-iron, because of its short shaft; and the resulting swing is much more upright than the swing with a driver. There is no real problem with this change of plane, though; for from the player’s angle it is purely automatic and should merely vary directly with the length of club used. Now, in the correct pivot in the backswing there is a certain degree of shoulder turn, linked with a certain degree of shoulder tilt. One can soon deduce how a swing with too little downward tilt of the left shoulder, and too much turn, will be too flat. Similarly, one with too much tilt, and not enough turn, becomes too upright. Each swing, though, produces its own characteristics. A ‘too upright’ arc usually makes for better iron play than wooden club play, since these iron shots are hit on the downswing. Correspondingly, a ‘too flat’ swing often works very well with the woods, but is of little value for iron shots, since these are then hit nearer the bottom of the arc. The present vogue is to aim at an upright swing – which I suppose I would prefer to a flat one. But why not swing in plane – which will then be the right degree of uprightness for all shots? Don’t spin your shoulders If you spin your shoulders too early in the downswing, it throws the club outside the ideal swing path which means you’re right on track for a pull or slice. This is perhaps the most common fault I see at club golfer level. If that sounds familiar, think about how you swing your hands and arms down from the top. I’m reminded of the great Harry Vardon, six time Open champion, who said that as he changed direction from backswing to downswing, he felt his hands swung down to hip height before his body even began to unwind. In reality, he combined the perfect arm swing with the ideal body rotation, but his feeling was one of swinging the arms down first and this is a swing that that would definitely help you if you slice. It encourages the hands and arms to play a more dominant role, swinging the club down into impact on the ideal path and plane. Don’t let tuition destroy your natural rhythm As a teacher I’m forever conscious of the fact that tuition must never get in the way of the natural rhythm in a golfer’s swing. I remember teaching Seve at Wentworth in 1979 and thinking: ‘I’ve got to be careful here.’ He had such wonderful rhythm that I didn’t want to tell him anything about his swing that might upset it. So all of my advice to him was in consideration of that fact. When Seve was playing well there wasn’t an ounce of tension in his body. I believe that some of the problems in the 1990s stemmed from the fact that he’d become perhaps overly concerned with techniques and swing thoughts, which has never quite been his style, and thus taken away some of that natural softness and impeded the free-flowing motion of his swing. This is a danger for any golfer. Whenever you get taught something new, the first instinct is to tighten-up and that process usually starts with the grip. You must be aware of this and avoid tension creeping into your hands. Never lose the gift of being able to swing the club freely. Keeping your grip soft will almost certainly help. As Peter Thomson used to say: ‘Always grip lightly because you’ll instinctively firm up at impact anyway.’ That’s not a bad philosophy to bear in mind whenever you’re trying to make changes to your swing. If you wind yourself like a spring … I like to compare body action in the golf swing to the winding and unwinding of a spring. Think of it this way and you will realize how important it is that the bottom half of the spring should resist the turning of the top half, in order to increase coiling (and thereby power). The feeling should be one of staying relatively still, but ‘lively’, from the waist down, while your torso turns around the axis of your spine and your arms and hands swing the club back and up so that it ultimately points parallel to the target line. The left leg will give a little, turning in towards the right, and the left heel will usually be pulled rather than lifted off the ground. But the effort should be to prevent, rather than encourage, such movements – while making sure your shoulders turn as your arms swing the club back and up. … automatically you will let it all fly Create sufficient torque with your upper-body backswing wind-up and you cannot help but release it into a powerful throughswing. As your legs and hips win the battle of the opposing forces, and pull spring-like towards the target, swing your arms straight down before your shoulders spin. Never do anything to inhibit a free arm-swing. Keep your head down? Forget it! When I was on the instruction panel of the American magazine Golf Digest in the 1960s they carried out a survey of the leading 50 money winners on tour. They photographed each golfer hitting shots, with a grid pattern positioned behind them so it was possible to monitor their head movement during the swing. Of these, 48 of the 50 golfers moved their head to the right in the backswing. Some moved more than others and two golfers remained centred. But, not surprisingly since these were all good players, none moved to the left. The obsession among some club golfers to keep the head down has kept me busy for 50 years. It’s like strapping a straightjacket on to a golfer; it restricts a full, free turn, so essential for both power and accuracy. So if ever I hear of a golfer whose main swing thought is to keep their head down throughout the swing, the alarm bells ring in my head. In any good swing there is invariably a certain amount of lateral movement of the head and body. So long as this body action is harmonized with the hand and arm action, it is allowable and in many cases desirable for there to be a degree of lateral movement. Careful of some other clich?s Let’s punch holes in a few more of some prime ‘book’ clich?s: ‘Go back slowly’: This is nothing short of an invitation to disaster. It leads to moving rather than swinging the club back, in a motion completely lacking in rhythm. If you go back at the pace that the slow-back proponents suggest, you have got to control the club every inch of the way, which, apart from anything else, is too much of a mental exercise. What you should do instead is set the swing off smoothly at a pace that will enable you to come down quicker than you go up. I find most players swing at the correct pace when they remember they want their maximum speed at impact. ‘Tuck in the right elbow’: A right elbow flying away from the body is usually caused by a steep tilt of the shoulders in the backswing, rather than a combined tilt-turn. It is equally wrong, however, to suggest – as some teachers still do – placing a handkerchief between the right elbow and the body and keeping it there in the backswing and downswing. The right elbow will find its correct position if the shoulder turn and the arm swing are correct. ‘Follow through’: Making a conscious effort to follow through nicely when the rest of the swing is thoroughly bad leads to nothing but confusion and frustration. The initiation of the downswing completely commits you all the way to and through the followthrough. So, if you think your followthrough is bad, look for something wrong much earlier – possibly your grip, set-up, backswing or the way you start your downswing. Remember that a correct followthrough is the result of a correct start down. Sweep those arms down and through The action of the arms is the most neglected area in golf instruction. There have been ‘hands’ methods, and ‘body’ methods, but the fact is that, whatever method he hung his hat on, every good golfer in history has swept the club through the ball fast and freely with his arms. Words always in season When I am teaching I continually find myself using some phrases over and over again to player after player. Since these would seem to be the ones I have found most helpful to the most players, it may be worth repeating them yet once more. They are: 1 Don’t lift up; wind up. 2 Start the backswing with the right shoulder getting out of the way. 3 Point the clubhead at the target in the backswing. This, incidentally, is a quick way of getting a beginner to pivot, and to cock the wrists. 4 As near as possible, keep your feet flat on the ground. 5 Stay ‘sat down’ as you turn your shoulders. How – and what – to practise I assume that the fact that you are reading this book means you want to improve your golf. I further assume that you want to improve badly enough to be prepared to give some time – even time that you would normally have spent playing – to practising the game. Some of us are ‘naturally’ more talented golfers than others, but all of us need to practise to develop and hold our full potential. I have spent a lot of time teaching, so I know a fair amount about the habits of the average golfer in terms of their approach to practice. And what has come home to me is that he has a great deal to learn, not simply about the technicalities of golf, but about the sheer mechanics of practising it. What seven out of ten golfers do when they go to a driving range, or down to the club with a bag of balls, may be exercise, but it isn’t practice. Let us start, therefore, by defining practice. It has three distinct forms. The first and absolute primary form of practice you do at home sitting in an armchair, or driving the car to work. You can do it with your brain, and it consists of thinking through the cause-and-effect of whatever you were doing the last time you played golf. From here, still strictly on the mental plane, you decide through a logical reasoning process, not guesswork, exactly what you will be trying to achieve the next time you practise. Ideally, these thought processes should be based on lessons you have been taking from a professional in whom you have confidence. There is no substitute for personal tuition – for advice tailor-made for you as an individual. The vitally important thing, however, is never to practise until you have a clear picture of what you are trying to do. The next form of practice is the physical execution of what you have planned mentally. This is swing-building and game-improving practice, and we will look at it in detail in a moment. The third form of practice, which all good players do, and which I’d like to persuade you to do, is the prelude to any important round of golf. It isn’t practice in the previous sense, because you are not trying to rebuild your game (or at least you shouldn’t be). What you are trying to do, with anything from 10 to 50 shots, is to tune up the game you possess on that particular day; to loosen muscles, to get the ‘feel’ of the clubs, to bring the clubface into the ball squarely and solidly and thereby boost your confidence for the ensuing round. And to find one workable swing thought for the day. This is the form of practice few club players bother to make the effort to do, but which is indispensable if you have serious golfing ambitions. Having defined practice, let us now get back to the actual techniques of its swing-building form. Once you get to the practice ground with cause, effect and treatment all clearly in mind, don’t worry too much about where you hit the balls – especially if you are making a major swing change. Your fault will have been grooved, and the action incorporating it will probably feel comfortable. The cure might at first feel very strange, but you must persevere if a lasting improvement is to be made. If no improvement can be made over a reasonable period, rethink the problem or go back to your golf teacher. Next, before you even draw a club from the bag, pick a definite point of aim. It doesn’t matter what it is or how far away it is, so long as you can focus upon it easily. Now, take out not your sand-wedge nor your driver, but your 6-iron. This club represents the mean average between the extremes of loft, shaft-length and power. It is the ideal swing-building club. With the 6-iron in your hand, the point of aim in your eye, and your swing objectives crystal clear in your mind, ‘break down the adhesions’ with a few easy – but not careless – shots. Right from the outset try to grip correctly, aim the club as the first step in setting-up and set yourself correctly to that clubface alignment. As you move into the session, try with every shot – and I mean every single shot – to do what your preliminary analysis has told you will give you a more solid strike or a straighter flight. Stick to your guns on this long enough to determine whether your mental assessment and cure was right. If it was, keep on practising it only as long as you have plenty of mental and physical energy and enthusiasm. Then plant the relevant ‘feel’ firmly in your mind for the next actual game you play. My method of doing this sort of work – and it is work mentally and physically – would involve basically a 6-iron, a hundred balls and as many one-hour spells a week as I could manage. Even if I were a weekend player, I think I would be prepared to sacrifice actual playing time in order to make a lasting improvement. For instance, if I normally played 12 hours a week, I would play perhaps six and practise the other six. If your assessment and cure are proved wrong after fair trial, do not give up, start experimenting at random, or lose your temper and pop off balls like a pom-pom gun. Take a rest. Go and sit down somewhere and think it all through sensibly again. The flight of the ball tells you what you are doing, in your grip, in your swing line relative to the target line, and in the angle at which your club is attacking the ball. Use this information at all times. Therein lies the only ‘secret’ of golf. A lot of resolution is necessary to carry through this kind of programme, as it is to stick with any change in method when actually playing the course. Until the new system works, rounds played can be less than satisfying (which is a good reason for not playing too many!). If it is essential to try to play well on occasion while in the middle of changing your swing, obviously a compromise will have to be made. I know only too well that weather and golf club facilities in Britain are against consistent and studied practice, but I am equally sure that if a golfer is keen enough he will find a means. As a last resort, he can erect a golf net at home. For years I used to smash golf balls into a net in my garage, and this is very valuable swing-changing practice, first because you haven’t got a result to worry about, and secondly because there is no one to see how badly you are hitting the ball. If you are that keen but don’t have the facilities to put up a net, try knocking lightweight plastic balls off an old doormat. Anything you can do to build up your golf muscles, to ‘groove’ good actions, to keep swinging, must eventually pay dividends. At the very worst, try every day to swing a club at home for a few minutes – concentrating on what you would be doing if you were hitting balls. One more important point. There is yet another type of practice – the kind one does on the course in preparing for a tournament. Many people go about it wrongly. Never play more than 27 holes a day in practice, especially the day before an event. It is essential to conserve both energy and enthusiasm for the actual competition. Very few world-class golfers ever play more than one round a day in practice. Don’t play sloppily in practice rounds. Try to hit the ball solidly, and don’t be frightened of scoring well. A good practice round builds confidence. Give yourself time to take note of the course and your own play. You need two or three extra balls handy to play extra shots, especially bunker shots, chips and putts, hitting them from where you think you will have to hit them on the big day. Take particular note of the clubs you play, especially if the weather is fair. In windy or wet conditions, of course, your practice round estimates may have to be revised. Finally, although you may use your practice rounds to loosen up and make final swing adjustments, never fundamentally change your method during practice rounds. You are stuck with what you’ve brought with you. Try to make it work as best as possible. This happens in every good golf swing Stand facing any good golfer and watch the space between his hands and right shoulder during the downswing. You will see that it widens like lightning. Then watch any golfing friend who slices the ball repeatedly. The space between his hands and right shoulder will not widen as fast, because he swings his body rather than his arms. The speed at which all good golfers widen this angle is proof positive that, although the lower body initiates the downswing, leg and hip action must always be married to a fast, free arm swing. Baseball analogy helps keep your swing on plane One last thought, which may ring a bell with one or two readers. I think golf is very akin to baseball – in this way; in baseball a player swings in plane with the flight of the ball as it comes towards him. In golf, all we have to do is swing in plane with however far away we are from the ball, which partly depends on what club we are using. For any shot and any club, the plane most likely to be easiest really is that ranging straight up from the ball just over the shoulders, as you stand to address it for the shot. In any good golfer’s swing, the space between the bands and right shoulder widens ‘like lightning’ in the downswing. Try ‘two turns and a swish’ Golfers, I am afraid, sometimes like to make the game more complicated than it actually is. My simple definition of the golfing action is ‘Two turns combined with an arm and hand swing’. And I am often accused of oversimplification when I use this phrase. Well, here’s a suggestion for you. If your game isn’t what you would like it to be at the moment, and especially if you feel confused and snarled up by theory, play your next three rounds strictly on the basis of ‘two turns combined with an arm and hand swing’. Don’t think of the backswing as a set of complicated and separate movements, but simply as the first turn. Think only of moving your right side out of the way as your hands and arms swing the club back and up. Simplify your downswing likewise. Forget all the stuff about head, hips, late hitting, and what-have-you. Simply picture your downswing as the second turn, moving your left side out of the way as your arms and hands swing the club down and through the ball. If you have a decent grip and set-up, and can keep your head reasonably still and your feet firmly on the ground in the backswing, approaching golf this way could do wonders for your score. You will very quickly learn that the swing really isn’t a complicated movement, and that the ‘secret’ of golf lies in coordinating the turns with the actual swinging of the club – not in a series of geometrically exact, deliberate placement of the club in certain ‘positions’. Find a way to turn … even if it’s not exactly like Ernie Ernie Els achieves a massive upper-body turn without lifting his left heel. The hips don’t turn much, either, so together that creates a lot of resistance in the legs – the action of a supple man and a powerful hitter. Most of you reading this will not be as supple as Ernie, but it’s important that you find a way to turn your body, in whatever way is appropriate for you personally. For many, this means making certain compromises, such as lifting the left heel to ‘release’ the left side and thus make it possible to turn. You won’t generate as much resistance in the legs, but it’s better to do that than keep your left heel planted which might not give you the flexibility to make a sufficient turn. On a personal note, currently 80 years of age, I can say from experience that it is necessary to release from the ground in order to complete the full upper body turn. Starting down The correct start down begins in the lower half of the body – the legs and the hips. That is why telling people to ‘stay sat down’ in the backswing, and to ‘get the left heel down first’ in the downswing, is often good advice; doing so consolidates the anchor point of the feet, and starts the hips swinging back into and through the address position. This automatically begins to pull on the arms and hands and unwind them towards the ball. Just as the swinging wrist-cock of the backswing ended with the actual cocking of the wrists, so the swinging uncock of the downswing ends with the uncocking of the wrists, as you unleash the power of your hands into the stroke. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/john-jacobs/50-years-of-golfing-wisdom/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. 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