The Soul of Golf. P. A. Vaile
on "The Distribution of Weight." That is the plain answer why golfers do not get the results which they should get from the amount of work and thought which they put into their game, for golfers are, unquestionably, as a class, the most thoughtful of sportsmen. If they were not, a book such as I am dealing with could not possibly have secured a publisher. Continuing his argument on this subject he says:
… and yet how often it has taken three, four, and even five strokes to cover those hundred yards! It would be laughable were it not so humiliating—in fact, the impudent spectator does laugh until he tries it himself; then, ah! then he, too, gets a glimpse into that mystery of mysteries—the human mind—which at one and the same time wills to do a thing and fails to do it, which knows precisely and could repeat by rote the exact means by which it is to be accomplished, yet is impotent to put them in force. And the means are so simple. So insanely simple.
To which I say, "And the means are indeed so simple, so sanely simple." It is writers who do not understand the game at all who make them insanely complex. As a definite illustration of what I mean let me ask the man who writes that the golfer who desires to drive perfectly "could repeat by rote the exact means by which it is to be accomplished" where, in any book by one of the greatest golfers, or in his own book, the golfer is definitely instructed that his weight must not at any time be on his right leg. In fact the author himself, in common with everybody who has ever written a golf book, deliberately misinforms the golfer in this fundamental principle.
How, then, can a man who claims to be possessed of an analytical mind say that the ordinary golfer could repeat by rote the exact means by which anything is to be accomplished when it is now a matter of notoriety that practically the whole of the published teaching of golf is fundamentally unsound?
Speaking of the golfer's difficulties in the drive the author says, "The secret of this extraordinary and baffling conflict of mind and matter is a problem beyond the reach of physiology and psychology combined." Yes, there is no doubt that it is; but it is a matter which is well within the reach of the most elementary mechanics and common sense.
It will probably seem that I am dealing with this attempt to explain the mystery of golf very severely, but I do not feel that I am treating the matter too strictly. Golf is enveloped and encompassed round about with a wordy mass of verbiage. All kinds of men and some women, who have no clearly defined or scientific ideas, have presumed to put before the unfortunate golfer directions for playing the game which have landed him in a greater maze of bewilderment than exists in any other game which I know. It is obvious that if a man is both "a duffer" and a slow thinker it will be unsafe for him, until he has improved both his game and his mental processes, to attempt to explain the higher science of golf for anyone. It should be sufficient for him to study the mechanical processes whereby he may improve his own game until at least he has been able to take himself out of the class which he characterises himself as the duffers. To explain golf scientifically in the face of the mass of false doctrine which encumbers it, it is necessary that one should be, if not at least a quick thinker, an exact thinker, and that one should know the game to the core.
It seems to me that there is possibly a clue to the remarkable statements which we get in this book in the following quotation, which I take from the chapter on "Attention":
When I first rode a bicycle, if four or five obstacles suddenly presented themselves, these to the right, those to the left, I found I could not transfer my attention from one to the other sufficiently quickly to give the muscles the requisite orders—and I came a cropper … and so with the golf stroke.
It seems to me that here we have the key of the author's difficulty. His mind was fixed on the obstacles—some to the right and some to the left. In similar circumstances most budding cyclists, and I have taught many, confine their attention to the clear path right ahead, and consequently the obstacles "these to the right, those to the left" do not trouble them. This, psychologically speaking, is a curious confession of the power of outside influences to affect the main issue. It seems to me that right through the consideration of this subject the author, like many other golfers, has been devoting his mind far too much to the things which he imagines about golf, instead of to the things which are, and they are the things which matter. No wonder, then, that he has "come a cropper."
There is a chapter called "The One Thing Necessary," which starts as follows: "But, since I stated that my own belief is that only one thing can be 'attended' to at a time, you will probably be inclined to ask me what is the most important thing? what precisely ought we to attend to at the moment of impact of club with ball? Well, if you ask me, I say the image of the ball." This is really an astonishing statement. "At the moment of impact of club with ball" the image of the ball does not really matter in the slightest degree. As I shall show later on, the eye has fulfilled its functions long before the impact takes place. Also, of course, to the non-analytical mind it will be perfectly obvious that the image of the ball could be just as well preserved if the golfer had lifted his head three to six inches, but his stroke would have been irretrievably ruined.
Now, as a matter of fact, by the time the club has arrived at the ball it is altogether too late to attend to anything. All the attention has already been devoted to the stroke, and it has been made or marred. As we have clearly seen from what James Braid says about the stroke the moment of impact is the time when the attention and the tension is released, so it will obviously be of no service to us to endeavour forcibly to impress upon our minds in any way the image of the ball. If there is any one thing to think of at the moment of impact, the outstanding point of importance must be that the eyes should be in exactly the same place and position as they were at the moment of address.
Here is a most remarkable sentence:—
It is a pity that so many literary elucidators and explicators of the game devote so many pages to the subsidiary circumstances. … I wonder if they would pardon me if I said that, as a matter of simple fact, if one attended to the game (with all that that means), almost one could stand and strike as one chose, and almost with any kind of club.
There is a large amount of truth in this; but it comes most peculiarly from the author of this book, for of all the literary obfuscators whom I have ever come across I have never met his equal in attention to the "subsidiary circumstances" and neglect of the real game. Much time is wasted in an analysis of the nature of attention. Now, attention, psychologically, is somewhat difficult to define from the golfing point of view, but as a matter of simple and practical golf there is no difficulty whatever in explaining it. Attention in golf is merely habit acquired by practice and by starting golf in a proper and scientific manner. I shall have to deal with that more fully in my next chapter, so I shall not go into the matter here. Suffice it to say that lifting the eye at golf is no more a lack of attention than is lifting the little finger in the club-house. It is merely a vice in each case—a bad habit, born probably of the fact that in neither case did the man learn the rudiments of the game thoroughly.
We are told that "the arms do not judge distance (save when we are actually touching something), nor does the body, nor does the head. The judging is done by the eyes"; but we must not forget that the arms accurately measure the distance.
CHAPTER III
PUTTING
The great mystery to me, not about golf, but about the work of the greatest golfers, is the attitude which they all adopt with regard to putting. Now, putting may quite properly be said to be the foundation of golf. It really is the first thing which should be taught, but, as a matter of fact, it is generally left until the last. Practically all instructors start the player with the drive. It is beyond question that the drive is the most complex stroke in golf, and it is equally beyond question that the put is the simplest. There can be no shadow of doubt whatever that the only scientific method of instructing a person in the art of playing golf is one which is