General

The Responsive Movements

It is one of the misfortunes of golf that the correct playing of the shot should make a pretty picture; the observer - and the player as well - is apt to become too much interested in the pretty picture, that is, in effect, and too little interested in the causes of which that effect is merely an expression. In no other game does the statuesque position occur so regularly. In golf it appears at the finish of almost every properly played shot, from the shortest of short approaches to the longest of long drives. The club, the hands and arms, the shoulders, the legs and feet, are all seen in a more or less stereotyped relationship, all in repose, the repose that is the logical result of well-directed effort, the repose that invites the camera or even the sculptor's chisel. There is nothing comparable with this characteristic in, for example, baseball, football, cricket, tennis, or billiards. In those games the vitally interesting thing is the action by which the result is achieved, not the appearance of the performer when the action is being, or has been, made. And this fact doubtless explains to some extent why in golf the action of the average player looks, and indeed is, so much less spontaneous than in other games.

The footballer kicking a football does not know, or think, or care, where his right knee or his left hip will be at any given moment in the operation of kicking. His mind sends a direction to his feet, and his feet obey if he is a good footballer, or disobey if he is a bad footballer. The billiard player is not at all concerned with the position in which he will be found at the finish of his stroke. He is not at any moment in the game an inspiring subject for the photographer, much less for the sculptor. He consequently gets on with the work. The mind directs the fingers and the fingers direct the cue. The elbows, arms, shoulders, body and legs also move; they move, however, not on their own account, but in response to the impetus in the cue set up by the action of the fingers. The person performing Indian club exercises never thinks for one moment about the position of his elbows or his knees. What he does think about all the time is the movement of the club, and the action of the hands and fingers by means of which that movement is produced. He is pre-eminently a creature of action, not a hero of repose, and he is not in the least degree interested in what his appearance may be at the end of any movement or sequence of movements that he may make.

The footballer's mind is directed to the one point of contact - toe and ball; the Indian club performer's mind is directed to the one point of contact - fingers and club; the billiard player's mind is directed to the two points of contact, cue and ball, fingers and cue. And so the golfer's mind should be directed to the two points of contact, club and ball, hands and club.

The golfer's object is to gain command of a golf club just in the same way as the Indian club performer's object is to gain command of an Indian club. True, it is not necessary for the golfer when making his shot to twist his club about as though it were an Indian club. At the same time, the golfer should be able to twist it about in that manner. He should be able to swing the club about in his hands and fingers, freely and fluently in any direction. The pianist learns all sorts of exercises that never come actually into the performance of any piece of pianoforte music. He does so in order to gain command of his fingers. And in the same way, the golfer will do well to make any and every movement with his club that will increase his skill in manipulating it, increase his sense of intimacy with it, his feeling of power over it. When he is swinging the club about in this casual manner, whether with right hand or left hand, or with both hands, he will observe - if it occurs to him to do so - that though he thinks only of communicating movement to the club by means of his hands and fingers, the forearms, the elbow joints, the shoulders, and probably the legs and feet, are also in action - responsive action; responsive in the sense that they move without any specific direction from the mind, but on the impulse created by the action of the hands and fingers in the club. If an attempt were made to swing the club about by using the hands and fingers to the exclusion of the action of other members of the body, that is to say, without the naturally responsive movements, the result would not only be stilted and powerless; it would produce an appreciable strain on the muscles involved.

This is exactly the stilted and powerless movement or series of movements that is known as mistiming the shot. Of the various parts of the body that should act in harmony, some parts act either out of harmony, or not at all. It is good to start the club-head by hand and finger action, but it is useless to do this unless forearms and upper arms and shoulders and hips and legs and feet and head are allowed to follow. Everything must "give" when the call comes - except the grip of the thumb and forefinger of each hand; for with an adequate grip there, control or the club can always be preserved without retarding any responsive movement whatsoever. The responsive movements are just as vital to the proper execution of the shot as the initiatory movements.

One of these responsive movements, as has been suggested, is the movement of the head.

A still tongue may make a wise head, but a still head does not make a wise golfer, no matter what may have been said by the pundits to the contrary. And the pundits have spoken with no uncertain voice. Take a few examples:

Taylor: "[The illustration] shows my head has been kept immovable during the back swing, a most important factor in accuracy."

Herd: "Keep that necessary nuisance down as long as you can as though you had it in a vice. And keep it down for half a second after you have hit."

Massy: "The player must keep his head perfectly motionless."

Vardon is so overwhelmed by the fetish that in his book, "How to Play Golf," he devotes a chapter to it, and recommends the player when practising to tie himself up to a contrivance which tinkles a bell whenever the head moves !

But what is the fact? The fact is that unless the head is allowed to give in the up-swing, in the down-swing, and in the follow-through, the movement will be cramped and ineffective. So long as a movement is purely a responsive movement it must not be interfered with.

There are, of course, many movements of the head that are not responsive movements, just as there are many movements of the arms and shoulders and hips and legs and feet that are not responsive movements. And all such movements are bad and must be cut out.

To what extent, then, are the movements ot the head in the swing responsive movements? The answer is - to an extent which varies according to the build of the player and his mental picture of the swing.

Take as an example Edward Ray, whose golf is well known on both sides of the Atlantic. Is Ray's head "immovable," "perfectly motionless," rigid as "in a vice"? On the contrary, it moves emphatically from left to right in the up-swing, and from right to left in the down-swing. It would ring Vardon's little bell all the time. Yet Ray is a champion golfer.

It is customary for pseudo-theorists to say that Ray is a genius and can do these odd things; but Ray's view is that his apparently casual attitude to his head is the "crowning ornament" of his style. It is not, however, because Ray is a genius that he can move his head without fatal consequences; nor is that movement the "crowning" ornament of his style. The swing which Ray visualises in his mind is not a swing made about a fixed vertical axis, but a swing made about an axis which is moved sideways thirty or forty degrees by the pull of the club-head. Ray can move his head without fatal consequences because he allows it to move, not on its own account, but in response to an impulse set up by the action of his hands and fingers.

Whilst Ray is an extreme example of head movement, there is probably no first-class golfer whose head does not move in order to allow of a free and full development of the swing. Let the reader try to swing freely whilst keeping his head as rigid as if it were in a vice.

The very idea of the head in a vice is enough to cramp his style.

In these circumstances it will be seen that the cure for head-lifting is not to try to keep the head down till after the ball has been hit away. To try to do that will inevitably destroy the rhythm of the shot and so jerk the head up! The so-called cure must accentuate the disease. That is why players who experience a patch of head-lifting are so seldom able to get rid of it at will. The head must be allowed to move responsively - and if it moves respon-sively it will move evenly. If, then, the player concentrate on hitting the ball he will not look up prematurely. In a word, if he can make the club-head obey his hands, his own head will obey the club-head.

Another golfing fetish is the stiff left arm. The golfer is admonished to see to it that his left arm is kept extended throughout the swing. He is urged to do this consciously. But the extension of the left arm is an effect, not a cause. It is an effect of the proper action of the hands and fingers. When one attempts to catch a ball one does not think of extending the arm; one reaches out with the hands and fingers, and in doing so, one inevitably extends the arm. The extension of the arm is a natural result of the action of the hands and fingers. It is precisely so in the golf swing.

Examples could be multiplied almost indefinitely. The golfer will now be able to find them for himself. And the great lesson for all golfers to learn is this: In the making of the swing two kinds of movements are involved, the initiatory and the responsive movements. For practical purposes the hands and fingers may be regarded as giving the initiatory movements, and the arms, shoulders, legs and feet as contributing the responsive movements. The hands and fingers should be assertive, masterful; the other members of the body ever ready to respond - to speak immediately they are spoken to, but not before.