The principle of slow-back which is dinned into the ears of every beginner is practised by no first-class golfer. The beginner is led to believe that some subtle magic resides in the process, and he performs the laborious operation as though he were anxious to get the club over his right shoulder without any profane onlooker seeing or hearing what he has accomplished. He is like a thief in the night, or a housemaid circumventing a meat-fly. It is, of course, possible to hit a good shot after treating a golf club in this ridiculous manner. It may be less difficult to hit a good shot in that manner than after snatching the club-head away from the ball as though the golfer had suddenly gone mad or suddenly imagined that the club-head was burning the new half-crown ball away. But the up-swing is neither a funeral rite nor a music-hall trick. It should be just a light, easy, free, flexible movement, pleasing to execute, pleasing to observe. The slow-back doctrine is a clumsy statement of the principle of control. The golfer must obtain and retain control of the club. It is seen that he almost necessarily loses control when he jerks the club away from the ball, and instead of the root principle of control being intelligently explained to him, he is told without ceasing to go "slow-back." He begins to regard "slow-back" as an end in itself instead of a bad means to that end, and he plods on, for ever missing the whole significance of the golf swing.

It may be objected that the person who makes the up-swing at a snail's pace does in fact possess control of the club. This, however, is untrue. In the first place, the movement he makes is not an up-swing at all - it is merely an upward movement, or rather a series of upward movements. There is no swing in it, and it cannot conduce to the development of swing in the downward movement. The phrase "control of the club" means control of the club qua golf club, not qua sledge-hammer; it connotes the ability to set up speed in the club-head, from the utmost speed that it may be capable of achieving, as in the drive, down to the lowest speed at which it can be induced to move effectively, as in the short putt Such control is not to be obtained by the observance of any shibboleth, least of all the shibboleth of slow-back. The up-swing must be a swing, and its only function is that of the best possible pre liminary to the down-swing. It is not an end in itself: it is only a means to an end. It is not a means to that end unless it is light, easy, free, flexible. If it has those qualities, and is controlled, its speed is a matter of no importance. The best golfer is the golfer who has greatest control of the club, and it may well be that he is the golfer who has the quickest up-swing - this being an effect, not, of course, a cause, of supreme control. The beginner should therefore always keep in mind the great question of control, and he must steadily refuse to be side-tracked, whether he is considering, or practising, either the up-swing or the down-swing. As a matter of fact, he would do well never at all to think of the swing in separate parts. The waggle, the up-swing, the down-swing, the follow-through, and all the rest of it, are in reality one thing - the movement by which the golfer obtains, and expresses, his mastery over the club-head. This mastery is to be achieved by the cultivation of proper hand and finger action, by relying on the hands and fingers to provide the initiating motive power - in other words, by setting the machinery going at the fingers.

Fig. 28. Corollary to Fig. 25.

Fig. 28. Corollary to Fig. 25.