DRIVING: TOP OF SWING..

[To face p. 37.

If the head and the imaginary axis behave themselves, there is nothing desperately difficult about the body movement; nothing, indeed, comparable in difficulty with the initial task of keeping the head still. If the club goes back properly, the left shoulder will be found to be coming gradually round and downwards towards the ball, while the right shoulder goes gradually upward and away from the ball. But the left shoulder cannot move very far round if the left foot is kept rigidly fixed, and so the turning movement is communicated to the left knee and left foot. Two things are particularly important as regards this left foot. First, it has to occupy a completely subordinate position and ought hardly to move before it is literally torn from its place by the turn of the body. Secondly, when the turn of the foot is made, it is to be made on the inside of the foot and not on the tip of the toe. To pirouette on the extreme toe almost inevitably upsets the balance of the body, and is a perfectly spurious and unnecessary movement, coming under the head of what has been called ' false encouragement' to the swing.

Now, if all these various parts of the body have performed their functions properly, the player will find himself poised at the top of his swing and looking at the ball from a point just to the right of his left shoulder. His hands should be just above the level of the right shoulder, and the club well clear of the shoulder. This is what ought to have happened, but since it is quite possible that it has not, it is worth while suggesting one or two errors that, in spite of all precautions, may have crept into the upward swing. It may be that the club, instead of being over the shoulder, is over the head, while the right elbow, instead of being kept low and fairly close to the side, as it ought to be, is high in the air. In that case it is probable that the right hand has been recalcitrant, has refused to obey the left, and has taken charge of the swing, with the consequence that the turning movement of the wrists has not been properly carried out. It follows that the turning movement of the body is not properly completed either, and the whole swing is thrown out of gear. There is nothing for it but to pay great attention to the wrist movement, and go back if necessary to that back-handed movement of the left hand. On the other hand, the player may have made exactly the opposite mistake; he may, with the best intentions, have exaggerated the turning movement, so as to swing the club with a scythe-like motion round the middle of his back, while the wrist, from overmuch zeal, is actually turned out instead of in. If so, he must see to it that in turning over his wrists he does not perform that action with such misdirected energy as to turn the left elbow outward and far away from the body. If the left elbow be kept lightly brushing against the chest as the club goes up, the wrists ought not very gravely to misbehave themselves in this particular.

These are the two extremes of error into which the player may have fallen, but I will assume that he has avoided them both and is now comfortably poised at the top of the swing - comfortably and yet with a certain sense of tension: tension of the wrists if they are bent beneath the shaft as they ought to be: of the body if it has turned properly, and of the right knee, which ought not to have been allowed to bend in the slightest degree. He ought not in fact to stop at this point, for the club should come down again after only an imperceptible pause, but I may allow him to stop and rest for a minute, because he has now accomplished infinitely the most laborious and difficult part of his task. The down swing which actually does the hitting of the ball is child's play compared with the up swing; granted a proper up swing, the down swing will come almost automatically. Therefore, though the club has at first to be taken up carefully, it can almost from the first be brought down comparatively light-heartedly, subject only to two words of caution. The head must be as immovable as ever; the player must keep his eye on the ball or, as I have seen it well expressed, he must take care to see his club strike the ball; also he must not allow himself to think too much of the word hit: he must remember that he is still swinging.

On this down swing the various movements before described will repeat themselves in an exactly reverse order: the wrists will, so to speak, uncoil themselves: the body will turn back on its immovable axis: the right shoulder will come round and under. But, and this is intensely important, the player must let these things happen spontaneously: he must not try to help them. If he does, he will probably turn his right wrist over and beat the ball heavily over the head with the face of the club turned inwards.

He must regard himself rather as a piece of machinery which has been carefully and correctly wound up and must, so to speak, go off by itself. Left to itself, the machinery will bring hands, body, club and all back to the ball in exactly the same position in which they were when the swing was begun, and to do this is, I suppose, the secret of accurate hitting. But the machine must not be stopped with a whir and a jerk when the ball is reached. Left to itself - and this phrase cannot be repeated too often the swing will finish right out and the club head go, as it were, clean through the ball and end over the left shoulder, while body and legs follow obediently in its wake. A good player can, by putting in force at the right moment, accelerate the working of the machine without dislocating it. The novice must not try to do so; it will work quite quickly enough unaided. It is because this is such a hard lesson to be learned that the word hit is to be deprecated. The good player does hit very hard, but he hits smoothly and through the ball; the bad player hits at it, and to do that is to stop the swing with a jerk. It is far easier to avoid this error if nothing more solid than a daisy takes the place of a ball, just because it is so much easier to imagine oneself hitting through a daisy.

Wherefore the ball should be eliminated until the club swings backwards and forwards smoothly and easily. The longer the learner can do without a ball, the longer will be the distance that he will some day be able to drive it.