By A. C. M. Croome

There are many who hold that Golf, being an Art and not a Science, cannot be learnt from books.

These never tire of narrating the fable of the Open Champion and the Casual Stranger. The latter had arranged to visit Walton Heath and to play with the former, receiving odds of half a stroke. As the pair walked to the first teeing-ground the visitor expressed a confident hope that the allowance would prove sufficient. He had, he said, been reading much in the book of Advanced Golf, and believed that careful study of its contents had improved his game by at least four shots. 'Then I will give you two-thirds,' was the reply of the talented author of that great work.

Rightly apprehended, the moral of that fable is not that the reading of didactic books on golf is necessarily and in all cases a hindrance towards permanent progress in the efficient use of the clubs: if that were so, the writers of those books would be guilty of doing grave disservice to their kind. It is true that numerous cases can be cited of men who, after reading such books, have for a time played worse than they did before. That is because, while the knowledge acquired in armchairs is in process of assimilation, the student is apt, when he visits the links, to think overmuch about his style and to neglect, at least partially, the plain duty of hitting the ball. But in the long run knowledge proves itself to be power on the golf-course as elsewhere.

In every art theory is valuable only so far as it is capable of being translated into practice. Nothing but the theory of golf can be learnt from books. The beginner who has taken a dozen lessons from an expert golfer will certainly be able to beat another, his equal in physique, who has read all the books about the game which have ever been printed, but has not had the will, or the opportunity, to avail himself of practical instruction. Yet the books may contain the whole truth and nothing but the truth, while the expert may say much that is demonstrably wrong. But the expert can hit golf-balls, books cannot. Thus the former by his example can and does minimise the evil effects of unscientific instruction orally conveyed. The printed word has no corrective for wrong apperception of its meaning by the mind of the reader.

When one sets out to tell incipient golfers ' How to Learn,' it is no bad thing that he should begin by pointing out to them the true place of didactic books in the scheme of education. Their function is to clear the ground for the practical instructor. The beginner ought to spend all the time and money which he can afford on taking lessons from a professional. These lessons will be pleasanter for both parties, and more profitable to the pupil if previous reading has so informed his mind that he can rightly understand what is said to him, and can correctly analyse the example of the way to hit which is displayed for his edification. The science of the various shots required to propel a ball from tee to hole will be set forth in subsequent chapters by men excellently qualified for the task, owing to their notorious skill with club and pen. This chapter is intended to serve merely as an introduction to their work. They, and the professionals who show to learners how theory is translated into practice, must inevitably use phrases which have become conventional. Many of these phrases are sufficiently illuminating, and need no further explanation. The true inwardness of others is only to be discovered by analysis and thought. For an example of the latter let us take the recommendation that in executing short mashie shots the weight should be rather on the right foot. A common spectacle on the links is that of a man, in an attitude of great discomfort, trying to balance himself on the right foot while he plays a little pitch up to the hole. The precept above mentioned has been seared into his brain, and his reverence for authority causes him to stand as if he had lost a leg in a railway accident. The fact is that the great golfer has a delicate sense of balance. Consequently, when he causes his right leg to support two or three pounds more than half his total weight, he is acutely conscious of its unequal distribution. Less gifted persons require stronger evidence to prove to them that they are poised, as they think, correctly. Consequently, when one of them tries to rest his weight 'rather on his right foot,' he overdoes it by a stone or more, sways his ill-balanced body as he makes his stroke, and produces a more or less egregious foozle.

But before proceeding to discuss the exact meaning of possibly obscure phrases, there is a matter of supreme importance to be considered. It is the difference between method and style. Method is one and universal. Whenever a player who receives the limit handicap hits a really good shot he employs the same method as the Open Champion. The difference between the good strokes of the two men is one of degree, not of kind. No doubt the spectacles presented by the executants will be vastly different, for each has his peculiar style, the collection of idiosyncrasies which he superimposes on the essentials of method. A bad style is one which makes difficult the inclusion of all the essentials; a good one is not necessarily graceful, but it ensures that the club head is presented square to the ball, and is at the moment of impact travelling at the pace required to produce the desired effect. Unfortunately a teacher is prone to regard some point of his own individual style as an essential of method, and learners, in their anxiety to discover a royal road to success, seize with avidity on 'tips' which, when unscientific, retard rather than accelerate their progress. For example, some teachers find that they themselves can hit the ball more accurately if they hold their clubs with part of the right hand overlapping the left. They strongly recommend, if they do not insist, that their pupils should imitate their example in this respect, and adopt the so-called 'Vardon Grip.' They do not realise that the grip of the hands, more especially of the left hand, is nothing more than the attachment which links together the two parts of the club shaft, the one part being the hickory stick, the other the left arm of the striker. It is very helpful to the beginner if he realises that everything from his left shoulder to his club head is, properly speaking, shaft. The progress of many towards steadiness of play is retarded because they bend left wrist or left elbow in hitting. No man has a hinge in the shaft of his driver: it is not certain that the Rules Committee would pass such a mechanical contrivance. Manifestly a hinge in the human part of the shaft, though it would escape the ban of authority, must be a cause of wildness. Just as many people play well with hickory shafts which are not exactly straight, so many drive far and sure with their left arms bent. But - this is the important thing - the amount of bend is constant throughout the stroke. A pedant would call it 'warp ' rather than bend. This little digression will not, it is hoped, be regarded as irrelevant. To return to the original point - just as the head of a club may be joined to a stick by a socket or a skear 1 - if that is the right way to spell the word - so the stick may be united to the arm by varying arrangements of the left hand and its fingers. Some grip very much over, like Braid; others, including Mr. John Ball, go to the other extreme. Some have the thumb down the handle, others keep it round the leather. These are differences of style, and people must discover which variety suits them best and stick to it. Method demands that the attachment between the two parts of the club shaft should be strong enough to remain firm when club head impinges violently on its objective, and so adjusted that the club face is presented fair and square to the ball. None can doubt that for Braid, Taylor, Vardon and the strong-fingered gentry, the overlapping grip is the best. Probably the employment of it saves each of those three professors as many as six or eight shots in the course of a year's play. Every beginner ought to experiment in the use of it, if only for the reason that when a man has once grown accustomed to it, he is less liable to alter his grip insensibly and so introduce a cause of wildness into his hitting. The question whether to overlap or not is one which need not trouble the learner during the first few weeks of his golfing life. But it is of great importance that he should at once discover how far over the handle of his club he should place his left hand. The best method of making the discovery is that recommended by Sir Walter Simpson in his book, The Art of Golf. He says: ' Having placed himself opposite the ball, let the player take hold of his club loosely, but so that, if held short, the end of the shaft would pass under the wrist bones. Let him swing it backwards and forwards freely over the ball, describing an elongated eight, whose length is limited by the locking-point of the wrist joints. After two or three such continuous figures have been described, the hands, still holding loosely, will settle themselves into a proper relation to each other, and to the shot.'