A good deal of what I have said in this book comes very decidedly under the head of advanced instruction. Some of it may be difficult to understand. It has certainly been difficult to express. In this chapter I am going to be more elementary. I am going to try to put down something of what I should say to an actual beginner who came to me as a pupil. I do not claim that all my methods of teaching are necessarily right, but such as they are I will try to explain them.

I will imagine, therefore, that I have got a complete novice, and that I am going to teach him to drive. For all I know it might possibly be better to begin at the other end of the game and start him close to the hole and work backwards, but I do not think that if I did so I should be a popular teacher. I can generally make a good guess, by looking at the pupil, whether he is likely to do any good at the game. One can always tell the natural athlete and also the man who will never be much of a hand at any game. However, to whichever class this pupil belongs, I shall begin in much the same way and ask him to bring his wooden club. Very likely this club is a brassy with a certain amount of loft on it, as beginners often buy only a few clubs, and in that case their wooden club is generally a fairly lofted brassy. But if it happens to be a driver, by all means let him begin with that. There is no harm done by making things fairly difficult to start with.

I begin by making him take hold of the club with his left hand in such a way that when he looks straight down the shaft he can see at least two knuckles. If he gets the grip of this hand correctly, the right hand generally fits fairly well into its place. There is some inclination to get the right hand too much under, because he feels that this gives him power, but 'No,'

I say to him, 'you will have all the power you want by holding at the roots of the fingers of both hands, if you will only believe it.' I always teach the overlapping grip whether the pupil is old or young, a man or a woman. I know it is said that it does not suit ladies, and that they have not strong enough fingers for it. I have also heard golfers, and very good golfers too, say that they cannot manage this grip because their fingers are not long enough. Personally I do not believe in any of these reasons. I think that any one can learn to do it, and that it is the best grip. Therefore any one beginning the game at the very beginning had much better adopt it.

Having taken hold of his club the pupil next takes his stand and addresses an imaginary ball, and the first thing that I nearly always notice is that he stands up too straight. So I tell him to sit down to it a little and get his weight back on to his heels. I don't worry him very much about his knees, but like him to stand easily with a little give in them. I fancy that one of the reasons for this standing up too much is that the beginner thinks the club must be very carefully placed so that the whole sole of it is flat on the ground. This is quite wrong. I am a great believer in the hands being well down and, consequently, the nose of the club being a little cocked up in the air. I know that when I am driving my best the nose of my club is well cocked up. To have the hands down is to give the club-head every chance of beginning to go back properly-that is, to go round and inwards and not to be pushed out to the right. Another very common mistake in taking up the stance is laboriously to square the shoulders instead of allowing the right shoulder to be lower than the left. This is its natural and proper place, since the right hand is below the left, and any one who begins the game young gets this naturally correct. This is not so with grown-up learners, and I have to rub it in to them to get the right shoulder down and get more weight on the right foot.

The next stage is that the learner should waggle a few times. I show him what a waggle is like, and try to get him to do it with some freedom of wrist. If, as often, he is very stiff, I say to him, 'Now then, get a break in your wrist.' So many people do not seem to realise that they have got wrist-joints.

Having waggled and got a little freedom and some feel of his club, his next step will be a swing at the imaginary ball. I show him of course, by actual example, how to do it, and explain something of it to him in words. I say nothing whatever about the turning over of the wrists, which is as a rule the first piece of preliminary instruction in books. I do not think it is necessary. If a player is holding properly with his left hand with those two knuckles showing, as much turning movement as is necessary will come naturally. I do not find that beginners have generally any difficulty in opening the face of the club, except that now and then there is one who is inclined to grip too fiercely with the right hand too much under and so shut the face. The chief point that I insist on in words is the movement of pivoting. Briefly what I say is this: 'A half turn of your right shoulder, a half turn of your right hip, and get your left shoulder moving.'

When he actually begins to swing the club I try to make the learner take a three-quarter swing to start with, and then gradually lengthen it a little by means of more pivoting. With beginners, as with champions, there is a natural tendency for the strong right hand to take charge too early in the up-swing and spoil it. If a pupil suffers very badly from this I make him put his right hand in his pocket and do some one-handed swings with his left hand, and this, as it may be called, back-handed shot is often very useful in helping to produce some smoothness and rhythm.

All this has taken me some time to write down, but in real life it does not take very long. In point of fact it takes about a quarter of an hour, which is quarter of a lesson, and at the end of that time I generally let my pupil have a go at a real ball. It depends of course on how he shapes. Some people take longer to get a rudimentary notion of the swing than others, but in the case of a normally promising pupil I start him on a real ball at about this time, and I generally have half a dozen balls and tee them for him one after another. The average result in my experience is this : three or four tops, one fair hit, and one or two slices. The topped shots are usually produced by swaying, the slices by insufficient pivoting, and the one fairly good shot possibly by chance.