In the last chapter I imagined a complete beginner coming to me and asking to be taught golf. This time I will imagine another and more common case, that of the golfer, more or less mature, who comes to me in a state of despair and says, 'I'm slicing everything,' or 'I am hitting all my pitches on the socket,' or whatever else his particular trouble may be.

Golfers who are thus for the moment unhappy I may roughly divide into two classes. First of all, there is the man who has not got what I call the 'ball sense.' He probably never could or wanted to play games when he was a boy, and he has taken to golf when he is middle-aged because his doctor told him he must. He will never make a player : he has no instinct for the game and no power of balancing himself-a very, very important factor in playing games; still, in his way he enjoys it and wants to play as well as he can. The most that can be done for him is to make the best of a bad job. Nevertheless a great deal can be done to help him, and I have had plenty of experience in trying to do so.

First of all there is something to be done for a player of this type by artificial means-that is, by having his club adapted to his weaknesses. He nearly always is inclined to slice, and this I would counteract by making his club with a hook. With a young athletic pupil I would not do that. I would not give in to his weakness, but would teach him to swing properly so that he did not slice. But in this case that is past praying for, and the hooky club if it does not get rid of the slice will reduce it and give him confidence. Also I would give the player a whippy club in order to give him a little more length. He will never be able to hit hard, and the artificial device of the springy shaft will make up a little for this deficiency.

I find that there is a peculiar kind of swing which is best suited to this rather feeble kind of player. It is first a fairly short one, because as a rule the further he is away from the ball the worse he balances himself. Next, it is what I think of as a 'round and up 'swing. I do not know if that will convey anything to other people. I mean that the swing should begin by being a flat one, with the club going well round and pretty close to the ground. That does away with the strong natural desire to pick the club straight up with the right hand. But this player cannot complete the swing on these lines. He cannot get round enough and pivot freely. If he tries he will swing himself completely off his balance. So after the club has gone round a little way I teach him to take it up and then stop. In short, it is a swing that begins by being flat, then becomes upright, and then stops fairly short. It is not a powerful style or one for the man who can ever hope to be a good player, but it will produce a certain amount of steadiness, and the player is more likely to balance himself decently well. In the case of a player to whom I teach this stop-gap method of driving I impress on him the fact that he ought to specialise in the short game. There is no reason why he should not pitch and putt, especially putt, pretty well. Let him be content with short but reasonably steady driving, and then learn to pitch and putt. If he does, he may come to beat a good many people who ought to be beating him.

Perhaps no one of my readers will like to think that these remarks apply to him. I hope they do not, and I will now come to the normal reasonably athletic player who is for the time being in a bad way either from one fault or another. He is more often worried about his driving than about anything else : so I will begin with that, taking the commoner golf faults or diseases, whichever you like to call them, in turn, and suggesting some remedies that are generally effective.

Suppose, then, that this golfer comes to me and says, 'I can't do any good at all. I 'm hooking like blazes and smothering the ball.' Of course there are various things that may produce hooking, but the chief one that I look for first is the opening of the right hand and lifting the right elbow high in the air at the top of the swing. I am not sure that I am not putting the cart before the horse. I think it is rather the lifting up of the right elbow which tends to force the hand open. The result is this. Feeling that his right hand is open at the top and that he has lost control, the player makes a grab at the club on the way down. He succeeds in catching it, but by thus seizing it he shuts the face of the club. When he hits the ball it is with the club-face turned over and the nose turned in, and of course he smothers the ball. This is a trick it is quite easy to fall into, especially if one is tired. At the end of last season when I was dead stale I had a turn of it. I could not stop that right elbow going up, and round went every ball to the left. A great many people make it more fatally easy for themselves than they need by opening the right hand as they waggle. Then they are naturally inclined to do it as they swing. Those are especially given to it who, while they are waggling, have the right elbow working backwards and forwards quite clear of the body. Let them resolutely keep the right elbow well into their ribs as they waggle. There will be much less tendency for the hand to open or the elbow to go up. I have sometimes seen this cure work like a charm. You will never see a good player with that right elbow wandering away from the body in the address.

Now suppose a still commoner case. The despairing one says, 'I 'm slicing everything. I feel I 'm going to before I start. I can't keep the ball out of the rough on the right.' It is very long odds indeed that he is not pivoting enough. In fact in nearly every case of slicing the trouble boils down to just this -lack of pivoting. The player won't start his swing with the turn of the left shoulder, and the more frightened he gets the less will that left shoulder do its office. He cannot so to speak 'get round the corner'in his swing, with the result that at the top he is in such a position that he must come across the ball on the way down. The left shoulder is one constant sinner : the right hand is another, as I have dinned into my readers' ears right through the book. The two almost seem to conspire together. If the swing begins with the right hand taking charge, it is very difficult for the left shoulder to come round properly. So let the slicer mind that shoulder and hand and keep on pivoting.