Sometimes I find that slicing comes from the player being too heavy on his left foot. He starts with too much weight on it in the address. Then he does one of two things. Either he sways to the right to counteract it, or else he piles still more weight on to the left foot at the top of the swing. In either case he cannot turn properly and freely. The man who has too much weight on the left foot at the top of the swing constantly falls back on to his right foot at the finish. Very likely he attributes this habit of falling back to not having his weight enough forward. Of course he is exactly wrong in diagnosing his disease, and only makes it worse than ever by his remedy.

This habit of getting too much weight on the left is often caused by the player doing with his wooden club what he has been told to do with his irons. He is told to lean to the left and get his weight well forward in the up-swing when he is playing an iron shot. He finds that he plays his iron shots better in consequence, and jumps to the conclusion that this is the way to play all shots with all clubs. Not long ago a lady pupil of mine, a fairly good player, came to me very unhappy about her driving. About a month before I had given her some lessons in iron play, and now I found that she was trying to play all her drives like iron shots and getting far too much weight on her left foot. I could not get her out of this trick at first. So at last I told her to try to sway. This was a desperate remedy, but it acted well. She did not really sway, although she thought she was doing so. What she did was to get lighter on the left foot, with the result that by the end of the hour she was swinging beautifully.

When a player is driving badly, whatever the particular fault he is committing, it is quite likely that he is taking his eye off the ball. But it does him no good to tell him so, or make him try hard to look at the ball. I don't believe in worrying about that. The thing to do is to search for the antecedent cause. One may be sure that he is doing something wrong in the earlier part of his swing that makes it almost inevitable that his eye should come off. The thing to do is to find out this something and get rid of it. When a man says to me in explanation of a bad shot, 'I took my eye off,'I say to him, 'But didn't you do something at the very beginning of your swing that made you do it ? 'If only one can get to the top of the swing properly the eye won't come off. I can never remember having taken my eye off unless there was something wrong on the way to the top.

I am not treating the old maxim, 'Keep your eye on the ball,'very respectfully, and I am equally disrespectful to another, 'Follow through.' I don't bother my own head or other people's about the follow-through. The club can't help coming through, quite as much as there is any necessity for, if the swing is properly made. Personally, on the days when I am hitting my best, I am conscious of less coming through than usual. I wish I could hit the ball with as little follow-through as Abe Mitchell. Many people come through too much and think too much about it. Of course I may be wrong, but I never teach my pupils anything about following through.

When golfers come to me with tales of woe about their iron play, the thing they most often complain of is that the ball is constantly finishing to the left of the pin. This is because they will try to hit the ball instead of pushing it. Of course I mean 'pushing' in the sense in which we talk of a push shot. They are not bold enough, or have not faith enough to do what they know they ought to do. They won't get enough weight on the left foot, and they let their hands fall behind. The natural effect of this is to shut the blade of the club. It reaches the ball with the nose a little turned in, and the ball flies to the left. I tell them to shove the hands a couple of inches forward when they are addressing the ball; but I add, 'For Heaven's sake don't move the weight with the hands.' The weight is to be moved on to the left foot, not in taking up the stance but as the club goes up. I know this is not an easy thing to do, but it has got to be done. I find it quite difficult to make myself believe that I can thus get my weight forward in playing quite short shots, but I play them best on the days when I really do believe it. A vast number of mashie shots (some of my own included) are 'fluffed 'through this lack of weight on the left foot at the top.

A very common fault in playing mashie shots is that the player tries to scoop the ball up into the air. This he does by a horrible bend of the left wrist on the way up, and a corresponding bend of the right wrist coming down. This bending of the left wrist going up is naturally followed by an opening of the right hand. Indeed it is all wrong from beginning to end. At Hanger Hill there is a hole on a terrace close to the club-house. The ball has to be pitched up on to the terrace, and at this hole I see lots and lots of players scooping away at the ball as if for dear life.

Finally, there is one painful and sometimes paralysing disease with iron clubs that can attack champions as well as long handicap players. Needless to say it is called 'socketing.' This generally comes from having the left wrist locked. The player gets this wrist bent. He will not carry the left wrist boldly enough and far enough back. He gets his left wrist and also the club-face too much into the position which they should occupy in putting. My cure I express thus : 'shove the club from the left shoulder, and get the blade of the club open.'

Occasionally there is a different cause. The player having got his left heel off the ground does not get it back to the ground by the time he hits the ball. I have seen very good players occasionally fall into this habit, and it is worth watching for.