Bear in mind that all the weight cannot now be on the left, otherwise there will be no balance. When coming down the levering process takes place in converse order, the right side tearing the weight from the left, and passes down until the club catches up with it at impact. Just before impact the left heel is on the ground to receive the weight coming forward on to it. Before this point has been reached, however, the left toe has already had a great deal of pressure on it. I have experimented on this subject and got other people to observe my left foot very closely during my swing, and I have found that half-way down in the down-swing, which is the moment of maximum effort, my left toe is trying to dig its way into the ground harder than at any other time. Incidentally, the fact that half-way down is the moment of effort can be seen in a rather interesting way from photographs. Look at the face of the player, as well as you can, in the series of driving photographs. Clearly he is making a great effort half-way down. At the moment of impact there is, by comparison, an appearance of relaxing. This is particularly noticeable in any photographs of Taylor hitting the ball, although when you watch him in real life you may get the impression that it is at impact that he is putting in all he knows. A little while after impact the relaxation seems to disappear, and there comes again the appearance of great effort, as if the player were hanging fiercely on to the club to stop it flying out of his hand.

However, this is to wander away from the left heel, which had just come on to the ground before the actual impact, in order to receive the weight. By the time the shot is finished one should be able to do away with the right foot altogether, but I think the question of a good or bad drive has been decided before then. The important question is how the weight is distributed at the top. If the body is balanced at that point, then the finish will naturally be right.

The height of a shot all depends upon the amount of weight that was on the left foot at the top of the swing. For instance, if one wishes to keep a ball down against a wind, extra weight is crowded on to the left during the uptake. Braid is our longest hitter against a wind, and this is partly because he is naturally heavier on his left foot at the top and partly because he adopts the shut-face method. If a player is heavy on the left foot at the top it means that the weight will be much later in its transference to the right on the down-swing. It appears to me that in Braid's case his weight gets behind his club only at the last possible moment. This makes his blow a descending one and so keeps the ball low.

Taylor, like Braid, hits nearly every shot a descending blow, but does it in a different way. Instead of transferring extra weight on to the left foot during the up-swing, Taylor when he takes up his stance stands a little more in front of the ball than most people do. Consequently his weight, like Braid's, is more forward than that of, say, Vardon, who might be described as having a tendency to hit the ball up. I might express it in other language by saying that the bottom of the arc is reached in Vardon's case sooner than in Braid's or Taylor's on account of his having more weight on the right before impact. Vardon can lean over and hit the ball down when the occasion demands, but that is not his natural way of hitting a ball.

In iron-club play, except in a full cleek shot, the transference of the weight is not quite the same as with wooden clubs. What we all wish to do when using an iron is to hit the type of shot that starts low, gradually rises until it reaches the end of its flight, and then comes nearly straight down. In other words, we want to hit the ball a descending blow beneath its centre. There are two ways of playing this shot. One consists in a marked transference of weight on to the left foot during the up-swing ; the other in standing more in front of the ball when addressing it. I recommend the first method. It seems to me much easier to time the transference of the weight when the swing is in action than it is when the weight is put in front before the swing is started. When I say that there is a difference in the weight movement between wooden-club shots and those with irons, I mean that the weight goes forward on to the left foot sooner in the case of an iron shot. The swing is a shorter one ; therefore less pivoting is required, and so the transference of the weight forward feels more like a gradual leaning forward from right to left than anything else. The real difference is this, that the left leg does nearly all the weight-carrying throughout the stroke, and the shorter the shot the more noticeably is this so. At the same time we must have some use for the right leg. The extent of that use is this: when we start the shot the right will be carrying most of the weight. After we have once started the swing we can very nearly do without it.

There are times, of course, when one has to play a different type of shot than the one with a low trajectory; one has often to get a ball up quickly, it may be with a brassy shot or it may be with a mashie pitch. Naturally we cannot play a full shot with any club without putting a little weight on the left foot. This is the shot in which we have to balance the body without putting more weight on the left foot than we can help. When it comes to the high mashie pitch we can all but do away with the left leg, as it should not have any weight on it during the stroke. But here let me emphasise the fact that what is in this special case a virtue is in playing the ordinary approach a vice. In playing the ordinary approach this is just the trouble of most golfers, that they are short of weight on the left foot during the uptake. One has always a chance of adjusting the weight when a full swing is made, as the club after passing half-way on the uptake begins to move forward and so brings the weight with it ; but when a half-swing is being employed as in an approach, there is no chance of the recovery of balance if the weight is allowed to follow the club. I always tell my pupils to lean against the club during the uptake when a half-shot is being played. The tendency is always to allow the weight of the body to follow the arms and club to the right, and then to hit from a position in which all the weight is on the right leg, whereas it should be mostly on the left.