I have before referred to the idea of pulling and slicing to counteract wind. It is astonishing how deeply rooted this idea is. At page 53 of Concerning Golf Mr. John L. Low says: "There is no shot which produces such straight results as the sliced shot against a right hand breeze," to which I reply that there is no shot which gives such straight results as the straight shot in itself without slice or pull of any description whatever, and that as a matter of fact it is practically impossible to calculate within twenty yards, and that means double the distance, where one will land if one starts pulling and slicing in a cross wind.

This is a matter of such importance that I must quote Harry Vardon in support of my statement. He says at page 92 of The Complete Golfer:

Now, however, that this question is raised, I feel it desirable to say, without any hesitation, that the majority of golfers possess vastly exaggerated notions of the effect of strong cross winds on the flight of their ball. They greatly over-estimate the capabilities of a breeze. To judge by their observations on the tee, one concludes that a wind from the left is often sufficient to carry the ball away at an angle of 45 degrees, and indeed sometimes when it does take such an exasperating course and finishes on the journey some fifty yards away from the point from which it was desired to despatch it, there is an impatient exclamation from the disappointed golfer, "Confound this wind! Who on earth can play in a hurricane!" or words to that effect. Now I have quite satisfied myself that only a very strong wind indeed will carry a properly driven ball more than a very few yards out of its course, and in proof of this I may say that it is very seldom when I have to deal with a cross wind that I do anything but play straight at the hole without any pulling or slicing or making allowances in any way.

PLATE XII.

GEORGE DUNCAN A characteristic stroke, showing Duncan's perfect finish in the drive.

If golfers will only bring themselves to ignore the wind, then it, in turn, will almost entirely ignore their straight ball. When you find your ball at rest the afore-mentioned forty or fifty yards from the point which you desired to send it, make up your mind, however unpleasant it may be to do so, that the trouble is due to an unintentional pull or slice, and you may get what consolation you can from the fact that the slightest of these variations from the ordinary drive is seized upon with delight by any wind, and its features exaggerated to an enormous extent. It is quite possible therefore that a slice which would have taken the ball only twenty yards from the line when there was no wind, will take it forty yards away with the kind assistance of its friend and ally.

These are, unquestionably, words of wisdom. There can be no doubt whatever that the straight ball is the ball all the time in golf, and it is absolutely certain that what Vardon says about the effect of the wind on the golf ball is true. Wind has remarkably little effect on the golf ball which is driven without spin. I have had no doubt on this subject for at least seventeen years. I had my lesson in one ball during the course of a match played over my home links in New Zealand. One of the holes was on top of a volcanic mountain at a place where New Zealand is only a few miles wide, and there was a howling gale raging from ocean to ocean right across the island. I can remember as if it were yesterday, the champion of New Zealand, as he was then, playing this hole. He drove a very high and perfectly straight ball from tee to green, and the ball travelled to all appearances as directly as if there had been no wind whatever, whereas had there been the least slice on the ball it would have been picked up by the wind and carried away into the crater which lay sixty or a hundred yards off the course.

Speaking of Mr. Low reminds me that he makes some extraordinary statements with regard to spin.

At page 35 of Concerning Golf he says: "I have said that a ball with left to right spin swings in the air towards the left in exactly the opposite direction from a sliced ball and from contrary causes." It is obvious that this is wrong, for the spin of the slice is from left to right, and of course, as every one knows, that spin makes the ball swerve towards the right, which is the swerve of the slice.

At page 32 Mr. Low makes the same error. He says there: "Now a pulled ball comes round to the left because the sphere is rotating from left to right, or in the direction contrary to the hands of a watch." This, of course, is a contradiction, for the hands of a watch as we look at them do rotate from left to right, but in any case Mr. Low's explanation is quite incorrect, because the spin of the ball is not in a direction contrary to the hands of a watch laid face upwards on the ground, as Mr. Low affirms.

Mr. Low says at page 31:

Every child nowadays seems to know how to slice a ball; you have only to ask the question and the answer will come quickly enough, "Oh, draw the hands in when you are hitting," or, in other words, spin the ball in the direction of the hands of a watch laid face upwards on the ground. The ball advancing with this spin finds it is resisted most strongly by the atmosphere on its left side, and therefore goes towards the right in the direction of least resistance. The converse is the case with a pulled ball in the sense of a ball which curves in the air from right to left.

We have already shown in dealing with Professor Thomson's article that this statement is quite incorrect. In passing I may also refer to the fact that Mr. Low's idea of the production of the slice, viz. by drawing the hands in when one is hitting, is also wrong. There is no drawing in of the hands at the moment of impact in the properly played slice. It is the drawing in, if we may use the term, of the head of the club in its travel across the intended line of flight, but not anything which is done intentionally during impact. However, that is by the way.