Situation: Driving with trouble on the right.
Suggestions: Unless you consistently curve your shots slightly to the left with the driver, this is a good time to consider leaving it in the bag. Two ballistic factors favour using a 3-wood or 4-wood instead in this situation.
First, these clubs are more lofted and shallower-faced than the driver. Thus they usually make contact lower on the back of the ball. The lower contact adds backspin and lessens sidespin. This reduces the degree that the ball will slice into trouble on the right, if you should happen to hit it with an open clubface.
Second, bear in mind that if you should happen to make contact with the clubface closed to the left, the club will be carrying a reduced degree of effective loft. Thus the more lofted 3-wood or 4-wood would be more likely to fly the ball a suitable height than would the straight-faced driver, which might fail to put the ball into the air at all.
The golfer who slices almost all long shots would surely choose a more-lofted club in this situation. He would also be wise to grip the club with his hands turned a little more to the right. This will make it easier for him to square the clubface at impact.
For many golfers it also helps to tee the ball a bit higher than normal in this situation. The higher the ball sits, the more we tend to sweep it away with a somewhat flatter swing. This, in itself, generally squares the clubface a bit sooner in the hitting area.
Situation: Driving on a hole that has trouble down the left.
Suggestions: This situation should not be particularly bothersome for the golfer who invariably slices his drives to the right. With trouble on the left, this is his safest shot.
To further guarantee the slice, however, he might well choose a driver rather than a more lofted club, if he happens to be in doubt about club selection. Because the driver has less loft and a deeper face it tends to contact the ball higher on its backside. This higher contact decreases backspin. Thus any slice spin applied will make the ball curve to the right a greater degree.
The golfer who tends to curve his drives to the left will find it helps to tee the ball a bit lower than normal in this situation. With the ball sitting lower to the ground, he will be less likely to sweep it away with a relatively flat swing, which tends to close the clubface to the left prematurely in the hitting area. Instead, he will instinctively swing on a slightly more upright plane, which tends to delay the squaring of the clubface.
This golfer will also find that a tighter left-hand grip will further reduce any hooking tendency, which in this situation could prove disastrous.
Situation: Playing in a left-to-right crosswind.
Suggestions: Most right-handed golfers hit their worst shots when the wind is blowing from left-to-right. They sense that they must start the shot out to the left to offset the wind. This causes them to swing the club back to the ball from outside the target line while – bearing in mind that we stand to the side of the ball – the ideal path is from the inside.
Also, the out-to-in path creates a steeply downward angle of approach. This not only reduces distance, because the blow is downward rather than forward, but it also inhibits free swinging of the arms and hands, for fear of burying the clubhead into the ground. This lack of free swinging impedes squaring of the clubface; at impact it still faces to the right, in the direction that the wind is blowing.
Thus it is best to avoid the instinctive temptation to swing the club to the left of where you are aiming – out-to-in – when playing in a left-to-right wind. There are better ways to handle this type of wind. The method you choose, however, should depend on the shot you happen to be playing.
For instance, on a tee shot where you want maximum distance, I suggest, given a wide fairway, you merely play a straight shot down the left side, with the club swinging back to the ball from the inside, and allow the wind to curve it back to the centre of the fairway. Since the ball will be curving in the same direction as the wind is blowing, this method will give you good distance.
If, however, the fairway is too narrow to allow the ball to drift to the right with the wind, you will need to play a shot that would normally curve slightly to the left. The wind will offset this normal curve and hold the shot more or less on a straight line.
To play this shot you will need to hit the ball with the clubface turned slightly to the left of your swing path. Since closing the clubface takes loft off the club, I suggest you choose a 3-wood rather than a driver for this shot. The relatively straight-faced driver, when closed, doesn’t carry enough loft to give the shot sufficient height. However, the 3-wood when closed becomes, in effect, a 2-wood or a driver. It will give your shot a trajectory that is more or less normal.
To hit the shot with a slightly closed clubface, grip the 3-wood with your hands turned a bit farther to the right than normal. Aim and swing for a straight shot, ignoring the wind.
When hitting approach shots to the green in a left-to-right wind, you again have the same two options. You can either aim to the left and let the wind bring the ball into the flagstick, or you can aim on target and hit a shot that would normally curve to the left, one that will fight the wind and thus stop quickly.
On long approach shots with, say, a 2, 3 or 4-iron, the first option is best. Any attempt to hit these relatively straight-faced irons with a closed clubface would probably leave you with too little effective loft to give the shot sufficient height. Therefore, aim left of target, play a straight shot and let the wind bring it in. The ball will probably bound freely forward and to the right upon landing, however, so plan to land it short of the green and somewhat to the left.
On occasion you may also use this method on shorter approach shots with the more-lofted irons. These shots will fly higher, of course, so you can try to land the ball on the green, left and short of the flagstick, but only if the green is very soft and the flagstick is near the back. Otherwise this plan of action would be dangerous. The ball will be curving from the left, thus flying more or less with the wind. It may not hold the putting surface.
Therefore, as a general rule I suggest that you apply your second option when approaching with a more-lofted iron club in the left-to-right wind. Play the shot that would normally curve left but, because of the counteracting wind, will tend to hold its line. This shot will settle softly on most greens.
To play this shot I suggest you choose a club with more loft than you would normally use for the distance at hand, say an 8-iron instead of a 7-iron, or a 7-iron instead of a 6-iron. With less club in hand, you will need to swing full-out, giving the shot an especially forceful lash with your arms and hands. This extra effort will tend to close the clubface slightly at impact so that the ball can fight the wind and thus hold its line.
You would not want to use this method if you have found that swinging with extra arm and hand action makes you mishit your shots. In that case I suggest you choose the club that you would normally use for the approach shot in question, but make the same grip adjustment that I suggested for tee shots when fighting the left-to-right wind with a 3-wood.
Situation: Playing in a right-to-left crosswind.
Suggestions: The right-handed golfer who normally makes the mistake of swinging on an out-to-in clubhead path will hit some of his best shots when the wind is blowing from right to left. He senses that he needs to start the ball right to offset the wind. Thus he swings the club into the ball from inside as opposed to his normal out-to-in approach.
When the clubhead’s path is from the inside rather than the outside, it’s angle of approach is shallower. This sends the force of the blow forward, rather than downward, so the shot travels farther. The path from the inside also encourages a free release of the arms and hands into the shot. This tends to square the clubface on target at impact, rather than leave it open to the right.
When driving down an open fairway in a right-to-left wind, I suggest you merely play a normal drive down the right side of the fairway. Let the wind bring it into the centre of the fairway. The ball will travel good distance because it will be curving in somewhat the same direction as the wind is blowing.
If the fairway is too narrow to allow the ball to drift to the left, you will need to play a drive that would normally curve to the right. The right-to-left wind will disallow much of this curve and thus hold the ball more or less on line. This shot should be simple for golfers whose drives normally curve to the right. Others should grip the club with their hands turned a little farther to the left than normal. This grip will delay the squaring of the clubface so that it still faces slightly to the right at impact, to counteract the right-to-left wind.
Teeing the ball lower than normal has this same counteracting effect. With the ball setting close to the ground we tend to swing more steeply downward to it, to avoid the ground behind it. The steeper angle of approach, in turn, tends to leave the clubface slightly open at impact.
When approaching the green in a right-to-left wind, it is also best to hit a shot that would normally curve to the right. Again, the wind will hold the ball on line. Since the ball is more or less fighting the wind, it will also settle more quickly on landing, whereas the shot that is allowed to drift to the left, with the wind, will not.
On these approach shots I suggest you choose more club than you would normally use for the distance in questions – a 7-iron rather than an 8-iron, or a 6-iron instead of 7-iron. Knowing that you have too much club in hand, you will instinctively swing with less force than normal. The less-forceful swing will tend to leave the clubface slightly open to the right at impact. This puts a certain amount of left-to-right spin on the ball to offset the right-to-left wind.
Please bear in mind, however, that it is most difficult to apply slice spin to the ball with the more-lofted irons, such as the wedges and 9-iron. These lofted clubs contact the ball so low on its underside that in a large part backspin, rather than slice spin, is applied.
The art of competing
Sir Michael Bonallack, five-times British Amateur champion (and later secretary of the R&A) is the perfect example of what I would call a ‘mental golfer’. Perhaps we could say, without being too uncomplimentary, that he is a manoeuvrer; a better competitor than striker. But, of course, that doesn’t mean a hoot; the score counts. And when something clicks and he starts to strike the ball well, he wins everything.
Bonallack’s best asset, like a lot of great players, is his golfing brain. It has been true of Peter Thomson, Bobby Locke, Walter Hagen, and many other great golfers. They were good strikers most of the time, perhaps, but their chief asset was a golfing brain which enabled them to overcome mechanical or technical deficiencies. In other words, they could nearly always score well when playing badly. They could compete.
I wish more people had this sort of golfing brain. There are no end of golfers who can hit the ball very well, professionals and amateurs alike, but there seem to be very few who can win championships. Those who do are the people who can think properly and keep their cool under heavy pressure.
All tournament players have been in the position many times of coming in after an event having played rubbish. With nine holes to go they have more or less given up mentally, and tended to play sloppily as a result. Then, once in, they have found they lost by a shot or two. You always imagine that other people are doing far better than you are. Club golfers will have experienced the same thing.
This is a problem inherent in every form of competition where the action is spread out. The only answer is confidence in oneself, and a relentless determination to keep trying whatever happens. Perhaps a ‘big head’ helps; the sort of attitude that no one can do better than you in the long run. Mind you, there is no need to tell everyone that!
Just how do you score well when playing badly? Especially when you have been playing well and the collapse is sudden and shocking.
The most vital thing is to know what you can fall back on simply to move the ball from A to B, a reliable shot which comes to you easily, under any sort of pressure. I think this is the most important single piece of armament in a good golfer’s arsenal. It doesn’t matter if the shot is a slice, a hook, or even a half-top, so long as it is repeatable; so long as it can be played with confidence at any time.
Too many good golfers try too hard for technical perfection, and not hard enough to score well while striking poorly. Nobody ever hits every single shot perfectly. Even the finest strikers only hit six or seven shots in any one round exactly as they mean to. Many competent golfers find it difficult to accept this situation. They seek perfect striking and are unduly disappointed and disillusioned by their bad shots, which adversely affects their confidence and tenacity. It is impossible to achieve perfection of strike, even on a practice ground, so how much more difficult must it be when the shots count; when one is playing under pressure?
If a Peter Thomson or a Gary Player went into a championship not hitting the ball well he would be what I’d call ‘sensibly perturbed’. He would certainly be looking for ‘a way’ in his mind and on the practice ground. But he would not be completely demoralised, because of his ability to compete. Whereas a lot of people in this position would be beaten before they even left the 1st tee. They would panic and become demoralised. The great competitor knows that he is a pretty good striker, which is all you need to be to win a great deal if you have the right mental attitude. If you haven’t got the right mental attitude, you need to be a superlative striker to finish anywhere in the running. It would seem to me that the good competitor will go on winning almost irrespective of his striking, whereas the good striker who is a poor competitor is likely to shine only occasionally.
A bad start will quickly kill off the majority of golfers – sap both their confidence and their desire. I once asked one of the finest competitors in tournament golf what his reaction would be to starting a major championship with a seven: ‘I would just try to forget the seven and go on playing the other holes as they came. I certainly wouldn’t be trying to make a sudden, dramatic recovery. I wouldn’t think ‘now I’ve got to go 3-3-3,’ or anything like that. You can never expect too much too fast. Over-anxiety to recoup a shot too often leads to loss of more. You have to wait for it, wait for the opportunities.
‘I like to start off quietly. I don’t believe in attacking right from the gun. The same applies with putting. I’ll be happy to get down in two. Once I’ve got the mood of the game and am getting into it, then I feel like I can start attacking. Even when you have ‘played yourself in’ there will be days when you are striking the shots well but the score won’t come. There is absolutely no percentage in getting distressed about it, as many golfers do. You can only go on trying to do your best and wait.’
Whatever your level, remember that – with the right effort – you can almost always score better than you played. The word for it is competing.
Attitude
There is no doubt in my mind that lower scores will come about from improving both your impact conditions and your understanding of various on-course situations. I am equally certain, however, that almost all weekend golfers also need an improved attitude before they will ever play to their true potential.
Proper attitude in golf is probably a subject that is worthy of an entire book in itself. Here, however, I will mention three particular characteristics that dramatically separate, say, a Bobby Jones, a Ben Hogan, a Henry Cotton or a Bobby Locke from the average weekend player.
First, those great players were successful because they realised their limitations. They knew that some shots are all but impossible for anyone to play successfully. They knew that other shots were beyond their own particular abilities. Like great generals, they knew when to charge and when to retreat.
Though far less skilled, most weekend golfers that I have seen seldom retreat. I see them attempt shots that are doomed to fail in themselves, apart from the additional wasted strokes that they bring about. So learn to play within your limitations and attempt only those shots that you can reasonably expect to achieve, even if they might not be all that spectacular. Sometimes it’s far better to accept the loss of one stroke instead of risking total disaster.
Second, you should work on developing the positive approach that is far more common among great players than among weekend golfers. Try to maintain the same attitude and degree of concentration that you adopt when you are two down with four holes to play. Avoid the negative thinking that comes when we are two up with four to go, or when we’ve just finished the front nine with a good score, the attitude that says: ‘I’ve got to be careful that I don’t ruin everything with this one shot.’
Finally, try on every shot. We are all determined to do our best on the first tee. We continue in this vein until disaster strikes, as it invariably does sooner or later. Then, so often, comes the blow-up.
Continuing with your best effort after running into trouble – and succeeding as a result – is surely the best way to get maximum satisfaction from playing golf. Come to think of it, the same would hold true of life itself.
Follow Jack’s methodical approach
I have found certain ways to make my actual practice time more productive. It is all too true in golf that lots of practice, if misspent, will not produce any improvement.
To make our practising more productive, we could all benefit from the example set by Jack Nicklaus. I have never seen Jack hit a practice shot without first giving it the same careful thought that he would apply in a key competitive situation.
Without fail he plans the shot and his execution of it before he ever steps up to the ball. He is particularly careful to aim the club and address the ball correctly, as you should be. I suspect that this care taken in practice is a major reason why Jack competes so well under pressure. His routine on the course is the same as he has applied countless times in practice. The weekend golfer who does not practise as he plays feels lost to a certain degree on many shots that he must play on the course.
There is, however, one difference between the way you should practise and the way you should play. I suggest that you limit yourself in practice to no more than two thoughts during each swing. I suggest you limit yourself on the course to only one such thought. I would remind you to go through your address procedure on every shot prior to swinging.
I also believe that every golfer, even the non-practiser, should hit at least a few shots before each round of play. This is vital, not only for getting the feel of a club in your hands, but also for finding your swing thought for the day. You will score better on average if you never walk on to the first tee without having first decided on the one thing you will think about as you swing the club.
Finally, a word about mastering a new swing technique through practice; select a target that is about 20 yards closer than you would normally expect to hit shots with this club. The reason for doing this is to make yourself swing at a tempo that is slow enough for your brain and body to perform an unfamiliar function. Adults, especially, need to swing at a brain speed that gives them time not only to do what the instructor has suggested, but also to sense – to feel – themselves doing it, so that they can repeat the correct feeling on future shots.
Give it your all
I am not one of those teachers who advocate that a golfer should play within himself using, say, only 80 per cent power, as if anyone of us is capable of making such a measurement. I believe it is easier to hit the ball with as much power as you can muster without losing your balance.
By the same token, when you are between clubs I would normally go for the weaker club and make a full-blooded hit. If you select the club which is strong for the distance, it is vital to grip down the shaft and give the shot the full treatment. Soft or quiet shots using a portion of your power are much more difficult.
When Seve Ballesteros blew his chances in the Masters with that infamous second shot into the pond on Augusta’s 15th hole in 1986, it was clear the moment he made contact that the clubhead was decelerating in the hitting area. Subconsciously he knew that the club he had in his hands was too strong for the distance. In Seve’s defence, he was having to wait and watch Jack Nicklaus going mad, making an eagle, in front of him.
By contrast, when Jose Maria Olazabal was in a similar position on that hole in the 1994 Masters he selected a club which needed to be hit 100 percent perfectly and with all his power in order to carry to the green.
Of course, this doctrine requires that the player has a realistic idea of how far he hits each club. Regrettably, most club golfers kid themselves about their power.
A waste of my time and your money
Regrettably too many lessons do not do a scrap of good. I have reached this bleak conclusion after many years of trying to help golfers who come to me with deeply ingrained bad habits. With this type of pupil it is easy enough to get them hitting shots which are an absolute revelation. I can show them their potential for hitting shots which are beyond their wildest ambitions. But bad habits die hard and unless the pupil is prepared to work long and hard on the practice ground the bad habit will reassert itself.
These days when, for example, an habitual slicer seeks help I often start by asking how much time and effort he is prepared to put into the physiotherapy exercises after I have rebroken the bone of his bad habit and set it straight. If he says that he really cannot spare the time to practice much, which is the case for many people, I tell him: ‘Then go on the way you are now and simply aim off to allow for your slice.’
Golf with the nerve removed
Hitting a few balls into a net may be all very well to loosen up before play, but extended practice sessions in the net can be dangerous. I had a low-handicap friend who went skiing in Switzerland every winter and in order to keep his golf swing in trim he went to one of the golf schools in Crans sur Sierre in the evenings and hit buckets of balls into a net. When he returned to our Sandy Lodge club he had the biggest hook you ever saw.
In a net you have none of the fears you encounter on the course, such as woods and rough and ponds and out-of-bounds. So you swing easily and the tendency is to hit harder and harder and sometimes for the grip to get stronger and stronger. You need to see the flight of the ball when you practise so that you can detect a fault and remedy it before it develops into a full-blown habit.
Kid yourself
When a golfer is two up with four to play he is tempted to overdo the safety first policy. He takes what he believes to be extra care on every stroke and steers well clear of any possible danger. All too often this pussyfooting costs him the match. In this situation try to imagine that you are two down with four to play and suit your tactics accordingly. It helps me. Sometimes.
In a world of slicers, the hooker is king
Most of the great players are fighting a hook. So in their ghost written instruction articles for the golf magazines they tend to advocate a weaker grip than normal, that is with both hands rotated anticlockwise combined with a late hit.
The effect of this expert anti-hook instruction being disseminated to a world of slicers can be easily imagined. The slicers get worse and flock to me and the other teachers in droves. I’m not complaining, mind. I have always appreciated the time and effort the superstars put in to drum up business for me.
Some of those magazine readers whose fades have been converted into vicious slices by following the wise advice of the star players ask me: ‘How do I get a late hit?’
I counter with the stock reply: ‘What is wrong with hitting at the right time?’ End of discussion.
Let it happen
You play your best golf by letting your swing just happen, not by concentrating on making it happen.
Golf instruction often creates over-control. So the mood of a swing should be to ‘set it up’ (that is, to take a correct address position), ‘set it off’ (swing the club up to a position from which you can hit the ball) and ‘let it freewheel’.
Every good player has a ‘safe’ shot he can rely on for those occasions when he is facing a particularly narrow fairway, or when the nerves are jangling from the tensions of the moment, or when his regular game is slightly off key. It is invariably a fade, maybe not as long as a normal drive and not so spectacular – but safe.
Tee the ball low. This helps a fade; a high tee tends to promote a hook through hitting early with the hands and rolling the wrists over. Set up open to the ball aiming up the left-hand side of the fairway. Open the clubface and hold it open going through the ball, keeping the hands ahead of the clubhead. Make sure you turn through as you hit the ball, obviating any independent hand action.
Play your percentages
Although when we practise we aim for perfection, even Ben Hogan when he played a record-breaking round reckoned that he hit no more than four or five shots which satisfied 100 percent. Golf is a game of misses and the way to win competitions is to hit all your shots with only as much of your power potential as allows you to swing in balance.
Practice swings
Golfers frequently remark: ‘If only I could hit the ball with my practice swing.’ For purposes of discussion, let us assume that the speaker really does have the perfect practice swing to which he lays claim. It would do him no good to hit the ball with it.
A golf swing is only as good as the position of the clubface at impact. The arc of the swing may be perfect, but if the clubface of the driver is more than three degrees off square we miss the fairway. A practice swing is therefore devoid of fear since the squareness (or otherwise) of the clubface at impact is of no account. There is no impact and therefore there is no apprehension.
Never give up
Early in my career I was playing in a competition and soon into the round I suffered a disaster that cost me four or five strokes. It was a real body blow and completely knocked the stuffing out of me, to the extent that for the rest of the round I was just going through the motions. I stopped competing and, my goodness, how the strokes mounted up. In retrospect that was not such a disaster because it taught me a valuable lesson. As Bobby Jones remarked with his customary sagacity: you learn only from your mistakes.
When I am trying to impress on professional golfers the importance of trying your utmost on every shot I remind them that almost always the winner will have had at least two disasters in his four rounds.
The most salutary example I ever witnessed of the virtue of trying on every shot was Jack Nicklaus in the first round of the Open Championship at Sandwich in 1981. On the eve of the championship he had received word of his son Stevie’s car accident and with his mind in a turmoil of worry he was hitting the ball very badly by his standards in the dreadful conditions of wind and rain in that opening round.
I had gone back to my hotel and watched, in fascination, the drama on TV. He was on the 13th hole and at that point was about 12 over par. But he was not giving up; he was obviously trying his very hardest on every stroke and scrambling magnificently. I think he got up and down four times to restrict his score to 83.
The next day, after reassuring news from home, he played a fine round of 66 and just made the cut, which he would not have done if he had packed it in the previous day. That was a wonderful lesson from the greatest competitor there has ever been.
Attitude of the man maketh the golfer
The great Walter Hagen was truly the king of matchplay – he did, after all, win five US PGA Championships at a time when that was a matchplay event. Obviously he was no fool when it came to strokeplay. But somehow, head-to-head combat brought out the best in him. Much of this success would have to be attributed to his totally unflappable nature. Bobby Jones, who suffered his worst ever defeat at the hands of Hagen – an 11&10 drubbing over four rounds – said that it was a joy to play with him. ‘He goes along chin up,’ Jones described, ‘smiling away, never grousing about his luck, playing the ball as he finds it.’
This is one of the reasons why matchplay agreed with Hagen. He refused to let anything get to him. If he hit a bad shot, it was done, history – there was nothing he could do about it. By shrugging it off he stayed relaxed, yet mentally sharp, and thus better equipped to make sure the next shot was a good one.
Hagen’s ‘smell the flowers’ attitude is an example to us all. If you can learn to keep your composure after the bad shots, I guarantee you’ll hit fewer of them. Byron Nelson was one golfer who learnt the importance of staying cool. Early in his career he got so angry during one tournament that he threw his putter up a tree, which as you can imagine wouldn’t have done his score a power of good. He vowed from thereon never to let his temper get the better of him, forcing himself to breathe more slowly and even walk slowly in potentially stressful situations.
Whether you choose to smell the flowers as Hagen did, or breathe slowly like Nelson, it’s entirely up to you. What is important is that you find a way, any way, of staying calm on the golf course. Because the minute you lose your cool, you stop thinking clearly. And that’s when you make big mistakes.
On a personal note, when I played in the 1950s and early 1960s I occasionally became very annoyed with myself. If I was playing today I would enlist the help of a sports psychologist, as do many of today’s golfers.
Mental pictures must come first
The golfer with an effective short game, the man or woman who can consistently lay those little pitch and chip shots close enough to the hole for a single putt, really does have a tremendous advantage. Confidence in one’s short game gives a tremendous edge at all levels of competition.
The sad thing is that so few people command a sound short game when, whatever their standard with the long shots, it is well within their reach. Here is the area of the game where the fellow who booms the ball 300 yards off the tee is pulled back to equal terms with the chap who can never manage more than 210 yards. This is the department of the game that calls for nothing more than good mental imagery and ‘touch’.
The techniques for pitching and chipping are simple, but before getting into them I want to stress this imagery factor. As I have stressed before in this book, you should never play a short shot until you have a clear mental picture of how you want the ball to behave.
This really is the secret of a strong short game. Until you decide how far and high the ball should fly, where it should land and how much it should roll, you cannot select the right club for the job. And what prevents so many people from developing a good short game is their illogical use of the same favourite club for every shot. There is no way that one club will get the ball close to the hole in every situation when you miss a green.
By using the wrong club for the particular shot at hand, you introduce a needless variable. If you choose a club with too much loft for a little chip from the fringe, in some way you will have to deloft it during the stroke. Conversely, if you choose a too-straight faced club, there will be a tendency to scoop at the ball to get it into the air. Selection of the correct club will allow you to play the same, simple stroke under all circumstances, with the club’s loft automatically governing flight and roll.
Watch the extreme care with which the pros think out and plan these little shots in tournaments and you will get an idea of how important it is to ‘picture’ the shot, then select the club that will match the picture.
Brute strength and blind fury will achieve even less in bad weather than in perfect playing conditions. When you are cold, stiff-muscled, or restricted by clothing, any effort to smash the cover off the ball leads generally to an even greater loss of control. To know not only what you are trying to do, but what you are capable of doing, is always a help at golf. In rough weather it is essential. You must be prepared to play more conservatively, and when a birdie does come along, slip it on to your score as a pleasant surprise rather than an anticipated bonus.
Do not force the long par-4s and 5s. Accept the fact that in winter a long par-4 may become a par-5, and a reachable par-5 in summer a much more difficult five. Give yourself plenty of club, and accept the conditions as you find them. Never try to bash the ball into submission. The quickest way to fall flat on your face in bad weather is to try to tear the course apart.
The chief technical problem in wet conditions is to strike the ball squarely and cleanly. Water, mud and long wet grass combine against you to make this extremely difficult. Consequently, it is worth sacrificing a little distance in favour of a more solid strike. Think ‘strike it flush’, not ‘hit it far’. Quiet your game down, if necessary, in order to swing the clubface squarely into the back of the ball.
Generally in bad weather or ground conditions you should use more loft than you would normally. You need to get a wet ball flying, so don’t overdo the straight-faced clubs. The 4 and 5-woods can effectively replace the 2, 3 and 4-irons, especially among poorer players. These lofted woods will move the ball well even from wet rough, and are a boon for long shots from soggy or ‘shaggy’ fairways.
Possibly the worst of all rough weather problems is wind. This is really what plays havoc with our enjoyment and our scores.
The answer, again, is to keep your head; to accept the added difficulties and to counter them by playing within yourself. The wind should be used rather than fought. When you are playing against it, take plenty of club, really over-club, shorten and slow down your backswing, keep your feet on the ground, and endeavour to swing the clubhead not at but through the ball.
Too many golfers, even good ones, cannot make themselves punch say a low 5-iron when the distance in normal conditions would require a 7-iron. They would rather gamble on hitting a ‘miracle’ 7-iron. Of course, 99 times out of 100 such a shot will be blown away, but these stalwarts never learn. They seem to feel that they can allow themselves to attempt only the shots that they regard as ‘proper shots’. I can assure them that any shot arriving on target, no matter how it got there, is an excellent shot in a pro’s book.
Downwind the ball will fly farther, so long as you give it plenty of air. Adjust your club selection accordingly. Very often, in a strong backwind, a 3-wood from the tee will go farther through the air than a driver, but will stop quicker. Make use of this sort of knowledge when the conditions are against you.
High crosswinds are everybody’s nightmare, but again, they can be used rather than fought. My tactics vary according to the distance of the shot and the degree of accuracy needed. In a big right-to-left wind, I would aim off to the right on the tee and let the wind bring the ball back into the centre of the fairway. In the same wind on an approach shot I would probably try to cut the ball into the wind, hold it up by shaping it into the wind, because a with-the-wind hooked shot is difficult to control when the target is small.
This, of course, demands a high level of ball control, which many golfers don’t pretend to possess. Even so, they must decide how their standard shot is likely to be affected by wind, and make an appropriate allowance in aim.
The essential thing is to decide very clearly what you are trying to do before you actually attempt it.
Aim high
Unless ground conditions are very dry, hit your full 7, 8, and 9-irons not at the hole but at the top of the flag. These are the scoring clubs. Use them as such. Most handicap golfers are prone to under-club on approach shots. Instead of, say, hitting a controlled 7-iron at the stick, they thrash an 8-iron at the green. I find I tend to do this when I’m not playing well, but if I’m hitting the ball solidly I take ample club and fire straight at the top of the stick.
Most handicap players are often surprised at the clubs the best players use in approaching. Sam Snead, for instance, would often use a 7-iron where most players would try to wallop an 8-iron. You don’t get prizes for distance with the pitching clubs. A controlled shot at the flag is always a much higher percentage than a big, swinging thrash in the general direction of the green.
It says a lot about the inner drive of the true champions that even when they are enjoying great success, making pots of money and winning tournaments, they are prepared to jump off the gravy train and work for months on end to improve their technique.
The first example that comes to mind is Byron Nelson. I first met him in 1955 when I played in the old Thunderbird Classic and he invited me to join him in a practice round. What a player! He made me feel like a 15-handicapper. I did not have an opportunity to talk with him again until 1967 when we were both doing television commentaries on the Open Championship at Hoylake.
I used positively to devour instruction books in those days, any golf books come to that, and I had read his book. So I commented that when he started out he must have swung the club in a very flat arc. He made that flat swing work well enough to win tournaments but he was not consistent. He would win a tournament and the next week he would fail to qualify. So he took three months off and changed his grip, removing two of his three knuckles from view, and working on taking the club straight back and up.
Having grooved his adjusted swing he made a statement that, for a man of such inherent humility, bordered on providence-tempting arrogance: ‘I believed I would never play badly again.’ But that was about the size of it. He never did.
In his first instruction book, Power Golf, Ben Hogan advocated a three-knuckle grip and that is how he played. In my conversation with Nelson I remarked that it had taken a serious car accident to force Hogan to change his grip. Nelson corrected me. He said that Hogan had been practising with a weak left-hand grip before the accident – Henry Cotton said that it was he who had convinced Hogan of the need for such a change – but that when he got out on the course Hogan reverted to his familiar three-knuckle grip.
Having read Power Golf I had been very anxious to watch Hogan and I had my opportunity at the 1953 Open Championship at Carnoustie. His grip was completely different from the illustrations in the book. Hogan’s enforced layoff produced what was probably the most thorough and effective revision of a golf swing of them all.
Roberto de Vicenzo, that lovely self-deprecating character with his infectious good humour and fractured English, was another player who realised that he could never achieve his full potential until he eliminated a fault. His left hand was too far over the top of the club and it took him six months, hitting a thousand balls a day, to get comfortable with his new grip. Then he won the Open Championship and almost won the Masters.
Nick Faldo is a recent example of a highly successful player withdrawing from competitive play to rebuild his swing. He was a ‘rocker’ and he was very fortunate to find in David Leadbetter a teacher so well suited to his needs. It seems to me that Faldo sees golf in terms of infinite complexity whereas I believe and teach that golf, although admittedly a most difficult game, is essentially a simple game. Indeed I might go as far to say the simpler the better.
Jack Nicklaus never actually withdrew from competitive golf in order to make changes to his swing. But he was a prodigious worker on his golf. He established what is now the standard routine for professional golfers of hitting hundreds of balls a day and also of going straight to the practice ground after a competitive round in order to iron out a fault. For years he struggled, without lasting success, to convert his shoulder tilt into a turn.
One day when I was in his office I was emboldened to remark, using the verbal shorthand of the profession: ‘You won most of your titles missing it.’ He grinned and replied: ‘Yes, but I’m smarter than the other guys.’ And that was no less than the truth of it.
Mix in the best company you can find
Mix with and try to play with better golfers than yourself. Most good golfers are only too glad to encourage others to play the game well, and, once the ice is broken, can be of great help in doing so. This is not a question of learning to swing. It is more a question of learning scoring technique, strategy, tactics, when to pitch, when to chip, how to recover from trouble, when to play safe and when to attack, and so on. Careful observation of the good player in these areas can be very instructive – as, too, is the effect on one’s own game of watching a good method and witnessing a good score.
Four final thoughts to help you play your best
The more I teach, play and watch golf, the more convinced I become that the decisive factor in good shot-making is preparation: shot assessment, club selection, grip, aim, stance, posture. If you can master these departments you have every chance of playing golf to the best of your capabilities, whatever those may be. These are the spadework areas; the foundations upon which your game must be built if you have the ambition and the opportunity to reach your full potential as a golfer. Of that I am totally convinced, and I am sure I would be supported in this view by the majority of the world’s top players.
But there are a few other aspects of the game that I want to mention before we close, which golfers of all calibre tend to overlook or forget.
First of all, I would like to ask you always to remember with what you hit a golf ball. It is not your shoulder pivot, your straight left arm, your bent right arm, your knees, your hips, nor even your hands. It is the head of the golf club. In the last analysis, what golf is all about is applying the head of the club to the ball as fast and as flush as possible.
Now, this might sound rather an elementary point to labour, but I feel that it is increasingly overlooked these days, especially by beginners. We live in an age of applied science, to which golf has become subject perhaps more than any other sport. It is such a difficult game to play very well, and so many millions of people now want to do so, that ‘method’ has become almost a religion. Even though I teach individuals, rather than a ‘method’, I wouldn’t argue with that. It is fun, if you are keen on something, to immerse yourself in the theory of it; and, so long as you are discerning and selective, it is often possible to pick up something of value.
But do not let theoretical ‘method’ blind you to the basic objective of the game, which is to propel the ball forward with the club, not with some part or the whole of your anatomy. In short, whatever simple or complicated manoeuvres the search for better shots leads you into, don’t ever forget to include among them swinging the clubhead into the ball.
This is especially true if you are a slicer, which 80 per cent of golfers are naturally. In the simplest terms, you never get the clubhead to the ball before you are past it with your body – you never hit ‘early enough’ with the club. If you want the fastest cure I know, simply hit shots with your feet together – and I mean together. That way you can only do the job with the clubhead. If you don’t you will fall over!
The second thought I would like to leave with you concerns your own physical limitations. It is not easy to assess realistically and then candidly accept one’s inadequacies, but doing so is a particularly essential operation for the golfer, because the game he plays is not one of power, but power under control.
Nine out of ten pupils who come to me want to hit the ball farther. Very often I can help them, by showing them how to hit it accurately and solidly with an easy swing, instead of approximately and glancingly with a difficult or furious one. But what I cannot do – nor can any other teacher – is increase their natural clubhead speed. Everyone has a definite point, depending on natural muscularity, coordination and playing experience, where he can equate speed (or power) with control. He should find it then play always within it if the score is more important than the exercise. This is a lesson that every successful golfer learned early and has stuck to. You will never meet a top tournament pro who swings as hard as he could physically, other than in exceptional circumstances for an occasional recovery shot.
My third point concerns your attitude on the golf course. Even if you have the ability to hit the most perfect shots in the world, you won’t win matches and tournaments unless you can play them strategically and tactically. So, whatever your limitations or advantages as a shot-maker, never forget to apply yourself assiduously to the arts of scoring. Bear in mind that many, many victories have been won, in first-class and club golf, by inferior strikers who could get the ball from A to B, over superb stylists and stroke-makers who couldn’t answer the strategic or temperamental problems set by the course and the competitive situation. Remember that golf is a game of how many, not how; that people may often be interested in what you scored, but rarely in how.
Finally, I would ask you to do what sounds quite a simple thing but is, in fact, very difficult: to try your utmost on every shot. Golf can be the most frustrating and infuriating, as well as the most satisfying and elating, of games; but if it has one cliché that cannot be denied it is that the game is never over until the last putt has been holed.
So, don’t give up – ever. Think about what you are trying to do, which is to make a good impact. Think about what will help you to make a good impact, which, to put it as simply as I can, is correct aim and stance followed by two turns, one to get your body out of the way while you aim the club, and one to get it out of the way while you swing the club through the ball. Think out the shots before you play them, then think of one key factor to help you swing as you have planned.
There’s never been a greater game for triers.
Keeping golf in its right place
Golf being the difficult game that it is, it is very easy for any of us to lose our sense of proportion about it. I seem to meet far too many people who regard as a disaster of the first magnitude a couple of fluffed pitches or a drive into the rough. In point of fact, of course, the greatest players hit very few shots completely as they intend to; and I think it does much for our temperament in golf if we realize and accept this. I often want to say to one of my pupils: ‘Who are you to think you can do more than they can!’
If golf is a difficult game, however, we should all be the more grateful for our good shots. After all, the game is tougher than any of us – and will always win. The best players will follow a sparkling 64 with a puzzled 75; or will win a tournament one week – and fail to qualify the next!
Try hard we must – but we must also keep a sense of proportion!