Bobby Jones on Golf

by Robert Tyre Jones

  The immediate cause of a slice is a contact between club and ball while the face of the club is directed to the right of the line upon which the club is moving. These conditions may be met when the club head is moving precisely along the line of intended flight but when it is facing to the right of that line, or when the face is square to the line and the club head is moving across it toward the player’s left. Unless the grip of the left hand has been relaxed enough to allow the club to turn in the fingers, the first set of conditions is rarely ever encountered. In correcting a tendency toward slicing, the problem is almost always to correct the direction of motion of the club head.

  Instead of making this correction, the attempt to whip the club head in first only leads to more difficulty. The effort to hold everything back to allow the club head to get in front prevents the completion of the forward shift of the hips, and assures that the stroke must cross the line of play from the outside, precisely the thing sought to be avoided.

  The better idea is to concentrate upon holding the swing behind the line of flight passing through the ball. It is possible to groove a swing that hits down from the top, but not one that moves the club head outward.

  When the weight stays back on the right foot, and the forward shift is not completed, the stroke, as I have said, must come from the outside in. The result of such a stroke depends upon what the hands do to the face of the club. If the right hand rolls over the left before the ball is struck, the result must be a badly hooked or smothered shot; if not, a curving slice, whether or not the ball finishes in the fairway.

  In a sound golf stroke, the back of the left hand is visible at the instant of impact to an observer standing in front of the player. It is important that this hand should drive straight through the impact position in the effort to direct the head of the club precisely along the line of play. The turning action, which begins to take place an appreciable space after contact, does so then because the player’s muscles relax after the effort of hitting, and because his swing has then reached the limit of motion it can accommodate along the line of flight.

  3 CURING THE SLICE

  The sliced shot, apart from its directional error, is always very weak, and the person who finds himself always cutting across the ball appears to be about as helpless as a golfer can be. To try to help such a person, I am jotting down a few points that may help him recognize and correct his troubles.

  First, let him examine his backswing to see if he turns his hips as far away from the ball as he might do with comfort. The idea here should be to make the swing come well around so that there will be a possibility of staying always well within the projected line of flight; a restricted hip turn in the backswing tends to force the club head into a more upright arc as it is moved by the arms and hands alone.

  The hips should begin to turn at the very beginning of the backswing, and every effort should be made to keep the right hand from lifting the club. At the top of the swing, the hands should be approximately above the right shoulder. If the player has swung around to this extent, at least he will have avoided a position that will force him to cut across the ball.

  But he still must look out for trouble; there are two mistakes likely to make their appearance at this point. One results from an improper handling of the weight of the body. The correct action from this point involves a forward turn or unwinding of the hips, starting the downswing, which clears the way for the right elbow to drop in close to the side, and thus to deliver the blow from behind the ball. If this movement is not made, and the weight of the body is held back on the right foot, the swing must be forced to the outside, and the club must cut across the ball.

  The other mistake, commonly made at the top of the swing, results when the right hand takes hold of the club in an effort to hit too quickly. Many players have the notion that they should start the club down by throwing it with the hands. Those who do this should throw the club completely away and start over, for this stroke has been spoiled beyond recall.

  Although it is proper to say that the path of the club head should be controlled by the left arm and side, soil it is important to know what the right hand and arm should be doing all this while, in order not to offer too much interference. The most difficult action for the beginner to understand is that of the right arm during the first part of the downstroke; and this action has a very immediate connection with his tendency to cut across the ball. The important features of this part of the swing occur to me somewhat as follows:

  First—That the right elbow at the top of the swing should not come up too far, the best position being one that leaves the upper part of the arm about parallel with the ground.

  Second—That the first movement of the right arm on the way down should return the right elbow to the side of the body; and

  Third—That the angle between the shaft of the club and the right forearm should not change during the first part of the downstroke; in other words, that the right wrist should not change its angle of cock until the downswing is well under way. This last assures that the right hand will not take command too soon.

  These are some of the things for the habitual slicer to keep in mind. Generally, he needs additional freedom in his swing; and particularly he should strive to get this freedom somewhere in the region around his waist and hips. He needs, above all else, an ample body turn in order to get himself into a position from which his arms will have a chance to function properly.

  4 THE MAGIC LINE

  One cannot help sympathizing with the poor fellow trying desperately to find some way of building up a sound swing when he finds himself submerged in a sea of “do’s” and “don’ts” with scarcely a chance of finding his way out; there can be no question that the chief reason golf is so mystifying to the beginner is the difficulty of expressing, in a few words, the simple, fundamental, necessities of form. There are numbers of players who devote enough thought, time, and hard practice to the game to make them reasonably good golfers if they might start out with an accurate conception of what they want to do; but in so many instances there is a confusion of ideas, making intelligent progress impossible.

  One cannot select one movement, or even one series of movements, and say that this, or these, is, or are, fundamental; if a basic principle is to be found, it must be broader than this; it must be an idea, rather than a prescribed procedure that can be charted upon a blackboard; it must be something for the player to accomplish with the club, rather than with his own body.

  I lay no claim of invention or discovery to the theory of hitting from the inside out. I don’t even know that I agree that such a manner of hitting is indispensable to good golf; but I do believe that the duffer seeking a fundamental conception to guide his practice, and his development, cannot do better than to resolve never to permit his club head to cross the projected line of flight back of the ball. Whether he will cross that line at or after impact depends entirely upon the kind of shot he wants to play.

  Almost every inferior player swings across the line of flight from the outside to the inside; he is either a hooker or slicer, depending upon whether the club face is open or closed at impact. One rarely finds a dub who stays at all times inside the magic line.

  Suppose we look at the problem in this way: There are two points in the swing to be watched, two places where a misdirected move may make a crossing of the magic line inevitable. One is at the moment when the club is started backward from the ball; the other occurs as the club is started downward from the top. If a man will practice starting upward and starting down with this in mind, I believe he can very soon learn to swing in a proper groove.

  In starting the club backward, there is one thing that may throw it outside. This is the right hand. If the player initiates the motion by breaking his wrists, almost inevitably his right hand and wrist will lift the club and carry it upward over his shoulders.

  A proper start of the backswing is made by rotating the entire body, by turning the hips and shoulders upon a pivot, at the sam
e time bending the left knee and lifting the left foot from the ground. I can think of no better way to make a start than by “taking off” from the left foot, by rolling the weight toward the inside of that foot. The arms may move slightly, but only a few inches across the body; the hands—moving straight backward—drag the club away from the ball along the line of flight, then turn toward the inside.

  This turning and swinging, following naturally, lead to a proper position at the top of the swing, with hands well back and the club pointing over the back of the neck to a point several yards to the right of the objective.

  This is the second critical point; at least two things can be done here to throw the club head beyond the line. To start with a pure turn of the body, without moving the hips forward, is fatal because such a motion pulls the hands forward, causing the club head to move toward the player’s rear; to swing first outward, then inward and across the ball, is then not only easy but inevitable. The same thing happens if the wrists are employed here to whip the club downward, as is so often advised.

  There are three things that must be done at the top to keep the club swinging inside the line of flight. They are: First, the hips must be shifted quickly toward the front along the line of play, ever so slightly, yet definitely; second, the right elbow must return to the side of the body; and third, the hands must be moved or dropped a few inches backward and downward, without straightening or starting to straighten the wrists. If this sort of start is made, the rest is easy.

  I do not believe that the direction of the blow at impact should actually be from the inside out unless the player desires to produce a draw or hook; to play a straight shot, the club should travel along the line of flight; but anything is better than playing always and helplessly across the ball from the outside. Sometimes, to produce a fade or slice, it must be done, but when the player cannot help doing it, he is in a discouraging predicament.

  5 “EDUCATING” THE SLICE OR HOOK

  In almost every group of golfers, in the habit of playing a lot together, there will be one with the reputation for getting a lot out of a poor game. Usually, the person so maligned, or complimented, whichever way you view it, will be an awkward-looking player who slices or hooks every shot, but who makes allowance for the error, and so manages to keep his ball in the fairway. No one will be foolish enough to consider him a golfer, but the very consistency with which he makes the same error sometimes enables him to return surprisingly low scores.

  I think it was Macdonald Smith who once said that he never tried to correct a tendency to hook or slice during a round. The man with the “educated” curve may take consolation from that, but in reality it should afford him none. It is not unusual for an expert player to find, on certain days, that he has more confidence in fading or drawing the ball into the flag than in playing it straight. On such occasions, as Mac Smith said, it is unwise to go contrary to this preference. But the dub actually hooks and slices; the bend he must allow for could not be described as a fade or draw.

  When Mac Smith played a shot like this, he knew how he did it and could tell when it was going to happen; to an uncanny degree, he could tell how much curve the ball would take. But the dub allows for the hook or slice only because he has always had it before; he does not know why he has had it, nor how to stop it; above all, he does not know how much he will get, or if he will get it at all.

  It happens often that the man who aims far to the left of the fairway, anticipating a decided slice, will bring off a hook of equal proportions. This is the one place in golf where the short player has a definite advantage—he will not have to come back so far.

  There have been a number of fine golfers who preferred to play every shot with a fade or draw. J. Douglas Edgar was one of them, and when he was in the mood, he could do wonders with a golf ball. I saw him return a 66 in the last round of the Canadian Open of 1919, and I think he played not one single straight shot in the entire round. He was bending everything in from the right or left, over fences and trees and anything else that happened to be handy. He appeared to pick out the worst trouble, hit his ball straight at it, and then turn it back into the fairway as if it were on a string.

  But even a man as capable as Edgar could not play consistently in this way; he had to be touched by some bit of inspiration; at other times, when he was not exactly right, he could score very badly.

  So the man who habitually allows for a hook or slice, instead of setting about to correct it, can never hope to do much with his golf. On days when he repeats the fault consistently, he may get along nicely, and really do better than he has any right to expect. But he has not enough control over his swing to enable him to consciously produce the curve; when he does happen to hit one straight, or bend it in the other direction, he will have a good day’s work getting back to the fairway where he intended to be playing.

  6 PULLING

  A pulled shot is one that flies straight, without noticeable curve to right or left, but is merely misdirected to the left of the intended line; a hook is understood to be a shot that may start on any line, but breaks or curves to the left. The alignment of the club face and the direction of its travel at the instant of impact is, of course, not the same in the two cases. A pull, that is, a shot flying on a straight line directed to the left of the objective, results when the club face is approximately square to its direction of motion but at impact is moving across the line of play from the outside in. A hook results when the club is facing to the left of the line upon which it is moving as it strikes the ball. As the contact between club and ball endures for only the tiniest fraction of a second, we do not need to look for extended lines or intervals of time.

  Usually a player who hits the ball well enough to score in the high seventies, and particularly one who drives well, might be suspected of exaggerating the inside-out idea, producing his hooked shot by hitting too much to the outside. But the fact that hooks are mixed in equally with pulled shots means that the fault cannot be this. The requirements for hooking can be met with the club traveling across the line of play from either side, or even precisely along that line, but a pull cannot result when the club is crossing from inside-out.

  The trouble comes from holding the weight a shade too long upon the right foot, a fault that throws the downswing out beyond its proper path, and results in hitting across the line of play toward the inside, or to the left of the objective. Obviously, the club face must have been completely reclosed by the time it meets the ball, resulting in a straight flight in the direction the club was traveling. When it closes a little more, the hook appears, and if the fault is exaggerated, there is a complete smother.

  I should recommend moving the weight at the beginning of the downswing a little more quickly from the right foot to the left, actually making the first movement in the unwinding of the hips a shift directly toward the objective. Here the right elbow, which has been drawn away from the side of the body in completing the upswing, should return to the ribs in order to keep the arc of the swing inside the line of play. Exert a strong pull from the left side and continue it straight through the ball. Hit the ball slightly downward and visualize a swing straight through toward the objective.

  7 HOOKING

  Whenever a man who is a fairly good swinger finds himself beset by a fit of hooking, the first suspicion is that he is hitting the ball on the upstroke; in other words, making contact after the club has passed the low point of its arc. Although hooking is definitely a fault of the better player, there is nothing that can make a capable golfer appear or feel more helpless; and in a great majority of cases, he will have to be told what he is doing.

  The dub is rarely guilty in this particular, because he has not yet learned to keep his swing inside the line of play. He swings the club back outside this line, and in most instances, cuts across the ball from the outside. He is most commonly a slicer, and when he errs on the other side, the result is usually a pull or bad smother. The shot that gets up into the air well enough, but curves shar
ply to the left, is the one that has been hit upward.

  The hook in this swing results directly from the failure of the left side of the body to carry on through the ball. The usual sequence begins with a bracing of the left leg that locks the left hip and stops its turn; the hip then obstructs the left arm, causing it to collapse in order to complete the swing. In extreme cases, the player may feel himself shoved back upon his right foot as he hits, so that he cannot help striking upward.

  The things to watch, obviously, are the left hip, the left arm, and the cock of the wrists. First, to be sure that the unwinding of the body is led by the left side and that the hips shall not stop their turn too soon; second, that the left arm does not quit, relax, or collapse before the club has passed a safe distance beyond the ball; and, third, that the effect of the wrist-cock is not lost by discharging it too early in the downstroke. A tee shot should not be knocked down when ultimate length is desired, but when it becomes a matter of correcting a destructive hook, it is best to try to hit the ball down in order to keep it in the fairway.

  Probably the most difficult thing for the player to believe is that easing off the swing aggravates, rather than corrects, this fault. As soon as we begin to take the thing more quietly, the hip turn begins to stop sooner and the left arm to collapse more completely. We then find ourselves desperately trying to steer the ball down the course. What we want to do instead is to hit hard, and by forcing the swing, to make the hips go around and the left arm to keep going.