50 years of golfing wisdom

• Swing your left arm directly back from the ball, allowing it to move progressively upward and backward –i.e., to the inside of the target line –as a natural response to the rotation of your shoulders around the axis of your spine. Can the golf swing really be that simple?

• Don’t lift up; wind up. Start the backswing with the right shoulder getting out of the way. Point the clubhead at the target in the backswing. This, incidentally, is a quick way of getting a beginner to pivot, and to cock the wrists. As near as possible, keep your feet flat on the ground.

• Stay ‘sat down’ as you turn your shoulders.

• Distance is clubhead speed correctly applied.

• an unrushed, even-paced movement, in which the clubface never passes the hands until the ball has been sent on its way.

• In the pitch-shot backswing, the wrists should cock easily and remain cocked throughout the downswing –your left hand must ‘lead’ the clubface through impact.

• Since the followthrough is often curtailed on short shots, ‘inside to straight-through’ is a good mental picture for the club’s path on chip and pitch shots. If you are a confessed bad short-game player, I am sure that ‘seeing’ the stroke this way will help you.

• The rules are simple. One penalty stroke if your chip does not pitch on to the putting surface. And one club and a putter only. I nominate which club must be used. Each day I choose a different club.

• Here’s a useful pitching drill. Place a second ball roughly eight inches behind the object ball. To avoid contact with that second ball, the clubhead must travel into impact on a descending angle of attack. If you combine that with a slightly open clubface and keep the body moving, thus avoiding independent hand and wrist action, you’ll learn to hit wonderful soft-landing pitch shots.

• Unwinding while clinging, instead of swinging, forces your club to move outward before it can start downward; hence the out-to-in path and the resulting steepness in the angle of approach.

• To witness how freely the arms of a really fine golfer swing the club to the ball, stand facing him and watch the space between his hands and right shoulder during the downswing (refer once more to the illustration on page 63). You will hardly believe how fast it widens. Now watch that friend of yours with the larger handicap and the even larger slice. Because he spins his whole upper body mass into the shot before he swings his arms downward, the space opens much more slowly.

• My priorities are: (i) Temperament, (ii) Technique, and (iii) Physical strength.

• You should feel that as you start your downswing you collect together all the moving parts of your swing and that they arrive simultaneously at impact.

• 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.

• 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.

50 Years of Golfing Wisdom