Golfing Health: 2nd Part.

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This is the 2nd part of the Golfing Health series. I have been out of action for over a week or so. Hence the delay in posting over the last week or so....

Every teacher has to keep continually in mind the fact that the natural thing for any golfer to do if he thinks first of hitting the ball to the hole rather than of making the shot correctly — is to swing the club head down the desired line of flight.

The urge to do this is so strong that a merely academic knowledge of where the club head ought to be felt to go cannot stand against it.

William James said that where there is a conflict between the Will and the Imagination, the Imagination always wins. So no Will to make a correct swing—unless reinforced by our conscious control- can resist, when imagination of the ball flying straight for the hole supervenes.

What usually happens is that before the back swing is completed, the player transfers his attention from the matter of making the correct swing to the matter of where he wants to hit the ball, i.e., somewhere at the top of his swing he switches from a correct in-to-out swing to one along the desired line of flight.

Consequently he comes down outside the ball.

Anyone who is not a pupil of mine will admit that "you came down outside" is their tutor's most frequent admonition.

And why do I say, "who is not a pupil of mine?" Well because I never just tell them that! It is quite useless to tell a pupil he has done wrong when acting instinctively unless you tell him why he did wrong and so enable him to avoid the fault in future. That I always do.

The player who comes down outside is almost invariably thinking of where he wants to put the ball, and the only effective way of overcoming his trouble is by getting him to concentrate on the swing that experience tells him will place it there. If this is done his conscious control— his feeling for the right movements, plus a steady intention to follow will inhibit his natural desire to take disastrous short cuts.

So Golf Bogey No. 1 can only be defeated by building up a swing which can be accepted by the mind as well as the muscles as a satisfactory means to the end desired, and then concentrating on the production of that swing.

With a properly felt swing, the swing becomes the aim and the matter of where the ball will fly is left (as it should be) to take care of itself.

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