The Golf Swing According to Percy (Part 3)

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Now I consider that our golf is liable to go wrong if we lose sight of any of these essentials.

There are of course innumerable incidentals that could be added that are important enough to have a considerable influence on one's game, but I will go so far as to say that if you have these six essentials well embedded in your system and if you have developed some conscious control of your swing by getting the feel of the right movements—your game will rarely or never desert you.

Of course the comfortable, reliable, right feel is not a thing that comes all at once. For instance, it takes years—though not if your teacher teaches by feel—to feel nicely set and comfortable before the ball; weight between the feet, perfectly free and active and yet firmly planted.

Then the waggle. About the waggle a whole book could be written. Every movement we make when we waggle is a miniature of the swing we intend to make. The club head moves in response to the body and the body opposes the club head. It is a flow and counter flow of forces with no static period, no check.

There is no check anywhere in a good swing. There is no such thing as the "dead top" of a swing—there are four points each one of which might be so considered if it were not for the other three! They are:

1. When the pivot (feet to shoulders) has reached its top, the arms are still going up.
2. When the arms have reached their top, the body is on its day down.
3. When the arms begin to come down, the wrists have still to break back, and
4. When the wrists break.

Now these four points together make up the top of the swing, and I was talking about the waggle—which is the bottom of an imaginary swing!

But do not think I was digressing. I was not, the two are linked together. And why? Because unless you feel the whole of the swing in your waggle, your waggle is failing in its purpose.

The whole meaning and purpose of the waggle is that you shall first feel your swing rightly so that you may then make it rightly. I remember watching Sandy Herd makes his first Cine pictures.

In order not to waste film he tried to do without his customary fourteen waggles and in consequence he could not hit the ball. He could not make his shot because he had not felt it.

They got over the difficulty eventually by letting him have his full fourteen waggles but only starting the camera at about number ten!

There is of course a great deal more to be said about the swing than I have said in this chapter, which is intended simply as an outline of the fundamentals as I see them. Much of the detail will be dealt with in later chapters.

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