Hitting the ball from in to out

I want to help you to feel how to swing from in-to-out, a thing of which many people realize the importance without being able to put it into practice.

Firstly what is this "in-to-out"? It is the feeling of swinging the club head not directly down the line of flight, but from inside this line as the ball is approached to outside the line in the follow through. The feeling that this is the path taken by the club head is essential to a good swing. Therefore the fact that scientific analysis can prove that at the impact the club head does actually follow the line of flight exactly can be ignored. You play golf by feeling, not by scientific analysis.
This feeling of in-to-out is intimately connected with that other feeling referred here.

The Feeling of In-to-Out
"Preparatory to the Swing," that of being set inwards and behind the ball. The long straight drive that covers the pin all the way is the result of a swing which you feel travels from in-to-out. This is what we all refer to as an in-to-out swing; a shot in which the club head does actually take this path (as distinct from being felt to take it) is only played by the first-class golfer when he wants to put pull on the ball and if you will think it out, that suggests why the in-to-out feeling is something that we teachers try to instil into every pupil.

The point being that, while an exaggerated in-to-out feel gives pull, the correct in-to-out feel gives straight-ness and no in-to-out feel (that is, the feeling that the club head goes along the line of flight) gives slice.

The advantage of the modern in-to-out swing is seen in both the flight and the run of the ball. Hit with the correct in-to-out feel, the ball is given the very minimum of backspin—consequently it "floats" through the air and, when it pitches, takes its natural spin forward, instead of kicking sideways as an undercut ball tends to do, as every lawn-tennis player knows.

To return to the subject of slice. The man who gave me my first job as a professional thirty-five years ago was the late H. L. Curtis—father of the present Pro at Queen's Park, Bournemouth. He told me many years later that he was doubtful about giving me the job, but having done so he started me off with a very sound piece of advice. "Now laddie," he said, "if you ever want to make good at this business, you had better find out how to teach people not to slice."

Those were the days before in-to-out! Consequently few players could get any draw on the ball, and mainly we just sliced our way around the course. Well, it took me a good twenty years to learn to correct that natural tendency in my own game, and then I had to learn to pass it on to my pupils. For make no mistake, everyone has to be taught; it does not come naturally. In some respects teaching golf is like fighting the Devil!

From the first time we see golf played to the first time we take a club in our hands, we have instinctively formed a false conception of the movement. We visualize the club head going up and over our shoulder and down onto the ball. You need only take any neophyte to see how he immediately takes the club up and down. His conviction that this is the correct movement is strengthened by the fact that he sees the ball soaring into the air and concludes that it must have been hit with an upward motion. So to make matters worse, he brings his hands into play also to assist the up-down-up movement—and is fully equipped for a career of scooping.
Now here are two devastatingly false impressions, and it is astonishing how long in many golfers' lives they remain.

We must not try to lift either the club head or the ball, and we shall never be good golfers until we can feel that we pull the club head along as we swing, along not up and down.
Let us put this in another way. If I were to ask you to:
(1) Drive a wedge under a door and
(2) Drive a nail into the floor
—you would visualize two entirely different directions of hammer-head travel.

Driving the wedge under the door is the direction we must feel at golf. The force must go along through the length of the wedge, along through the length of the ball.
With this in mind, it becomes clear that in swinging, the weight of the club head should be brought along from behind the ball, not from above it. This is what we call the wide swing, wide not high: a wide sweep that brings the club head in from behind the back of the ball.

Now another impression we get which impedes progress is that the club shaft goes up and above the right shoulder. In fact it does this not by arm or hand movement, but by the wrists being broken at the top of the swing. Consequently you must not try to get your club up by lifting it with your arms; you must feel at the top of the swing that your club and left arm are in a straight line and are waist high. Please ponder over this until you see its practical implications.