How to improve your rhythm

We want rhythm, flowing movement, in our swing. But we have to dissect our swing before we can play it—just as a musician has to dissect a composition before he can even play the notes. Please note that he may learn to play the notes and nothing more; that is he may never get as far as the rhythm and tone in which all the delicate beauty and meaning of music are hidden. So also with our swings: we may have memorized the mechanics faultlessly and be able to perform them time after time, but, unless they can be blended by rhythm into a perfectly timed flowing whole, it will be a poor sort of soulless mechanical golf which we play.

For, rhythm is the soul of golf.

When we watch a really good golfer, we are impressed, of course, by the beauty of his swing, but perhaps even more by the sensation of prolonged effortless flight which his shots produce on us. They seem unaffected by the force of gravity, whereas our own poor efforts make for the earth at the earliest possible moment, which—as one of my pupils brightly suggested— may be why bad golfers are dubbed rabbits!

The good golfer can make the ball do two things which the bad or merely indifferent golfer cannot make it do.
(1) The good golfer can make the ball remain in the air a long time in the drive, or      run a long way in the putt.

(2) The good golfer can make the ball fly, or run, dead straight.

Now these two attributes of a good shot are due to a profound knowledge of the golf mechanics plus good timing.

Here are some more good tips to develop a good swing:
`Slow movement’ beat 'force' every time. One was in throwing the hammer, the other was in throwing a cricket ball. As a result of this experience, I began to play golf with as slow a swing as possible, getting the power from below the waist with the result that without any effort I became a very long driver even in the gutty period.

"After a lapse of some years owing to illness I came back to the game just as good as when I left off, after an hour or so swinging with my clubs. The slow swing looks lazy, but the power is there and it certainly does not come from the arms and hands. Providing your back swing goes up all in one piece and your timing is correct, one can send the ball a very long way without effort. Of that there is no mistake, I know it from experience."

There you have it!  "slow movement beat force every time'

The  perfect mechanics alone are not sufficient in golf. Let us try and examine the effect of accurate timing and see why it makes such a difference—the difference which we can all recognize between the almost perfectly timed shot and the perfectly timed one.

It hinges upon the fact that golf is a dead ball game. We have to set the ball in motion from a state of rest and this largely accounts for the extraordinary complexity and subtlety of the game. Good shots are easier to play in live ball games than they are in golf because the velocity at which the ball comes to us sets up a rebound, which together with the speed of the head of the implement we wield increases the speed of our return blow. The relationship of ball velocity, club velocity, and rebound are simplified.

Now we can trace the two elements of rebound and club head speed in the drive, the longest of golf shots. But now because the ball is "dead" their relationship is no longer simple. It is necessary to get the correct proportion of each of these elements into the stroke or the resultant shot will not be perfect. A slight overemphasis on either one or other of them completely changes the flight of the shot and such slight overemphasis in either direction is not a matter of golf mechanics but is due to a delicate inflection of timing.

Let us see how this arises. It is generally assumed that the faster we swing the club head through the ball, the longer the ball will be. This is true if, but only if, the maximum club head speed is attained just after we come into contact with the ball. Hence the fact that we often get exceptionally long shots when we are trying to hit easy ones. With the slower swing, the club head has still been accelerating when it made contact with the ball and so has been able to "stay longer with the ball" and so make use of the rebound.

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