Observing the ball

Now we know that for maximum effectiveness the highest speed attained by our club head (the dynamic center of our swing) must be some way past the ball-two feet past at least. So in one sense you must simply ignore the point in your swing where the ball sits on the tee. You must swing past it exactly as if it were not there. You must not get your eye frozen onto the ball, nor must you get your mind concerned with the problem of how far, how high, and how straight you are going to hit it.

The point I am making is that it is possible for us to be too conscious of the ball, for the ball to have too much of our attention. I suggested this to a pupil one day, and he retorted that in that case I should not give him a shining white ball to play with—a green or pink one would be less insistent. As a matter of fact he had some balls painted various colors and experimented with them with quite interesting results. But I had to point out that he was on the wrong track anyway. We use a white ball exactly because it is the easiest to see—and it is the degree of attention that is necessary to enable us to keep the eye on the ball that is the critical point.

Let me put it this way:
(a) You must not make an undue effort to keep your eye on the ball, but

(b) You must just keep your eye on the ball.

Here you see my difficulty again—the difficulty of finding a phrase that will accurately express a subtle shade of feeling. And however I express it, every reader will read and visualize it differently.

I remember one lady who came to me with her swing terribly constricted and tied up by looking too intently at the ball. She had no great physique, but she had patience and an analytical mind, and we soon had her sweeping the ball away in good style.
Knowing her to be an intelligent woman capable of expressing herself, and an interesting amateur painter, I asked her if she could explain the difference in her attitude to the ball since we had "united" her swing —and whether she saw it differently now. Her reply was worth pondering over.

"I cannot explain why," she said, "but now I never think of the ball. I am busy trying to feel how I should swing the club. Really I do not think I can tell you if I actually see the ball at all now . . . yes I do, but not in the old way. It used to look like craters in the moon, now it looks like a star in the Milky Way/'

Seeing my look of surprise she explained, "It used to be a huge, frightening, gray object, pitted with cavities; now it is a little star somewhere in the path of my wide sweeping swing."

Now that lady had found the joy of golf through getting an altered conception of the ball. For the joy of golf is to feel the ball snugly gathered up and thrown off the face of the club. In a sense no one can teach you that, you must find it for yourself—but some of us can certainly help you to find it, by giving you an understanding of what you are seeking.
The golf swing is governed by a chain of controls, and when the ball is introduced, it must not destroy, weaken, or dislocate any of them. Let us take four of the principal controls, purposely taken from points widely apart in the swing so as to represent the whole movement. Here they are:

1. Pivot.
2. Bring down the left heel early in the down swing.
3. Allow the wrists to break back slowly.
4. Continue the stroke on, through and around the left side.

These are just a selection of possible controls. They can be replaced by others or added to. But if a player will learn them thoroughly, by doing them slowly one after the other until they are linked up in his mind and muscles, he will become at least a decent golfer.

But if having got him this far, when he misses a shot I suddenly say to him, "You looked up!" the chances are that he will then look at the ball so intently, with such fixed purpose, that he will miss the next shot too! What he has to do to get things right is to try not to look up but without interfering with his basic controls. In fact, the "not looking up" must become a new link in the chain of controls. You do not weaken a chain by adding more links to it unless the new links are weak.

As I see it, good teaching must be based upon giving the pupil a few fundamental controls that will never need to be altered but that can be added to, packed round, and supported by other controls as the pupil's game develops. But the essentials are that the early controls shall never need to be altered and that other controls which are added later must fit in with them; never contradict them. I can assure you that one needs a very sound knowledge of golf (and an extensive one of human capacities and make-up) to teach that way.

Further, when something goes wrong and a pupil loses his game, it will not do to say what is wrong and so to emphasize this wrong point that it attains undue importance in the pupil's mind. If you do that he will so concentrate upon getting that one point right that he will throw everything else wrong.

For instance a pupil comes along for a lesson because he has gone off his game badly. I see he is ducking his right shoulder and bending his knees and showing all sorts of faults which flow from these two. Now in my experience it is no use at all pointing out these faults to him. What I normally do, if I know him well enough, is to ask him what time he went to bed the previous night—and to suggest that he brace himself up a bit or he may fall to pieces—also that it is impossible to teach golf to a fellow who is practically down on his knees.

You would be surprised at the number of specific faults which I have cured that way! In fact it hardly ever fails. When your game goes to bits, try bracing yourself up.

Sometimes of course one has to be more specific, but even then I rarely point out the obvious fault as being an obvious fault.

Suppose a pupil comes to me and I see that his swing is too vertical; he is picking up his club head too quickly and so breaking his wrists (and even bending his left arm) too early. Plenty of faults to point out, but I do not point them out. What I do point out is that he is losing width, and in a short time just keeping wide will straighten his arm and correct the other faults. To get to this stage, I say to him every now and again, "That's fine, keep wide, don't stiffen, don't hurry, just keep wide." Soon he will begin to feel his swing again, and in a little it will be back to normal or maybe better than normal.