Rhythm and Grip

When using your mashie, you simply put the ball nearer your right foot (because of the shorter club) and again swing through the ball, thus taking it on the down swing.  Timing, then, is: (1) The gathering up of speed through the ball from correct mechanical movement, and (2) a correct conception of the location of the swing center. These two can only be blended into a whole which can be faithfully repeated time after time by our sense of rhythm.

If, as we stand on the tee, I tell you to hum over the first two bars of the Blue Danube and then the first two bars of the Sailor's Hornpipe, you will get the sense of two quite different rhythms. You will not find it difficult to recognize which is the rhythm of the slow, flowing swing—which it is that Mme Lacoste used when each spring we went out together to play a few shots to tune her swing up. She it was who told me that if she found herself swinging too quickly, this rhythm would put her right again immediately. Incidentally until your own rhythm is well established, it is liable to be affected by that of those you play with. One of the reasons why Mme Lacoste finds a few holes with me a good tuning-up process is; that my own swinging rhythm is very similar to her own.

Now we must go into the question of contact with the club through the hands.

My own grip is a variation of Vardon's, with only two knuckles of the left hand showing and three of the right hand. My left hand is not turned over the shaft and the right is very much on top. As my wrists are fully up as I address the ball, I feel as if I am pointing a revolver down at it and my trigger finger is waiting for the trigger pull. Obviously if you use a different grip, you will experience a somewhat different feel. Personally I find that the trigger finger of my right hand plays a great part in my rhythm. The right-hand power, which we feel (mainly in the trigger finger) as we come into contact with the ball, must be induced by resistance set up in the body, not by forward force set up by the right hand. For though the feel of golf may be largely right-handed, the power of golf is: centrifugal.

Next, we will never get effective rhythm into our swings unless we have a proper conception of that word "wait" or, as I have told you I now prefer, "delay."
I have told you that I dislike "wait" because it seems to imply stopping, and stopping breaks up the flow or rhythm of the swing. I used to wonder what I was to wait for and when and how it would catch me up. The club head perhaps? But what would it catch up?  the body? If so, if we stop the body at the ball and allow the hands to catch up, we make a direct hit at the ball which we know to be wrong.

So I analyzed it out to this conclusion: We begin the up swing all in a piece and naturally our leg and foot and hip movements are completed long before our wrists are fully broken back at the top, long before the club head begins its return journey. Since we must keep our feet, legs, and hips moving smoothly, they get far ahead of the club head. We actually encourage this gap by not clinging tight onto the club with our hands, but leaving our wrists flexible. What we are waiting for is the return power, the forward pull of the body that pulls the right hand and throws the club shaft back onto the trigger finger.

We must not intentionally pull with the right hand, we must wait for the body to pull it. We take up the feel of this pull mainly with our trigger finger; in a strong player the resistance may be so terrific as to burst the finger open. So we delay while all the time we are going forward. We are waiting in movement.
You will now see why I explained my grip to you in some detail. But the regulated succession of movements is the same in every good swing, the point of contact (in my case the trigger finger) being the varying factor. The detail of the grip is important only in that it must have a point of contact and resistance. This can be and often is in the left hand, but I personally much prefer my own grip which I have developed out of vast experience from the so-called Vardon grip. Perhaps I should add that although I have what might be termed a family affection for this grip—for was not the genial Harry a pupil of my father?—the reason why I adopted it is simply that it is the best suited to giving you the sense of connection between power and feel.

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