Bobby Jones on Golf

by Robert Tyre Jones

  Books by Bobby Jones

  DOWN THE FAIRWAY (with O. B. Keeler)

  GOLF IS MY GAME

  BOBBY JONES ON GOLF

  Contents

  Foreword by Charles Price

  Introduction

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE ULTIMATE OBJECT • SOME MEMORABLE ADVICE • THE FEEL OF A GOLF CLUB • HOLDING THE CLUB • MAINTAINING THE “FEEL” • THE VALUE OF GOOD FORM • SWINGING THE CLUB HEAD • HOW FORM AFFECTS SWINGING.

  CHAPTER TWO

  EASE AND COMFORT • SHIFTING THE WEIGHT • PLACING THE FEET • PROPER POSTURE • POSITIONING THE BALL • THE PROCEDURE IN ADDRESSING THE BALL • VARIATIONS IN THE STANCES • STAYING IN MOTION • THE POSITION OF THE HEAD • “REACHING” FOR THE BALL • AN INSIDIOUS HABIT.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE PURPOSE OF THE BACKSWING • ORIGINATING THE BACKSWING • ARGUMENTS FOR A LONG BACKSWING • ROLL OF THE LEFT FOOT • COCKING THE WRISTS • THE POSITION AT THE TOP • SHIFTING THE WEIGHT.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  DEVELOPING A STYLE • THE MOST IMPORTANT MOVEMENT • AN IMPORTANT FAULT • USING THE BODY • HITTING DOWN ON THE BALL • INSIDE-OUT? • USING YOUR LEGS • LOOKING UP.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  COMMON SENSE AND SHORT SHOTS • MECHANICS OF THE PITCH • THE NATURE OF BACKSPIN • WHAT DISTINGUISHES THE CHIP • CHOOSING THE CLUB TO FIT THE SHOT • AN ESSENTIAL FOR SHORT SHOTS • THE PROPER PROCEDURE JUST OFF THE GREEN.

  CHAPTER SIX

  GETTING CONTROL • A LIGHT GRIP • LOOKING AT THE BALL • NEVER IMITATE • THE PENDULUM STROKE • METHOD • PUTTING PRACTICE • MAKING CONTACT • SHORT PUTTS • STROKE OR TAP? • APPROACH PUTTING • SPOTTING THE LINE • CHOOSING A PUTTER • ATTITUDE.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  FINDING THE ORTHODOX • STARTING A NEW SEASON • THE STRAIGHT LEFT ARM • USING THE GROUND • STAYING DOWN TO THE BALL • TIMING • DELAYING THE HIT • CLOSED FACE VS. OPEN FACE • HITTING FROM THE INSIDE.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  POWER • DRIVING FOR DISTANCE • HITTING HARD • FAIRWAY WOODS.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SLICING AND HOOKING • CAUSE AND EFFECT • CURING THE SLICE • THE MAGIC LINE • “EDUCATING” THE SLICE OR HOOK • PULLING • HOOKING • FADING AND DRAWING • SHANKING.

  CHAPTER TEN

  RECOVERY SHOTS • THE MENTAL SIDE OF BUNKERS • TECHNIQUES OUT OF SAND • OUT OF THE ROUGH • DOWNHILL AND UPHILL LIES • AGAINST THE WIND • PUSH SHOTS • RELIEVING TENSION • FOR LEFT-HANDERS • THE INFLUENCE OF GOLF COURSE DESIGN.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  GOLF AS RECREATION • HOW TO PRACTICE • GETTING THAT CERTAIN FEEL • THE VALUE OF SIMPLICITY • RESOURCEFULNESS AND JUDGMENT • SLOW PLAY • PRACTICE SWINGS • SCORING • THE IMPORTANCE OF PUTTING.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  TOURNAMENT PREPARATION • COMPETITIVE ATTITUDE • CONSISTENCY • EIGHTEEN-HOLE MATCHES.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CONCENTRATION • COORDINATING THE SWING • GAINING EFFICIENCY • CONFIDENCE • STAYING ALERT • ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  TAKING THE BREAKS IN STRIDE • PLAYING THE WIND • DIFFICULT CONDITIONS • EQUIPMENT • GOLF ARCHITECTURE.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CONCLUSION

  Foreword

  By Charles Price

  In the eight years preceding his retirement from formal competition at the almost laughable age of twenty-eight, Bobby Jones won 62 per cent of the national championships he entered in the two largest golfing nations there are, Great Britain and the United States. Of the thirteen titles he collected, four of them—the open and amateur championships of both these countries—were won within a single season, a feat that is known as the Grand Slam. No amateur or professional golfer before or since Jones has come close to compiling such a record, and nobody with any sense could imagine that anybody else ever will.

  It would be the most natural assumption in the world to think that during those eight years Bobby Jones did little other than play golf. In reality, Jones played less formal golf during his championship years than virtually all of the players he beat, and he beat everybody in the world worth beating. Excepting the three seasons when he journeyed either to Scotland or England for Walker Cup matches and, while there, the British championships, he spent most of the tournament season playing inconsequential matches with his father and an assortment of cronies at East Lake, his home club in Atlanta, where his interests and activities ranged far beyond matters of golf. Often, he would go for months without so much as picking up a club. Instead, he studied mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, got a degree in English literature at Harvard, dabbled in real estate, and then attended law school at Emory University. Midway through his second year, he took the state bar examinations, passed them, and so quit school to practice. As a result of these off-course activities, Jones averaged no more than three months a year playing in, and going to and from, tournaments and championships.

  It would also be only natural to assume, therefore, that Jones was purely and simply a genius at golf, that he was a man who could step onto a course at any given occasion and handle a club as though it were an obedient extension of his imagination. After all, Jones was the sort of golfer who, under extreme pressure, could and did score seven 3’s in a row, hole a putt of forty yards, break his own course records the day after he had set them. But he was also the sort of golfer who could come to the last three holes of a major tournament he was leading by the almost incredible margin of eighteen strokes and then limp home four over par. He could travel clear to California by train to play in an Amateur Championship he was almost certain to win and then lose in the first round to somebody the public had never heard of. He could break into tears from nervous exhaustion an hour after he had defeated the top professionals in the country. Bobby Jones was more of a human being than the headlines during his playing career would have led you to believe.

  Even among sportswriters Jones had been a singular hero in a decade when they had a lot to choose from: Ruth, Grange, Dempsey, Tilden, Sande, Weismuller, Paddock, and, yes, Hagen. He had flashing good looks, a personality that could charm the blossoms off a peach tree, and the thoughtful grace of a man twice his age. (Who else might have retired at twenty-eight, having set a record so improbable that nobody then could bring it into proper perspective?) But what really set Jones apart from all the other athletes of his day, and from all the other golfers before or since him, was not so much his educated intelligence, although that had a lot to do with it, nor his modesty, although that had something to do with it, nor his native talent, although without that we might not be privileged to be reading this book. No, what really set him apart was his insight into the game, gorgeous in its dimensions if you have waded through the treacle and sophisms of many of the golf books which have preceded this one, the authors of which, unlike Jones, had as much to do with the actual writing of them as King James did with writing the Holy Bible. Even in his tender twenties, he was the most thoroughly intellectual golfer since Harry Vardon, the Edwardian Englishman who practically invented modern golf, and he has been matched in this respect since by perhaps only the mature Ben Hogan.

  No other player so effectively reduced this fearfully complex game to such common sense. For years before Jones it had been said that if you never hit a putt as far as the distance of the hole it could not possibly drop into the hole; never up, never in. There are still some talented golfers who cannot see beyond the obviousness of the argument. But Jones did. “Of course,” he said, “we never know but that the ball which is on line and stops short would have holed out. But we do know that the ball that ran past did not hole out.” Hence, Jones always played his putts to “die” at the hole.

  By
one of the blessed accidents of golf’s long, long history, Jones had to keep a meticulous diary of his thoughts on the game during the years when his native talent and his insight seemed to have been at their peaks: 1927 through 1935. During those years, he was under contract to write a column two times a week for the Bell Syndicate. Added together, these columns equaled five average novels. As editor of this book, it was mainly my job to reduce these words to the eighty-odd thousand you now have in your hands, a job that often made me feel about as necessary as a photographer for Reader’s Digest. Almost any eighty-odd thousand words would have made a better book on golf than I have ever read before. Since all of these columns were unfailingly articulate, what I tried to save from each was the timeless. Such as:

  On learning: “Golf is the one game I know which becomes more and more difficult the longer one plays it.”

  On windy conditions: “A headwind should be regarded as part of the golf course—just so many yards added to the hole.”

  On thirty-six-hole matches: “I admit that eighteen holes constitute a ‘round’ of golf, but since this came about by accident rather than design, the fact furnishes no reason why eighteen holes should be a ‘test’ of golf.”

  On championship pressure: “One always feels that he is running from something without knowing exactly what nor where it is.”

  On timing: “Nobody ever swung a golf club too slowly.”

  When I was through with what I thought was a masterpiece, Jones then took the manuscript and, over a period of months, picked apart every chapter, every paragraph, every sentence, every phrase of his own writing until he was sure that thirty years had not dimmed what he had truly meant to say. Well, now I know another one of the many reasons why I have never won thirteen national championships.

  This is not meant to be a book to be read at one sitting—if you can help it. But however you read it, make sure you really read it. There is no more rewarding reading in the whole library of golf.

  C.P.

  Introduction

  This book is composed of a number of sections which cause it to be an assortment of general readings in golf. I hope it will be useful to golfers of all classes; in helping earnest students of the game to interpret better the professional instruction they may receive, as well as to prepare them for this instruction; to aid those who would like to play better golf, but have not the time for formal instruction; to serve as a sort of reference book to which one may turn for a few minutes’ reading either before or after a round. I want it to be a guide that will prove helpful before the fact, as well as a source of comfort and correction after a day when troubles have been encountered.

  Most of the conversation about the improvement in the play of golf centers on the tournament players with their marvelous scoring. Even though much of this can be accounted for by better implements and better golf course conditioning, much is also due to a more widespread understanding of the fundamentals of proper technique and the willingness of intelligent young men to devote themselves to the game.

  More impressive to me than this, however, is the vast number of really good players seen around country clubs and public courses. No longer, I think, does the average golfer play somewhere between 90 and 100.

  So far as I know, the first effort to bring first-class players and first-class instructional methods to the public was made by A. G. Spalding about 1935 with their traveling troupe and motion picture, Keystone of Golf. This was followed by golf clinics held at clubs and public courses by well-known players in the employ of various manufacturing companies. The Professional Golfers Association and the United States Golf Association have for years maintained a circulating library of golf films available to clubs and other interested groups. More recently, television has brought the best players of the world to the screens of anyone interested in watching. All these must have had a lasting influence in the broad dissemination of an understanding of the swing. Even the average golfer now is a sophisticated critic.

  No less than this average golfer, I have been able to keep abreast of the game and to maintain a familiarity with the methods of the top-rank players by means of the annual Masters Tournament and the television programs I have mentioned. I think I know most of the players of today about as well as I knew those with whom I played years ago. Thus I am able to claim that I have played with or observed closely every one of the outstanding players of this century, beginning with Harry Vardon and proceeding through a great number to the present-day leaders, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Arnold Palmer.

  The golf swing of which I have written has been called by some the “classic” swing; but in reality there is only one sequence of movements which is entirely proper in playing a golf shot. My close observation of the game for all these years has convinced me of this fact, and I have the additional conviction that no means will be found in the future of altering the effectiveness of this sequence, that is, within the limits imposed by physical peculiarities.

  It is not easy to teach golf either by personal instruction or by writing. In order to play well, the player must have the feel of the proper stroke. Being unable to view himself objectively, he has no other guide than the sensations produced by the action of his muscles. Yet the words in our language that we must use to describe feel are necessarily vague and susceptible to varying interpretations among different persons; so that no one can describe the feel of a muscular action with assurance that the description will be readily and inevitably understood by another. For this reason, I think it is necessary in all forms of golf instruction to repeat over and over descriptions of the same movements, all the while altering the modes of expression and terms of reference. Often the learner will grasp the teacher’s meaning when stated in one way when he has failed to understand it in many other forms.

  It is worse than useless to prescribe a rote by which the club is to be swung and the ball struck and to finish there. The pupil or prospective learner cannot possibly direct his swing through a complete sequence of correct positions as ordered by the teacher. The whole thing happens too fast to be subject to this degree of conscious control. Nevertheless, since the successful player must have a good understanding of his swing, he must be made aware of the results to be expected from all conceivable movements, right or wrong. Obviously, this procedure can result in almost endless discussions and speculations, but that is just the kind of game golf is.

  To me, golf is an inexhaustible subject. I cannot imagine that anyone might ever write every word that needs to be written about the golf swing.

  During the years 1927-1935, I wrote two columns each week for syndication to daily newspapers, in addition to pieces for The American Golfer and other publications. In 1927 O. B. Keeler and I together produced a book; in 1931 and 1932 I wrote the technical material and performed in eighteen one-reel motion pictures produced by Warner Brothers; and in 1935 I wrote the script for the motion picture mentioned before produced by Grantland Rice for A. G. Spalding. I estimate that in these activities I wrote at least a half million words about the game of golf.

  The substance of these writings was drawn from my experience as a player and from my observation of many playing companions. I make no claim that my attempts at instructional writing brought anything entirely new to the literature of the game nor that they were in any sense definitive. Yet nothing in my continuing observations of the great players has caused me to alter my convictions, and it does appear significant that even today I find coming back to me in spoken words, and from the printed page, phrases I wrote more than thirty years ago. I mention this not at all as a complaint, because I am pleased to have confirmation of my views from the expert players and writers of today. The important aspect, of course, is the proof thus offered that the mechanics of the effective golfing method are generally understood today to be the same as ever. Superficial conditions may have changed somewhat, but the fundamentals remain unaltered.

  The one apparently basic detail wherein the present-day professional star de
viates from the classic swing described by me is in the length of the backswing for the full shot. Today the player commonly holds the club quite firmly with his left hand, never easing his grip near the top of the swing, as I did, to smooth out the change of direction from up to down. Thus the modern backswing has become shorter and the return to the ball proportionately more effortful. Forceful striking from a shorter windup is possible only because the steel shaft has made the golf club a more responsive instrument. I still think the full backswing is better for the less skillful player, because it gives him more time to build up speed before meeting the ball.

  The steel shaft has yielded greater driving power, and the various wedges have helped in turning this to advantage. The sand wedge, first made truly popular by Gene Sarazen in 1932, soon caused a shot from a greenside bunker to be no more terrifying than a long approach putt, or a chip from the fringe. Soon came the pitching wedge, with which the tournament players developed a deadly accuracy. Now added driving power began to mean something when a par four of moderate length could be played with a drive and a wedge, and bunkers held no terrors.

  The incentive to go all-out for length was there and the players got it. But the abbreviated windup led to a greater violence in hitting, and since much of this increased effort had to come from the legs and hips, many of our more effective players often swing themselves entirely out of the stance from which they began the stroke. These players fail to achieve the pictures of grace and poise cherished by the old-timers, but it is difficult to blame them when they are facing courses well over seven thousand yards in length.

  One very selfish reason I had for publishing this book was to place between hard covers what I believe to be the more significant ideas about the playing of golf that I have expressed over the years. At the present time, these old writings are buried in newspaper morgues and other places where they are not likely ever again to see the light of day. Having managed to resurrect most of them, I decided to review these writings and to select those which I considered to be most worthy of revival.