by Julie Ganz
Now time and experience have showed us all that we cannot be dogmatic about anything in golf except that the ball must be struck somehow, and least of all may we venture to dogmatise in the matter of putting, and we will only say now that the late Sir Walter has a heavy majority against him on this suggestion that in doing the short putts it is well to let the putter scrape along the grass when going forward to the ball. It seems a small matter (that little man child never thought of it, but I noticed he did not sclaff), yet a whole world of good and ill upon the links is bound up with it. We shall set this happy golfer as he was, and friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, against one of the great champions and one of the finest putters who have ever handled clubs, and that is Willie Park, the younger, who says, “One of the secrets of putting is to hit the ball, and the ball only—a sclaffy style of putting is fatal; and, with the object of making absolutely certain of avoiding it, rather aim to strike the globe just the least thing above the ground. The ball should be smartly tapped with the putter, the stroke being played entirely from the wrists; and it should be neither struck a slow, heavy blow, nor shoved, nor should it be jerked.”
Most golfers will be with Willie in this matter, and those who have not tried already that way of putting, the sole of the club being kept clear from the turf when the stroke is being made, might do so to their very likely advantage. It is a point that a player of limited experience might never think about, and I know many who have been converted from bad putters to good ones by it. Some of the leading players of the Hoylake school have long been addicted to a slight elaboration or variation of this method. As they bring the club on to the ball they lift it slightly so that at the moment of impact a peculiar running spin is given to the ball, one that is not quite the same thing as is imparted by merely topping it. The way appears to help the hole to gather the ball when it arrives, but it is a method that needs natural aptitude and much practice to make it quite safe in application. And then again, right away to the contrary, I have witnessed in recent weeks a way of putting by one or two of the best players in the country, which is new, and which they declare to be most effective when dealing with the small heavy balls that are now in vogue and which are so difficult to manage, especially on very keen greens. We have all heard of the push shot, generally done with cleeks and the more powerful irons—and many of us have tried to play it as Harry Vardon does, and the things that I have seen done and described as push shots by ordinary amateurs have been very dreadful. But, no matter; the idea of the push shot is to hit the ball a kind of downward glancing blow, the club coming to ground after impact, the result being that the ball starts off quickly and pulls up suddenly. The players to whom I have referred have applied this stroke to their putting, coming on to the ball above the centre and gently pushing the club through it, and in the circumstances I have indicated there can be no doubt they have succeeded. Balls being so tricky now, these matters are worth considering.
You would perceive how boldly dogmatic was the writer of the early classic on the question of stance. On that point there is just one more word to say. The tendency seems to be increasing in these days towards holding the feet closely together. It is a stance to which Harry Vardon, after all his putting troubles, has nearly settled down, and many of the best men on the green, Tom Ball for one, are given to it. But there is no law, no recommendation even, only the most timid suggestion to be made to any man in this matter. That way which suits him and gives him confidence is the best, and one may find men putting marvellously well when their stance and attitude seem to be so ungainly and difficult as to cause them pain.
* * * * *
The method of holding the club has, at least, as much to do with good putting as anything else, and in this matter one may almost dare to dogmatise. The majority of players hold their putters with the two hands close together but detached from each other, in much the same way as they hold their other clubs. All of them have heard of what they call the Vardon grip, or the overlapping grip, by which, when the club is held, the left thumb is brought into the palm of the right hand, and the little finger of that right hand is made generally to ride upon the first of the left hand. Many try this grip for their long shots, but few persist with it, as they become convinced either that their hands and fingers are not strong enough for it, or that before they could master the method they would need to suffer too much in loss of the game that they already possess. Therefore they renounce the overlapping grip entirely. But if they would try it in putting they would experience none of the difficulties with which they are troubled when applying it to their wooden club shots, no sort of force having to be given to the stroke, and almost from the first attempt they would enjoy an advantage. It is a matter of the most vital importance in putting that the two hands should not interfere with each other to the very slightest extent. One of them should have the general management of the putting, and the other, if detached from it, should do little save act in a very subordinate capacity as a steadying influence. Everybody is agreed upon that; it is absolute. But when we have the two hands separate, as with the ordinary grip, there is always a danger of the subordinate asserting itself too much, or at all events varying in the amount of work that it does. It cannot be avoided; it is inevitable. This, we may be sure, is the cause of much bad and uncertain putting.
Join the two hands together, as with the overlapping grip, and we have them working as one completely, and the risk of undue interference by the subordinate vanishes. This is the best hint on putting that all our counsellors have to give, and they one and all declare it will do more than anything else to raise a man to the high level of excellence of the innocent child. Sometimes we see men putting one-handed, and one may believe that for medium and short putts this way is more certain than the separate hands. Mr. Hilton once putted that way in the Amateur International match, and I have seen many other good putters do well with it. But it savours of freakishness, and, as a famous professional said to the distinguished player who adopted the method, “God did not give us two hands for one to be kept in a pocket while the putting was being done.” The simple truth is that the onehand way approximates very closely to the two-hand overlapping method. It is nearly the same thing, the same principle—all the work being done from one point. Upon thought, we often come to realise that what appear to be some of the most freakish methods of putting have the same fundamental principle at their base. Thus, take the case of Sherlock, who putts extremely well and consistently. He almost alone, among players of the game, holds his two hands wide apart on the handle of the putter, the left one uppermost, of course. This looks very strange, and at the first consideration it might seem that surely one hand will upset all the good work and reckoning that is done by the other. But the simple fact is that the left is so far away that it cannot interfere, and that is the secret of the quality of this method. When the left is dose up to the right we cannot prevent it from meddling; we are unconscious of it when it is doing so; but get it far away and we have it in subjection, and all that it does in Sherlock’s case is just to steady things up a little while the right hand does the business of the time.
Mr. Walter Travis, the most eminent American, than whose putting in the Amateur Championship he won at Sandwich nothing better has ever been seen since time and the game began, long since adopted a slight variation of this overlapping grip, specially for his putting, which, I think, has something to commend it. Instead of letting the little finger of the right hand rest on the forefinger of the left, he reverses the situation, and puts the forefinger of the left hand on the little one of the right, thus leaving the right hand in full possession of the grip, both thumbs being down the shaft. In the other way it is the left hand that has hold of the club with all its fingers, and it will now be remembered that while the left hand is the chief worker in driving and playing through the green, the right is the one that most frequently does the putting.
Having thus mentioned Mr. Travis, one can hardly refrain from quoting some of his ins
truction in this matter as he once conveyed it to me. “I believe,” said he, “that putting should always be done with one hand—with one hand actively at work, that is. The left should be used only for the purpose of swinging the club backwards preparatory to making the stroke. When it has done that its work is ended and the right hand should then be sole master of the situation, the left being merely kept in attachment to it for steadying purposes. When only one hand is thus employed the gain in accuracy is very great. Two hands at work on a short putt or a long one tend to distraction. When the stroke is being made the grip of the right hand should be firm, but not tight, and after the impact the clubhead should be allowed to pass clean through with an easy following stroke. The follow-through should indeed be as long as it is possible to make it comfortably, and, with this object in view, at the moment of touching the ball the grip of the fingers of the left hand should be considerably relaxed, so that the right hand may go on doing its work without interruption. Never hit or jerk the ball as so many players do. There is nothing that pays so well as the easy follow-through stroke.”
Yet we find that there is less than ever of that easy follow-through being done in these days, and putting may be no better for the fact, almost certainly is not. These are days when old maxims are being abandoned and new systems are being proclaimed season by season. Jack White, a splendid putter and a magnificent heretic, lately declared that it is time to get rid of what has been regarded as the most inviolable of maxims, “Never up, never in,” asserting that the determination to be past the hole in putting, if not in it, leads with these lively balls we now play with to far too many of them running out of holing distance on the other side. His counsel, therefore, is that the ball should be coaxed gently up to the hole with as much drag applied to it as can be. Then for years past it has been recommended that one of the best ways of managing the putting with these speedy balls is to have much loft on the putter, and so in that way do something to create the drag; but lately a change of opinion began to be made, and I am finding some of the best players using putters that are perfectly straight in the face, believing that by their agency they can putt more delicately and with a surer judgment of strength.
It is a little bewildering. Arnaud Massy, the French player who once won the Open Championship, and who is better at the putts of from six to ten or twelve feet than any man I know, says that he has come to believe that Nature has planted deep down in us a sixth sense, and it is that of putting. In the development of that sense lies the way to success. But after all such meditations as this, I go back to the remembrance of that wonderful little child who could never miss, and then from it all there emerges the only real secret of success in putting. The child has a quality which we elders do not enjoy, and never shall have it for any length of time. He knows not the hardness of the world. Having innocence and faith he looks trustingly upon it, and the old world and its four and a quarter inch hole is a little ashamed, perhaps. The child has Confidence.
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THE STORY: IF YOU DON’T MIND MY TELLING YOU
HOLWORTHY HALL
MR. Valentine Mott, scowling ferociously, made a fierce gesture toward his wife, five miles distant, and removed the hand which he had fitted over the transmitter as soon as the men in the nearest locker unit had begun to sing “How Dry I Am!” in close and execrable harmony. Mr. Mott leaned in utter impatience against the wall, and glowered mercilessly at his distant wife, and forthwith interrupted her in a voice freighted with glucose and saccharin.
“Well, I’m awfully sorry,” he said. “Yes, I know I promised to come back for lunch; I know all that. . . . I certainly did intend to come back, but . . . Well, you know how it is; I met this man, and he’s a good customer of ours and he wants me to play another round with him. I was just getting ready to change my clothes when he . . . Oh, I could, but I don’t like to offend a man; these big buyers are so touchy sometimes you wouldn’t hardly . . . Well, of course; but it’s the little personal attentions that count. It’s a real opportunity to get in solid with him. . . . Well, I don’t see exactly how I can get out of it now; he’s waiting for me at the first tee this minute. . . . I hope you don’t think I’m enjoying it; it’s a coldblooded business proposition; we’re not really going out for the golf; he just sort of wants to walk around for the exercise and talk business between shots. . . . Well, I would bring him home, but he wants the exercise. . . . Oh, absolutely! Why, I’ll take you anywhere you say; I hadn’t planned anything for to-morrow. . . . Not tonight, dear; I can’t go out anywhere to-night. . . . Yes, to-morrow, and any night next week, too. . . . I certainly don’t! . . . Well, I didn’t even expect to play this afternoon, and to-morrow I’ll drive you anywhere you . . . Oh, it might easily mean a thousand dollars to me. . . . Yes, a thousand. . . . Just as soon as we finish. . . . Oh, no, I wouldn’t do that! The greens committee doesn’t like to have women on the course on Saturdays. I’ll start home the minute we finish. . . . All right; I’m just as sorry as you are. Goodbye!”
Mr. Mott hung up the receiver, exhaled in an abandon of relief, and smartly accosted a cadaverous friend, who happened to be passing through the locker room.
“Oh, Smithson! Made up yet for the afternoon?” Smithson paused, and shook his head disconsolately.
“I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go home, Val. Where’s the crowd you had this morning?”
“They had to go home, too,” said Mr. Mott, implying unutterable weakness on the part of the henpecked miscreants. “I’m going to play eighteen more.”
How in thunder do you do it?” asked the cadaverous one in frank envy and injured righteousness. “If I ever managed to get in thirty-six holes just once—”
Mr. Mott waved the hand which had recently done duty as a silencer.
“Easiest thing in the world. Mrs. Mott wouldn’t any more think of spoiling my Saturdays than—well, she just wouldn’t think of it. She knows I’m working like a dog all the week; a man’s got to have some recreation.”
“That’s so; but I can’t ever seem to get it over. Well, how were you shooting?”
“Pretty fair—for me.” Mr. Mott nodded, moved off in the direction of the grill, and halted on the outskirts of a loquacious group which was actively engaged in filing demurrers and replications. “Everybody made up?” he inquired genially. With discouraging unanimity they answered in the affirmative; and in the same breath they asked him how he was traveling.
“Not bad—that is, for me,” said Mr. Mott. He hailed a lone wayfarer who was hurrying along the aisle. “Anybody looking for an extra man?”
“Sorry! Say, Val, there’s a special competition on for the afternoon; heard about it?”
“No,” said Mr. Mott, alert. “What is it?”
“Straight medal-play, handicap. Special prize put up by one of the newcomers. Wasn’t on the regular program.”
“Is that so? I’ll have to see about it. Well, how’re you hitting ’em?”
“Vile!” The lone man took up his march in the direction of the attendant’s room, and Mr. Mott shook his head in profound sympathy, and went on to the bulletin-board, where he delayed for a moment to inspect the current handicap-list. As he stood there, sniffing contemptuously at his own modest rating, a trio of late arrivals burst through the side door, and bore down upon him, laughing and talking and forecasting the future with that incorrigible golfing optimism which is Phoenix-born everyday out of the black ashes of yesterday’s sodden facts. Mr. Mott knew all three, and he hailed them cheerfully.
“Hello! Looking for a fourth man?”
“No; somebody’s waiting for us. No competition this afternoon, is there?”
“Of course there is! Special prize for straight medal-play,” said Mr. Mott. “Don’t you fellows ever read the announcements?”
“Is that so? That’s fine! Thought there wasn’t anything doing! Well, how were you going this morning?”
“Oh, pretty fair—for me, of course.”
The trio hurri
ed away, and Mr. Mott, lingering only to make sure that the tabular results of the competition for the treasurer’s cup still remained on the board,—he hadn’t been put out until the semifinals, and liked to see his name in the bracket,—strolled into the grill, and cast about him for companionship.
The low-studded room, as Mr. Mott entered, echoed the mad confusion of a political convention crossed with a dairy restaurant. Crockery clattered against wooden surfaces, plated silver clattered against crockery, tumblers clinked to tumblers, and hobnails grated on the red-tiled floor. Men in knickerbockers and men in flannels huddled close to the round tables and bawled statistics at one another; men in street clothes dragged rattling caddy-bags through from the office; men flushed and perspiring stamped in from the eighteenth green, and clamored loudly at the bar. Disheveled waiters dodged aimlessly about in answer to the insistence of a dozen members simultaneously. Half a hundred voices swelled in extenuation, alibi, defense; half a hundred voices rang clear in joyous prophecy. Drifting clouds of light-gray smoke clung like a canopy to the ceiling. The atmosphere was surcharged with excitement, and Mr. Mott’s nostrils dilated as he scented it. The air quivered to the ungodly tumult, and Mr. Mott’s ear-drums vibrated as he heard it.
“Waiter! Hang that waiter! Here, you! I—”
“I had a putt for a forty-seven coming in; without that nine on the tenth I’d have had a putt for a forty-one—”