Tips, Tips, & More Tips

Like the advice we receive to make and keep ourselves happy, golf tips are as numerous as they are fruitless. Indeed, some tips are just downright silly; for instance, one classic golf instructional book instructs the player simultaneously to think of himself in a barrel for his hip turn, while conceiving of his shoulder turning up and down. Another tip that I received suggests that the player conceive of the swing as fundamentally a pitching motion of the right hand. This tip helped my hook not one bit. Tips have been supplemented by a host of commercial gadgets such as hoops, rings, ropes and, most recently, shafts that break in two if the club is improperly taken back. Tips are golf’s common currency. “Slow back,” “head down,” and “down and through,” count among the games most common clichés. And, as in all things, there are a certain number of golfers who enjoy giving other players tips. One public links player I knew told every player he played with, “At the top of your backswing point the shaft of your club straight at the target.” It didn’t matter if he was advising a twelve-year old playing for the first time, or a seventy-year-old with severe arthritis. Advanced players manage their swing with such tips as, “straight back for a foot, then up”; “hesitate at the top”; “move a firm left wrist through to the target.” A hooker, who might hook for half-dozen reasons, including his body shape, will have a long inventory of tips: “get the weight back on a steady right knee”; “get the club back and up”; “start downswing with gentle move of the left hip toward the target and keep on going through”; “keep left knee bent”; “stay behind the ball.” Unfortunately, even the simplest tips mutate themselves in the course of a round. A tip that starts out being useful often ends up producing the most unwanted consequences. It becomes exaggerated, or, like so many of our medicines, mixes poorly with other tips. Such seemingly safe tips as staying down through the shot, or keeping the left foot planted on the downswing can result in stopping the player’s flow through the ball. Or a tip can produce a good thing for one part of the player’s gamesay, for instance, his drivingand worse things for other parts. Part of the genius of Nicklaus’s game has been explained by his ability to make slight adjustments in his swing during a round. Changing course conditions likewise change the tips that key the players’ games. For instance, strong winds, as a young Scottish professional explained to me, tend to make the hooker’s hook worse. Winds tend to make the player hunch over. Consequently, he flattens his plane and shortens his backswing, which leads the player to further abbreviate and flatten his swing, resulting in yet greater hooking. The seaside hooker’s tip then must be: “Don’t be afraid of the windstand up to it, and swing full into it.” Tips, however subtle, are insufficient even for a good player when his game turns sour. Even a few bad shots can make a player desperate for a saving tip. Like the addicted drinker’s need for his bottle, he needs a tip to survive the round. With each bad shot, the desperate player imposes upon himself a new order of instructions. His advice has the effect of making him a frightful mess of disjointed consciousness and erratic motion. He ceases to perceive the shot he must hit. He converses futilely with himself. He endeavors to make his swing into precisely what it cannot be: a matter of conscious command. The only hope of the desperate playerat least I have found this to be my only hope when I am desperateis the following advice: “Shut up the voices inside yourself as best you can. Put away all tips and directive ideas. Have a clearly defined target.” (Penick told his pupils “to take dead aim.”) Look at the back of the ball, and take your club back fully and slowly, which was something Jones advised all players to do, especially during the closing holes of any match, when pressure speeds up the swing. Finally, start down gently, and just trust in what happens. In the end, every player must surrender himself to the graces of his eye and swing. Over the course of time, the good player will necessarily work his way through many tips. He will discard some tips, incorporate others, and make variations and combinations of yet others. In the end, he will discover that no one tip will singularly assure his swing a sustaining grace. He will recognize that no one tip saves a swing or elevates a player beyond his game. Rather, he will use a variety of tips about fundamentals (grip, stance, backswing, and position at top) and shots (draws, fades, uphill and downhill lies, etc.) to inventory his swing on the practice range and to provide his swing some gentle guides for actual play. Beyond that, what he needs to play is a general attitude that strikes a balance between the enduring and mutable qualities of his swing. I remember one day as a boy, on a loop caddying for four of the club’s better but older players, how they openly argued about the secret of the game. Struggling with my own swing, I listened as earnestly as if I had been invited to the School of Athens. My favorite player of the loop, because he was the most friendly and generous of the four, argued that the essence of good golf was to hit through whenever possible, and to turn a slight draw whenever possible. His partner contended that to play well you must put your body in every shot, chips and putts included. The third contended that only when you see a shot, can you hit it. The fourth said that the essence of golf is, “Swing gracefully, play your shots one at a  time, and don’t be mean to yourself.” In retrospect, I consider their tips as good as any I was ever to hear. Nevertheless, no advice can precede the recognition that golf is a game to be played, not a thing to be possessed. By playing golf, the golfer agrees to develop skills (which can never be fully perfected) and to play in a domain where chance, luck, and grace have a place. The bad is always possible. Even though there are moments when the player knows with uncommon clarity and prescience that he will hit a good shot or sink a long putt, the outcomes of shots, rounds, matches, and tournaments are always far more in doubt than they are certain. Disaster itself lurks in a misthought shot, on any particular patch of ground, and in the gusting wind. However much the golfer practices or however long he has played, the swing remains a delicate and shifting mix of balance, coordination, sequence, and rhythm. It is like the most ethereal of elements. And if all this were not the case, golf would not be a game, and would be less the art and the play that it is. The golfer who wishes to delight in the game must play the game with a certain equanimity about its pleasures and pains. The golfer must arrive on the first tee with the good faith of intending to shoot well. But once out on the course, he can only do the best he can. He can only let his shots fly as they will. He cannot presume that grace will be with him. He cannot command his pleasures and ecstasies. Like the fruits of love and friendship, the goods of golf are not secured by will, nor are they free of pain.  “Golf is an awful game. ” Harry Vardon, from Henry Leach, The Happy Golfer “Golf is a humbling game.” George Low “Golf is the refined modern equivalent of the ancient barbarous Ordeal. ” Arnold Haultain, The Mystery of Golf