Golf on the Green (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1915. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER IV CAN PUTTING BE TAUGHT? The published opinions on putting of the greatest living golfers are so discouraging to the golfer, or the would-be golfer, that I have thought the following extract from "The Soul of Golf" of sufficient importance to reproduce. Therein I analyze the statements of the triumvirate and show how utterly wrong they are to dishearten people as they do. Putting is the most important part of golf, and the part that is most easily learned. It is therefore quite wrong to discourage people who desire to learn golf by creating bogeys about putting. PUTTING The great mystery to me, not about golf, but about the work of the greatest golfers, is the attitude which they all adopt with regard to putting. Now, putting may quite properly be said to be the foundation of golf. It is really the first thing which should be taught, but, as a matter of fact, it is generally left until the last. Practically all instructors start the player with the drive. It is beyond question that the drive is the most complex stroke in golf, and it is equally beyond question that the put is the simplest. There can be no shadow of doubt whatever that the only scientific method of instructing a person in the art of playing golf is one which is diametrically opposed to that adopted by practically all the leading players of the world. Instead of starting the beginner at the tee and taking him through his clubs in rotation to the putting-green, the proper order for sound tuition would be to start him six inches from the hole and to back him through his clubs to the tee. This is so absolutely beyond argument that I need not labour the point here, except in so far as with it is bound up the important question of attention--that is, of riveting one's eye and one's mind...