Fatal flaw          Sunday duffer spin.
Awful results     Pull, slice, hook, smother, or shank.
Magic move      Lateral hip slide, with head back.
Check points     One knuckle of left hand visible, two of right hand; right arm touching side.

We have now reached the most important and critical area of golf—the first movement of the downswing. With it we uncover the most common and at the same time most devastating flaws.

The golf swing itself is probably the most difficult and certainly the most elusive action in all athletics. Beyond question it is the most frustrating, and nowhere more so than at this very point, where the club and the body make their first moves down toward the ball.

The peak of frustration is reached here because, no matter what has gone before it, this one move can make a greater difference in the result of the swing and the shot than any other.

We can have a perfect grip, start back from the ball properly, reach the top in faultless position—and then ruin it all by the next move we make. Not only can the swing be ruined by this move, it is ruined about 95 per cent of the time.

The Fatal Flaws

The deadly moves, the most fatal flaws, are these:

(1) Spinning the hips without moving the weight laterally, (2) with this spinning motion turning the right shoulder high toward the ball, and (3) trying to move the club head or slowing down the hands.

Figs. 26A, 26B, 26C. The fatal flaws of the downswing—the spin­ning of the hips without moving the weight, the turning of the right shoulder out high toward the ball, the lagging of the hands, and the early expenditure of the wrist cock. Result: a weak slap at the ball.

These moves bring quick disaster by causing two things. They make us hit too soon and they make us hit from the outside in. The first robs us of distance, the second of direc­tion—and what else do we want from a full shot?

Because we hit too soon, the drive that might have gone 220 yards goes only 190, and into that trap that juts out into the fairway.

Because we hit from the outside instead of from the inside, the ball is pulled, and, if the face of the club is not square, it will be hooked or sliced, or perhaps smothered or even shanked. The best we can hope for is that we will slice it only a little and that, after starting to the left, it will curve back into the fairway. Even if we are that lucky, we will know we have hit a weak and sloppy shot.

These are the actions and these are the shots that we see on every private course in the country, every public course, and in stall after stall of every driving range.

Figs. 27A, 27B, 27C. The magic moves. In A. notice how weight is moving to left as hips move laterally and don't spin. In B. observe how quickly right elbow returns to side, compared with the elbow in 26B. See how the right shoulder comes down: it is farther down in C than it is in 26C even though the hands have not moved as far. And notice how the wrist cock is retained. This player is coming down behind the ball; the player in Fig. 26 is coming out and over it. There is a world of difference.

It can truthfully be said that this is the natural way to hit a golf ball—with the Sunday duffer spin. It is also the principal reason that the scores of our millions of players remain so high. These actions in this one area of the swing produce bad shots in such astro­nomical volume that the short game, no matter how good it is, can't take up more than a little of the slack. We will say without fear of contradiction that a player who makes these moves and still gets around in 86 on a good day would cut ten strokes from his score if he made the right moves.

The Magic Moves

So what are the right moves, the magic moves? They are, simply: (1) Move the hips laterally to the left while (2) keep-ing the head back and (3) making no effort whatever To move the club.

We cannot emphasize too strongly that the movement of the hips must be lateral and not a turning motion. When the hips are moved laterally to the left from the top of the swing, they carry the weight (which has been mostly on the right leg) along. They move it toward the approximately equal distribution, at least, which we must have at impact.

That is the first reason we must move the hips laterally. The second reason is that, since we are twisted and wound up tightly at the top, any turning movement of our hips turns our shoulders too. It turns our right shoulder around high and toward the ball. Hence, when we bring the club down, we have to bring it from the outside in.

The hips will turn if they are moved laterally, but they are very liable not to move laterally if they are merely turned. You can prove this to yourself by standing up and moving your hips to the left as far as they  will go. As they near the limit of extension, they will turn and you cannot stop them. At the top of the swing, of course, the hips are turned some­what to the right, maybe 45 degrees, and as you move them laterally they will quickly begin to turn back to the left.

The trick is get them going to the left, laterally, before they turn too much. If you ask how much is too much, you become hopelessly involved. You might as well ask how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. You don't have to worry about that. Just he. sure you get, the hips going laterally and that you don't try to turn them.

A third reason for the lateral slide of the hips is that this is the movement which starts the club down toward the ball, by causing the shoulders to rock slightly as they turn. That movement of the hips—and nothing else—provides the first impetus for the downswing.

It might help you to visualize this action if you think of the spine as being the axis of the swing. Now think of the axis as being a T-square, with the shank as the spine and the crosspiece the shoulders. The end of the shank reaches down to the pelvis or hips.
Figs. 28A, 28B, 28C, 28D. You can picture to yourself the correlated actions of the hips and shoulders, with the bottom of the imaginary T-square being moved laterally by the hips. This causes the cross-piece of the square (the shoulders) to tip somewhat and bring the hands down inside instead of outside.

As we address the ball On the backswing the hips move slightly to the right, causing the crosspiece to tilt slightly to the left, as it turns, of course, with the turning shoulders. On the downswing (and here is the critical point), the low end of the shank (the hips) is moved sharply to the left. This causes an immediate and definite tilting of the crosspiece to the right—and that is what starts the shoulders, arms, and club moving down toward the ball. This will be true so long as the whole swinging system is twisted tight, so that a movement against the twist in any one part moves all the other parts. Make no mistake about it, the hips are what move the shoulders and club and start the downswing.

Our second injunction was to keep the head back. The head, at this stage, plays a vital role. You have often heard and read that the head is the anchor of the swing. Right here it is. If we keep the head back as we move the hips laterally, it keeps the upper part of our body from going with the hips and thus loosening or relaxing the tension we have been at such pains to build up with the backswing.

This tension that we had at the top of the swing must be kept as long as possible as the swing comes down to the ball. This is one of the chief factors that give power to the swing and speed to the club. If the head comes forward at this point, we lose the tension and get ourselves, in a manner of speaking, "over the ball" as we hit it.

If we keep the head back we do in truth stay back of the ball where we should be. That is what is meant by the advice to "stay back of the ball."

The head, as a matter of fact, has a strange little action of its own during the first movement of the downswing. Con­trary to the old principle that the head must be kept still at all costs, it moves. Pictures of our best modern golfers show that the head not only stays back but that it drops somewhat and, with most, even moves backward a couple of inches.

Almost sacrilegious, this seems. Yet there is a logical reason for it. As the hips move as far as they can to the left, and turn when they can move laterally no farther, and as the shoulders tilt, elevating the left and depressing the right, the foody bows out toward the target. If the head doesn't go forward with the body, it has to come down—unless we sud­denly grow a few inches during the downswing. An archer's bow may be used as an example of what we mean. The bow may measure five feet from tip to tip before it is strung. When it is strung it curves outward and the distance from tip to tip is less than five feet. When the archer draws it to shoot an arrow, the tip-to-tip distance is still less. When a golfer hits the ball as he should hit it, his body takes the place of the bow: It curves out toward, the target, and the distance from head to feet is less than when he stands up to the ball.

Another reason the head drops slightly as the ball is hit is that most of the better players develop a rather definite knee bend as they come into the hitting area. They make it a prac­tice to keep both knees bent all through the swing, as they should be, and when they bring the club down to the ball with great speed, the centrifugal force exerted by the flying club head seems almost to pull them down just slightly and hence bend their knees ever so little more.

Our third injunction in this first move from the top was, Make no effort to move the club.

The club, of course, will move. It will be moved by the shoulders. What we mean is that no effort should be made with the wrists, hands, or arms to make the club move. That is the important point. If we could turn the arms, hands, and wrists into wood for a fraction of a second as the downswing begins, it would be perfect. Then they and the club would be "frozen" into one solid unit and they would all start down together in one piece, motivated by the rocking, turning shoulders. Then if, with some electronic impulse, we could switch them back to life again as the hands got down to about the hip position, we would have the perfect movement.

The whole downward action is initiated by the lateral movement of the hips to the left. Since at the top we are in a tightly coiled position, this hip action causes the shoulders to rock to the right and turn. The rocking action, with the left shoulder coming up and the right going down, is what moves the arms and the club. If the right shoulder comes down (rocks slightly) as it begins to turn, it brings the upper right arm against the right side and the swing starts down on an inside line. It is when the shoulders turn, throwing the right shoulder high and out toward the ball, that the swing goes outside. Keeping the head back helps the slight rocking action which brings the right shoulder down.

One of the most important things in golf is making this .first movement from the top without letting the angle be- tween the shaft and the left arm open. The peculiar thing about it is that if the hip, shoulder, and hand actions are cor-rect, the angle will not open. If they are wrong, it will.

The instant the right shoulder starts to move out high to­ward the ball, the arm-shaft angle begins to open, even if no effort is made by the hands to swing the club.

Most of the time the angle is opened up because the hands are trying to do something with the club. But even without the hands doing anything the angle will still open if the wrong shoulder action is made.

The start down from the top can be visualized in several ways. You can think of it as the "wooden freeze" just men­tioned, a momentary period during which nothing happens except what is motivated by the hips.

You can also imagine a triangle, formed on two sides by the shaft of the club and the left arm, with the third side an imaginary line from the dub head to the point of the left shoulder. From the top this triangle must be tilted and brought down a ways without changing the length of the imaginary side. This we call the "eternal triangle," because it must be retained as long as possible. As the speed of the club head increases, the imaginary side of the triangle length­ens, of course, and the arm-shaft angle starts to open up. But the triangle should be kept constant as long as possible.

We have said several times that the arm-club angle should be held as long as possible. From our use of the words keep, hold, and retain, you may have gotten the idea that a con­scious physical effort must be made to hold this angle. This is not true. What we mean is, if the swing is right, the angle will automatically be preserved, until late in the downswing. So, when we say the angle must be held, we mean that you must work on attaining the correct hip, shoulder, and hand motion which will permit the wrists to remain cocked and the angle preserved. Do nothing, in any event, to get rid of the wrist cock.

The motion is essentially that of the hips. If you have read much about the technique of the swing, you have read that the left hip should lead the downswing.

Figs. 30A, 30B, 30C, 3QD. This sequence shows how the left hip and left side lead the hands and the club all the way down and through the bail. It also shows how the hips must go through all the way, to bring the weight far over to the left leg while the head and upper

You have read in this chapter that the first movement from the top is a lateral thrust of the hips to the left, eventually followed by an au­tomatic turning of the hips. This is true. But there is more than that (Fig. 30).

The hips must not only move to the left and turn, their  movement must be so closely tied to the left arm that it pulls. the arm and the club down and whips them through the ball.

There must be a definite, conscious feeling that this is hap-ening. It is the single most important movement that a good golfer makes. The effect is shown in Photo C.

This is not to be confused with the mistaken advice to start down with a pull of the left arm.

part of the body stay back. Finally, it reveals how the hips turn toward the target as they reach the extension of their lateral movement. Are your hips ever in this position when you hit the ball?

What happens, actually, is that the left arm itself is being pulled by the hips. The arm is merely the connecting rod between the hips and the club.

When the hips exert this pulling action, they cause the shoulders and the left arm to revolve so fast around the axis of the upper spine that the hands have little or no time to manipulate or do anything whatever with the club except hang onto it.

If there is one single secret to the golf swings this is it.

Moving the hips in this fashion would seem a simple thing to do. It is easy to say and easy to understand. Yet nearly all of the vast army of golfers fail to do it. Millions have read it and heard it and seen pictures of it, but just as many mil­lions keep right on starting down with their hands, or pulling with their arms, or stopping the hips after they start them, forgetting to move them all the way through.

They fail for two reasons. The first is that this is a big movement and they are afraid to make it. The second is that, preoccupied with what they think they must make the club head do, they completely forget the fundamental hip action and let it die.

The tight connection between the hips and the club, and the consequent pull the club gets from the hip action, is the single greatest source of power in the golf swing. The big muscles of the upper legs and of the torso are giving the club a flying start before the hands do anything.

To visualize what happens it may be helpful to use a me­chanical image. Think of a golfer at the top of his backswing. Now imagine a rope, running from the point of his left hip up his left side to his shoulder and then out through his left arm to his left hand. This rope is pulled tight at the top of the swing. As the hips start the downswing by moving to the left and turning, they will pull shoulder, arm, and club with them—so long as the rope is tight.

The rope can be kept tight only if the hips move first and only if they keep moving and then turning, on past the ball. Otherwise the rope will slacken, the pull will stop, and the club never will gain the speed it should reach at the ball. The rope will slacken if, from the top, the shoulders or the hands move first, or if the hips stop moving before they are all the way through.

How do we know when to start the hip movement? We start it the instant we feel the backward momentum of the club start to pull against our hands at the top. This is a reflex action with most of us, but for those who want the moment pinpointed, there it is. And once you start to move the hips, keep them flying—all the way through until they turn toward the target. This action alone will cure a great number of golfing ills.

How It Feels

For you who have been hitting from the top and from the outside for years (and you are about 95 per cent of all golfers), these actions will feel strange indeed, and our prob­lem is how to describe the feeling you should have when you make them.

Words here become of even greater importance than they are customarily. So, since the same action feels different to different people, we will describe several feelings so that per­haps one of them may be recognized.

Once we were giving a lesson to a doctor who was one of the most persistent hitters-from-the-top, outside-in swingers, and hip-stoppers we ever have seen. Telling him to keep his head back, even holding it back for him, failed to give him the idea. Telling him to stay behind the ball had even less effect. Insisting he move his hips through brought no re­sponse. Other pros had told him to bring his hands straight down from the top, to bring the butt of the club straight down to the ground, to move his hands toward his right trousers pocket—all the standard gimmicks. He would do these things, in a sense, but he would always manage to turn his shoulders a little first, so when he brought his hands down he brought them down outside.

Finally we said to him: "How do you feel when you are at the top of the swing?"

"When I go there by myself I feel comfortable," he re­plied, "but when you put me there I am uncomfortable."

That was the clue.

"O.K.," we said. "Just go to the top a few times the way I want you to go, so that you are uncomfortable."

He did.

"Now," we said, "go up the same way, only stay uncom­fortable as you come down to the ball."

He followed instructions and drilled a 7 iron that was practically perfect—inside out with a late hit. You could see a light go on inside him. The idea of staying uncomfortable as he came down meant, to him, that he had to keep that uncomfortable body twist he had at the top, and the only way he could keep it was to keep his hips moving to the left past the ball. When he started his hips right from the top and kept them moving, he didn't have time to make the little shoulder turn toward the ball that he invariably made to be comfortable, and he didn't have time to do anything with the club head.

Another pupil, who got the idea quicker, said: "My whole idea now is to move my hips so far that I feel them pulling my left arm down toward the ball. When I get that feeling I know I will hit a good shot."

Still a third, an engineer, gave it an excellent expression when he said: "I have the feeling on that first move from the top, when I do nothing with my arms and hands, that I am storing up something—energy or momentum or power—that I am going to release farther down in the swing."

This is a wonderful feeling to have, because that is exactly what you are doing when this first move is made correctly. You are storing up energy that is going to explode at the ball.

What all this comes down to is two things. First, we coil ourselves up on the backswing to gain tension that is going to be released as late as possible on the downswing. Holding that tension is the "staying uncomfortable" feeling, the "stor­ing up" feeling. That is what gives us distance.

Second, as we move our hips laterally and keep our head back, but do nothing else, there is a complete absence of effort in our arms and hands. Then, if we have kept ourselves from uncoiling, the hands and club come down on the in­side. That, plus club-face position, gives us direction.

When we have made this first move from the top correctly, where does it bring us? It brings us to a position generally

Called the hitting area. It is not that, exactly. It is only one position in an infinite number that we pass through in the downswing. It is, roughly, the point in the downswing that we reach before the arm-shaft angle opens up much.. The move brings us down so that our hands are nearly opposite our right leg, our weight is about equally distributed but  moving toward our left leg, the body is beginning to bow out to the left, the right elbow is nestled against the hip bone, and the club is nearing a horizontal position.

The Check Points

Right here the check points appear. We can't see them in the actual swing, of course, but we can stop the swing now and then and take a look.

If the swing has been made correctly and if the hand-wrist position gained by the backward break has been held, then one knuckle of the left hand should be visible and two of the right, the club face should be at about a 45-degree angle with the ground, the right arm should be firm .against the, right side, and if the hips have gone through as they should, the player should be able to see the outside of his right leg from the hip to the foot.

Except for seeing the outside of the right leg, these check points are exactly the same as they were after the stationary wrist-break on the backswing.

Figs. 31 A, 3IB. To check your hand-wrist position, stop your down­swing at the so-called hitting position. You should see only one knuckle of the left hand and two knuckles of the right, as in A. If you see two or three knuckles of the left and only one of the right, as in B, you have lost the position gained by the backward break.

If two or more knuckles of the left hand can be seen, you have eased up on the wrist position and opened the club face. If the right arm is not firm against the side, you have turned your shoulders from the top and manipulated the club head. And if you can't see the outside of your right leg all the way down, you have not kept your head back.

So much for the magic moves from the top. We have seen what they are, how to make them, how they feel, where they bring us, and how to check on them. They probably strike you as strange, and there is no doubt they are elusive, but they are by no means impossible. All our good golfers make them with every shot they hit. Why is it, then, that these moves are so difficult for so many people to get?

Eternal Preoccupation with the Club Head

There are three main reasons. The first is that golfers, like other people, want to be comfortable and don't trust themselves to make a big move. The second is the advice, deep-rooted because it has been repeated for so long, to turn or spin the hips. The third is an overpowering impulse to make the club head move, to do something with it, right from the top. This we call the eternal preoccupation with the club head.

The first and second of these reasons have been thoroughly covered in this and earlier chapters, but the feeling that you have to make the club head do something needs elaboration. It stems, actually, from a complete misunderstanding of the swing, and there are two reasons for the misunderstanding.

The first thing people find hard to believe, apparently, is that a golf ball is driven straight by hitting it from the inside. The average player has the almost overpowering conviction that if he hits the ball from inside this line it will fly far out to the right. He cannot see how anything else can happen. He also knows that when he takes the club to the top of the backswing it is well inside this line. His first instinct, when he starts the club down, is to manipulate the head out onto the line or near it, so he can bring it down along the line and so knock the ball straight.

When the player does this the first movement he makes takes his hands and the club away from his body. The instant they move away they get outside the plane they must be in to hit from the inside.

Before we go further, let's look at the plane of the swing. It is extremely important. If we understand it, learning the right action will be easier.

From the top of the backswing to a point near the end of the follow-through, the head of the club describes what we can call, for convenience, a circle. It isn't a true circle but that isn't important. Suppose we liken this circle to the rim of a wheel. Then we cover the wheel with skin, let's say, so it's like the head of a drum—with a hole in the center for our head to stick through. We now have a flat circular surface, the plane.

During the swing this plane inclines or leans toward the player from 25 to 40 degrees, the exact amount depending on the length of the club used and on whether the player is an upright or a flat swinger. The bottom of the circular plane touches the line of flight (may cross it slightly) at the ball, then comes back inside and goes on up into the follow through (Fig. 32).
A                                                               B

Figs. 32A, 32B. The plane of the swing represented by a disk. When it is held so that it touches but does not cross the heavy black line in A, it is correct. The club head, following the rim of the disk, would ap­proach the ball from the inside—the inside-out swing. If the disk is twisted a little, as in B, the club head approaches the ball from the outside, the bad way.

If that plane is twisted just a little (see Photo D), the swing is thrown outside, and you can see how the club head, follow­ing the edge of this plane, now approaches the ball from outside the line instead of from inside.

This might make more of an impression if you manip­ulate the plane yourself. Take a flat dinner plate (preferably not the best china in the house), hold it at an inclination to a straight line on the table. Now twist the plate a little, as shown in Fig. 32B, and see how little alteration it takes to bring the swing to the ball from the outside.

It is just this "little bit" that we have to avoid when we swing a golf club. And when we start from the top to move the club out onto the line of flight with either our hands or our shoulders, we don't change this plane a little bit, we change it a great deal. The result is that we can't help but bring the club in from the outside when we hit.

In this respect it is well to know, too, that at the top a very slight move by the hands forward, or toward the line of flight as they start down, moves the head of the club a compara­tively great distance. A mere two inches by the hands moves the club head out a foot, throwing it outside. It is, as we say, already outside as it starts down. When you realize that this slight move of the hands is instinctive—you don't know you make it—then you can understand how hard a pro has to work to cure hitting from the outside.

The Insidious Hand Lag

A second reason for preoccupation with the club head, and this with most people is the chief reason, is the instinctive urge to get the club moving fast. The average player, know­ing he must get club head speed to hit the ball as far as he wants to hit it, thinks in terms of the head. It's normal that he should, but that is just another of golf's contradictions. The instant the player tries to move the club head he makes three ruinous actions. He turns his shoulders a little bit, which throws the club outside; he starts to open up the angle between the shaft and the left arm, breaking the eternal triangle; and he stops moving his hips.

Still another thing the average player often does—and this is the most insidious of all—is permit the club head to break the eternal triangle by failing to move his hands fast enough. It is easy to see that once the downswing is begun, the hands and the club must move at the same relative speeds or one will get ahead of the other. The simplest way to alter one of these speeds is to let the hands lag slightly as they come down. When they do that the club head, which is steadily gaining momentum, keeps right on moving, the angle between the shaft and the left arm begins to open, and the imaginary line of the eternal triangle begins to lengthen. You have, in effect, hit from the top and have done it without ever trying to flip the club head or indeed make it do any­thing. You have just, unconsciously, slowed your hand action a little bit. The triangle has been broken early and the power is gone from the swing.

The reason a great many players make this mistake—and it pursues them all through their golfing lives—is because they subconsciously fear that the club head will never catch up to their hands in time to hit the ball straight. They fear knocking it far out to the right with an open face. So, with­out ever being conscious of what they are doing, they make sure it will catch up by slowing down their hands, and they succeed, invariably.

This, without a doubt, is the chief reason a practice swing often looks so good and the swing when the ball is there is so bad. In the practice swing there is no fear that the club head won't catch up, so the boys clip the cigar butts and dandelion tops like the pros. They should remember that if the face of the club is square, it makes little difference how far the hands lead the club head at impact.

The attempt to move the club head faster also brings on the hand lag. When a player's efforts are bent on making the club head move, the very effort tends to slow down the hands. Once the hands get behind, they will never catch up; the eternal triangle, once broken open, can never be closed again.

Another peculiar effect of the hand lag is that it tends to prevent the movement of the hips, and the weight, from the right leg to the left. If you will take a few practice swings, deliberately slowing your hands through the first half of the downward arc, you will notice immediately that your weight doesn't flow over to your left side. And as long as you retard your hands, you can't move your weight over.

A pupil came to us recently who said he had been trying for years to move his hips to the left on the downswing but couldn't when the ball was in front of him. His friends had watched him and told him, correctly, that he had no trouble moving his hips on his practice swings. But, once he got a ball in front of him, he could not get those hips over no matter how hard he tried. He was, of course, flat-footed on every ball he hit.

His trouble was obvious after he had hit a few shots. He had the fear of so many that the club wouldn't catch up to his hands at impact, a fear that he would meet the ball with a wide-open face and that the ball would fly out at a wild and dangerous tangent to the right. So, to make certain this catastrophe would not occur, he was slowing down his hands. Once we got his hands moving at the proper speed, his weight moved too. When he found that the club head would catch up after all, his worst troubles were over. Very soon he began to hit the ball more solidly, longer, and with less expenditure of useless effort. When the lesson was over he said he felt ten years younger—and he acted it.

For anyone afflicted with the deadly hand lag there is an exercise that is a great help. We call it the arrested practice swing.

Take a No. 2 or No. 3 wood, tee up a ball, and address it. Now go to the top of the swing and start down at half speed, being sure the hands move with the shoulders and club in the one-piece unit and that the hips move out past the ball. But stop before the club reaches the ball. This swing will retain the wrist cock until the hands are almost opposite the ball.

Done at half speed or even less, the wrist cock can be held until the hands are actually past the ball while the club head is still about six inches or more short of contact.

Make this practice swing four or five times, interrupting it each time before the ball is hit. Speed it up a little but still keep control of the club so that it doesn't hit the ball.

On the next swing, speed it up a little more but don't stop it. Let it go through and hit the ball.

If you are a confirmed hand-lagger, the feeling you will get will be the strangest you have ever felt in golf. You will be amazed at where your hands and hips are, that they can be so far advanced, seemingly far in front of the club head at impact. But that is where they should be, where they have to be if you are to get the late hit and the timing that bring the distance the good players get.

Soon you will get the feeling of bringing the hands down in one piece with the shoulders and the club. You will get the feeling of the hands and the club moving together at their respective speeds through the first big area of the down­swing. You will feel that the hands are alive and active, but that they are moving themselves and are not trying to move anything else. Those feelings are among the most important in the entire golf swing.

It may help you to visualize the downswing as segments of three circles or rings, one within the other, all connected with each other and all turning. None of these is a true circle, of course, but for purposes of the image let's think they are.

The inner circle is the hips, and the hips move laterally as they turn.

The middle circle is the path taken by the hands as they come down from the top. The outer circle is the path taken by the club head as it comes down.

All three rings are started turning by the first movement of the hips. The club head, assuming a driver is used, starts about three and one-half feet behind the hands, owing to the angle of the wrist cock. If the hands are to maintain their three-and-a-half-foot lead, they must travel relatively as fast as the club head.

Fig. 33. The three-ring image. The rings are formed by hips, hands, club head. Drawing shows the lead the hands have on the club head at the top and how they must keep that lead as they start the down­swing, which is actuated by the hip movement. The shaded area outside the three hand positions is the area of greatest danger. It is here that the hands either try to throw the club head, or lag, waiting for it to catch up.

If they don't, the club head will begin to overtake them. In other words, the middle ring has to keep moving to keep pace with the outer ring. The instant it doesn't, the outer ring starts to gain on it, the angle of the wrist cock begins to open up, and the swing is ruined.

You may be prompted to ask at this point, how, if the hands must keep their lead, the head of the club eventually catches up (or almost catches up) with the hands at impact. This may be especially puzzling when you think that this happens when the swing is fast but that you can prevent it with the slower one you use in the arrested swing exercise. You are touching now on one of the great mysteries of golf. The answer is in the next chapter. It is enough to say here that it does and always will catch up, due to an immutable law of physics.

Hold the Wrist Position

One more action which must be observed, of course, as the downswing begins, is the retention of the wrist position. You will remember that we started the club back from the ball with an early backward wrist break. This brought us to the top with the right hand under the shaft, the left wrist in a straight line with the back of the left hand, and the face of the club square (at a 45-degree angle with the ground).

It. is of vital importance that this wrist position be kept. all through the downswing. This is what brings the face square at impact and gives us a, straight shot. If the position is lost, if the left wrist collapses and bends backward, the face opens and the shot is spoiled. So the position must be held, all the way through the ball.

You who have been accustomed for years to having an open face at the top will feel that you cannot possibly get the ball off the ground with this wrist position. Your feeling will be that the face will be so closed that it will simply bash the ball into the turf.

You are wrong. If the wrist position is held, you will bring the face square to the ball and the ball will fly straight. Many pictures of modern American pros, Palmer and Casper among them, show their club faces almost fully closed at the top. The face points almost straight up.

The reason it is possible to have this position and still hit the ball straight lies in the grip. With the old-fashioned grip, in which three or four knuckles of the left hand were visible at address, such a shut position would bring a bad hook or a smother. The two-knuckle grip will not.

Jimmy Demaret, three times Masters champion, has writ­ten: "It is too late to start cocking the wrists at the top of the backswing. The modern method is to cock them at the start of the backswing. The shut-face at the top of the swing (left hand in line with forearm, club face pointing sky­wards) is gaining in popularity and gives added distance."

There is a strong temptation, though, to relax the wrist and lose the position on the way down. You will not feel yourself lose it, either; it is such an easy, comfortable thing to release.

In this chapter you have learned how and why the fatal flaws develop on the first move down from the top and exactly what they are. You also have been reminded again of the terrible shots they cause. The reminder may have been painful but the gain in knowledge has been great. With it you should be able to replace the wrong moves and faulty positions with the right ones. When you do, you will cut strokes—many of them—from your score.

You have now been through the first three areas of the golf swing, the areas where the fatal flaws develop: the beginning of the backswing, the position at the top, and the first movement of the downswing. There remains only the final phase, the flashing move through the ball. This is intimately connected with the first movement of the down­swing, being, indeed, only a continuation of it. Yet it has elements which are distinctly its own, including a highly mysterious action. This will be dealt with next.

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