Fatal flaw                   Club-head obsession.
Awful results              Top, push, dead golf ball.
Magic moves             Hand-hit out of "eternal triangle," let­ting COAM take its course.
Check point                A good follow-through.

Once the swing gets down to the so-called hitting area correctly, the chance of its going wrong is very slight. That is because, as we have mentioned, the swing through the golf ball is only a continuation of the first movement of the downswing, the movement that brings us to the hitting area. By the same token a swing which reaches this area in the wrong position has no chance to get straightened out.

Yet, golf being the strange game that it is, there is still the possibility of the good swing going off the track at this late stage.

In both the good swing and the bad, though, when the flaws appear they appear for basically the same reason-trying to "help" the club head get to the golf ball.

They will appear in the good swing when the player loosens his left-hand grip slightly and collapses his left elbow. As the result of these actions there comes a peculiar body movement, a sort of heaving action, as though the player were trying, with the body, to help the swing or help hit the golf ball. It is a very strange contortion indeed. Women, especially, are given to it.

In this movement the loosening left-hand grip and the collapsing left elbow have the effect of bringing the club up sharply instead of letting it go down and through the golf ball as it should. The left elbow crooks and bends out to the left, toward the target. This suddenly shortens the radius of the swing, and since the straight left arm has been perform­ing the function of a constant radius all through the swing, there is nothing for the club to do but come up.

Fig. 34. The fatal flaw at the golf ball. Player is so obsessed with moving the club head that he has gotten it ahead of his hands. He has also loosened his grip, bent his left arm, and is "heaving" the club through. A good shot is impossible.

The horrible result is a badly topped shot. The club, coming up at impact, makes contact on or above the hori­zontal center line of the golf ball, the golf ball's "equator." How badly the shot is topped depends only on how much the club is brought up by the elbow action and the shortening of the radius. It is a dead certain way to bounce or dribble your shot into any brook, pond, or ditch that happens to be immediately in front of you.

If the swing happens to be from the inside, the loosening left hand and automatic strengthening of the right hand will cause the golf ball to be hit out to the right—a push. It may be a topped push or, if the club isn't brought up far enough to make it top the golf ball, just a push. There is usually trouble to the right on any shot, as every slicer knows, and it doesn't make any difference whether we slice the golf ball into that trouble or hit a straight golf ball into it. It still costs strokes.

A third possibility these flaws may lead to, if they are slight rather than pronounced, is a straight golf ball that doesn't go anywhere—a dead golf ball. This, of course, is caused by the loosening of the left-hand grip. The strong connection be­tween the motive force of the arm and the club that is being motivated is weakened. The connecting link (the hand) gives slightly at impact and force is lost.

We have played with club members who have made this very complaint: "I hit the golf ball square but it doesn't go anywhere. I must be getting weak."

They are not getting weak. George Bayer could get the same kind of a shot, relatively, if he loosened his grip as he came into the golf ball.

The Magic Moves

The magic moves for the good player, of course, are simply to keep his grip tight, hold the wrist position gained by the backward break, hit through with his hands, and let CQAM Jake its course. The first insures a strong, live connecting link between the arms and the club at impact. The second insures a square club face. The hard-swinging hands provide the speed. But COAM? What is COAM anyway?

COAM is the Conservation of Angular Momentum. In the golf swing it is the mysterious factor that makes the club head catch up to the hands, without any effort on the part of the player. Just a few more paragraphs and we will give you the full explanation.

Fig. 35. The magic move through the golf ball. The ideal impact position-weight over on left leg, head and upper body back, right shoulder coming down and through, left arm fully extended, back of left hand and palm of right moving toward the target. This is the result of all the good moves that have preceded.

For the poor or average player the same magic moves apply, but he must first learn to get himself into the position the good player is in as he reachers the hitting area. He will be in this position if he follows faithfully the instructions in the previous chapter—that is, if, as he starts down, he retains the hand and wrist position, slides his hips laterally to the left, permits no hand lag, and makes no effort to move the club. If he does these things he will keep unchanged the eternal triangle and he will be letting the body move the club. If he doesn't do these things he will never be in the right hitting position. There are just no two ways about it.

Let's take another look at the hitting position, the one the average player finds so difficult to reach (Fig. 36 and Photo A).

Fig. 36. That puzzling "hitting position." Here the player is coming down behind the golf ball perfectly. His hands have almost reached the golf ball, but his club head has a full quarter-circle to travel. How does it ever catch up?

The good player is moving most of his weight toward his left leg and his right heel has come up off the ground slightly. His body is beginning to bow out to the left, led by the hips. The upper part of his body, anchored by his head is still back, and his shoulders have not yet turned past the golf ball, though the left shoulder has risen and the right shoulder has dropped. His right arm is in close to his body. His hands are near his right leg but the club is still about horizontal and much of the wrist cock has been retained.

The good player here is coming down into a position behind the golf ball, so that he can hit it "out from under" and from the inside. He is not turning high and over the golf ball.

The most puzzling part of this picture is the position of the club, or of the hands and the club. The hands are so far down but the club still has so far to go, a full quarter-circle.

Pictures similar to this one have been printed by the thousands since the advent of high-speed photography. They are perfect for showing us how we should be at this late stage of the swing. But we believe also that they have caused more bad shots than any others ever printed.

Why? Because they have implanted—and if not implanted, strengthened—a terrible fear in the mind of the golfer. This is the fear that if he ever gets in this position he will never be able to make the club head catch up to his hands at the golf ball. Therefore, from this position he feels he would hit worse shots than he hits now, if indeed he were able to hit the golf ball at all. It looks, to him, impossible.

This is one of the fears that we dwelt on lightly in the preceding chapter—the fear that you will not be able to make the club head move fast enough. It is largely accountable for what we have termed the average golfer's eternal pre­occupation with the club head. He thinks of it as the tool that hits the golf ball, of course, and right from the top of the swing he starts to manipulate it to make it go faster. Or he retards his hands so the club head will catch up. Even though he knows he should not do these things, his sub­conscious takes command over his reason (as it always will), and he gets an action which has long been known as "hitting too soon," or "hitting from the top," or just plain "flipping."

The deep urge to do this is motivated not alone by the idea that he must make the club head catch up to his hands. Part of it stems from the mistaken idea that he must snap his wrists into the shot. We are not saying this snapping cannot be or isn't done by experts. We are saying that it isn't necessary for the average player. Even worse, it is sui­cidal. The average player, trying to do it, always gets the club head to the golf ball ahead of his hands.

The frightful result is shown vividly in Photo B. This fellow has succeeded in overcoming all possibility that his club head won't catch up with his hands. It has actually caught them already. It is from two to three feet farther along its orbit than it should be, in relation to his hands. Compare it with Photo A and notice (as soon as you recover from the shock) the differences not only in the club position but in the body, the head, the shoulders, the hips, legs, knees, and feet. The weight hasn't moved to the left as it should, the right foot is flat on the ground, the body shows no bowing-out tendency and the right shoulder is coming around high toward the golf ball. From this position nothing like the player's potential power is going into the shot. An inordinate part of it has been wasted in making sure the club head would catch up with his hands. A horrible example of what preoccupation with the club head leads to.

This is one of the greatest golf pictures the authors have ever seen for showing how not to swing the club. The best part of it, too, is that this is not a posed picture. The subject was hitting a drive during the course of a round and trying to carry a fairway trap about 170 yards from the tee. Funniest part of it is that he did carry it. All that proves, however, is how much farther he would have hit the golf ball (the trap never would have worried him) if he had had even the semblance of a good swing.

The instant you make the club head move faster than it normally is moved by the turning and rocking shoulders, the instant you make it go faster than the hands, the eternal triangle changes shape

Photo A. The correct hitting position that has puzzled golfers for so long: The hands are almost opposite the right leg. A few more inches will bring them directly opposite the golf ball, but the club head has a full quartercircle still to go. How does the club head catch up with the hands? The answer is COAM, the Conservation of Angular Momentum. Note the head back, shoulders rocking, right elbow tucked close in. The player, Joe Dante, is coming down behind the golf ball with the upper body, but the lower body is moving out to the left ahead of the golf ball. Hips, moving laterally, are starting to turn as left side gets out of the way, and right heel is rising.

Photo B. The wrong hitting position—and how wrong can you get? Com­pare the position point for point with position in Photo A. The hips are turning somewhat but are not moving laterally. Too much weight is on the right leg, leaving the right foot flat on the ground. The right elbow has not come in against the side. Worst of all, the player has lost all the wrist cock gained at the top of the swing. He has either thrown the club from the top or held back his hands to let the club head catch up. This it has done, although it is still nearly three feet from the golf ball.

Photo C. Impact. Notice how the hips have gone through and turned, and how much weight has been transferred to the left leg. The hips have led this swing all the way from the top, as they should. Note the distorted shape of the golf ball at impact. Player is Wes Ellis of the Mountain Ridge Country Club, former winner of the Canadian, Metropolitan, and Texas Open championships.

Photo D. The plane of swing in the inside-out swing (above) and the outside-in swing (below). Path of club is traced by electric light on toe of club head. Note position of body, weight on left leg, and head back for inside-out swing; weight on right leg, with shoulders and head turning, in outside-in swing. Player is James J. Dante.

Harold £. Edgerfon

Photo E. Conservation of Angular Momentum proved with multiflash photography. Notice how far the cuff on the player's left wrist travels from one flash to the next in area A, and how the cuff images draw closer together, overlapping, in area B (indicating a decline in speed of the hands), just before the club hits the golf ball. In area B momentum is feeding out of the arms and into the club, causing it to catch up to the hands as they move to a position opposite the golf ball. Player was one of the game's longest hitters, Jimmy Thomson.

Harold E. Edgerfon

Photo F. The same phenomenon revealed with an iron, the hands slow­ing down in area B as they near the golf ball, with consequent increase in club-head speed as momentum feeds from one to the other.

Photo G. Conservatic Angular Momentum operating in the swing of Dante's seven-year son, Ross. The youngster brings the club doing nicely, with the wrist well retained, in Nos. 6 he has reached hitting position. In hands are slowing slightly, though he does realize it, and then with momentum flows into it, is catching up 8 it has caught up dispatched the golf ball.

One side, the imaginary line be­tween the club head and the point of the left shoulder, begins to lengthen. When this happens early in the down­swing, you are lost. The triangle must be kept at the same size, almost down to the hitting area.

When this is done the angle between the left arm and the shaft of the club is retained until the last possible instant and we get what is known as the late hit, which is a sudden catching-up of the club head to the hands as the hands reach the golf ball.

The opposite of this is the early hit, in which the club catches up to the hands before the hands get near the golf ball.

In the late hit the triangle is retained through the early stages of the downswing and the player as we noted earlier, experiences the feeling of storing up energy to be released later at the golf ball. In the early hit he starts moving the club with his hands right away, or he lets his hands lag, and he has no such feeling.

The late hit produces, of course, just what the good player feels it will as he starts down: a high-speed, almost explosive, impact with the golf ball. The early hit yields only a soft, dying slap. The same amount of energy put into each will bring from 220 to 240 yards with the late hit as against 180 to 190 with the early hit, assuming a driver is used.

COAM—What It Is and What It Does

Why is this true? The answer directly involves the hard core of the swing—the physical principle called the Conservation of Angular Momentum, an understanding of which will work wonders for your game.

The golf swing, it should come as no surprise, is a prac­tical application of the science of physics. Physics is the science of the phenomena of inanimate matter involving no chemical change. More simply, it is the study of the strange and seemingly unaccountable things which happen to matter that isn't alive.

One branch of physics is mechanics. A subdivision of me­chanics deals with angular momentum, or the rotation of things around an axis.

When an object rotates around a fixed axis it rotates at a constant rate of speed (until friction or gravity slows it down) so long as the object stays at the same distance from the axis. If the object is brought closer in to the axis, it auto­matically speeds up; if it is moved farther out from the axis, it slows down.

Example: a man sits on a rotating stool, holding a weight in each hand. Let him extend his arms to the sides as far as he can, holding the weights at arm's length. Now let someone start him turning. While he is moving, let the man bring the weights in close to his chest. Immediately he will rotate on the stool much faster.

The reverse is also true. If the man starts rotating with the weights against his chest, he will slow himself down when he moves the weights out to arm's length.

A more familiar example is the figure skater executing a pirouette. As he draws his arms in he speeds up his rotation.

The scientist explains this by saying that, if the distribu­tion of mass with respect to the axis is changed, the rotational speeds change.

Remember that the mechanical principle is of the con­servation of angular momentum. In other words, the mo­mentum, once generated, remains in constant amount, re­gardless of how it is distributed. In the case of the man revolving on the stool the momentum is distributed back into the man as he brings the weights close to his chest.

The momentum will generally be distributed to the part of the system with the lesser mass, or to the part easiest to move. The stool, mounted on golf ball bearings, was the easiest thing to move in that classic example. But take the case of a man snapping a bullwhip. Here the momentum is distributed from the man's arm and hand and the heavy butt of the whip, into the steadily tapering lash to the light tip. The tip has the least mass and is the easiest thing for it to move. The tip travels so fast—about 840 miles per hour— that it breaks the sound barrier and thus causes the whip to "crack."

Fig. 37. The cracking of a bull whip. The tip moves so fast at the finish, due to the Conservation of Angular Momentum, that it breaks the sound barrier. The same principle causes the club head to catch up with the hands in the golf swing.

Now let's see how COAM applies to the golf swing.

The player and the club may be viewed as a mechanical system. The mass we are interested in consists of the player's shoulders, his arms, and the club. The axis of rotation is a line along the spine, midway between the shoulders.

As the backswing reaches the top, the extensible part of the mass (arms and club) is quite close to the axis. The folded right arm is very close and so is the club, the latter only a few inches distant at that point. The left arm is as close as it ever gets.

Then, when the hips make their lateral movement to the left, turning and tilting the shoulders sharply, the original momentum is supplied that starts the downswing. The down­swing, of course, is the rotational action in which we are interested.

Immediately the arms start down, and as they do they begin to move away from the axis.

In the early states of the downswing the original mo­mentum gives the arms and hands considerable speed. As the downswing proceeds, the arms, which are the chief mass, get farther and farther from the axis. The inexorable law of COAM begins to operate and the rotational speed of the arms slows down.

As they slow down—and this is the big point—the mo­mentum generated in the beginning must go somewhere else. It does. It feeds into the club.

This increases the speed of the club in the last stages of the downswing, and the club head whips through its last quarter-circle and catches up with the hands at the golf ball.

We repeat: The club head has to catch up with the hands, as a matter of mechanical law. It cannot do anything else.

Yes, we know. You don't believe it. You are jumping up with arguments and objections. Fine.

First, you say, this theory might be logical if we were dealing with an ideal, self-contained mechanical system. But we are not. We are dealing with flesh and blood, with bones, muscles, tendons, joints, and all the wonderfully complex human body. Cold mechanical principles just don't apply.

They don't? The application of mechanical principles has enabled men to jump higher, with and without a pole, to throw a hammer and a discus farther, and put the shot farther. Why should the golf swing be the great exception?

Figs. 38A, 38B, 38C, 38D. COAM at work. In A, it is generated in the shoulders, where the rotation begins around the axis of the upper spine. In B, it is coming down the arms. In C, it has reached the hands; as they slow down slightly, it feeds into the club. In D, it has reached the club head, giving it the final burst of speed at impact.

The axis is present, through the spinal column between the shoulders, and certainly the rotation is present. Why shouldn't the laws that govern rotation apply, even though the golfer is not the ideal mechanical system? They apply to the man on the stool. It is true that certain of the golfer's muscles do alter the action slightly, but not in the way you might expect. We will explain that later.

If you still think the strength of the hands must be used to bring the club head to the golf ball on time, try this experi­ment. Tee up a golf ball and swing at it with any club you choose. But instead of taking your regular grip, hold the club in only the thumb and second finger of each hand, and as far toward the tips of these digits as possible. Don't have any other fingers touching the club. You may not be able to take a full swing but you'll get the club back quite far. You will find that without any effort on your part (it's im­possible to apply any effort) the club head will catch up with the hands at impact. The golf ball will go off the tee, into the air, and straight, if the face is square. It won't go very far, because with that grip you can't swing hard, but it will be a shot. You can do the same thing by swinging with only one hand, either the right or the left. Do you still think you need strong hands and wrists to whip the club head through?

Continuing your objections, you will argue that the arms and hands do not slow down as they approach the golf ball, that instead they go faster.

The answer is that you think they do. Multiflash pho­tography proves that they slow down, in spite of your effort to speed them up. Study Photos E and F. There is less space between the hands down near the point of impact than there is when the hands are in what is designated area A. This means the hands have not moved as far between flashes near the impact point as they moved farther back. They are slowing down, despite the player's effort to make them go faster. As they slowed (because they were getting farther from the axis) the momentum was being fed into the club, and the club head, as the pictures show, was moving faster.

But you still demur. Why, you ask, should momentum feed from the arms into the heavy club? The club is also part of the mass and it, like the arms, is getting farther from the axis. The answer is that the club, although it feels heavy, is actually much the lighter part of the arm-club mass. The club will weigh thirteen to fourteen ounces. The arms of the average man will weigh ten to twelve pounds apiece. The club, then, represents only about 5 per cent of the complete mass. Remember the tip of the bullwhip.

If you don't think there is enough momentum being fed into the club to make it go so fast near the bottom of the swing, you can do a pretty good job of proving how much there is. Take a club, swing it to the top, and bring it down hard, but try to keep the maximum wrist break you had at. the top. Keep it all through the swing...Don't let the angle you had at the top ever open up. Try it. You'll find , that it is almost impossible. If, with great muscular strength, you succeed in partly holding that angle, your shoulders will be turned so violently that you will be thrown off balance-off your feet, even, if you swing hard enough.

The reason for this is that when you hold the angle closed, as it was at the top of the swing, you are not allowing much angular momentum to feed into the club, and since you are keeping it from the club, most of it goes into the shoulders.

Now do you believe us when we say that a great deal of momentum feeds into the club when you just let it go?

We think we hear you asking: If the slowing down of the arms causes momentum to flow into the club, why wouldn't it be better to just stop the hands, or try to, at the golf ball and the let the club head whip through, much as you snap a whip?

The answer is that you can, if you want to, and you won't get too bad a result. The late Abe Mitchell, a fine British professional, did something like that, and he was noted for his long driving. He didn't look good, because he had a peculiar, cramped, choked-off follow-through. Golf writers of the period referred to his influence as "the bane of British golf." What happened, apparently, was that his imitators tied themselves into knots trying to choke off their follow-through, without applying the whiplike lash that Mitchell unconsciously got. It was finally decided that only a man with hands as strong as Abe's could ever duplicate his swing, and the imitators gave up trying.

Actually, a deliberate slowing down of thearms and hands should not be attempted, for two reasons. The first is that it isn't necessary; enough momentum will feed into the club from the hands, and in plenty of time, without trying to force it. The second reason is that the movement of the hands toward and past the golf ball adds to the speed of the club head at impact. We'll go into this just a little later.

The weight of evidence presented in the foregoing pages should be enough to prove to you that the club will catch up to the hands from the provocative position shown in Fig. 36 and Photo A. That was the first big mystery to be solved.

The second is why the late hit is superior to the early hit, and the third is why hitting from the top so completely ruins the swing. These two have to be considered together, because the early hit is the direct result of hitting from the top and the late hit the consequence of not hitting from the top.

The explanation goes right back to COAM. Remember the principle, that a change in the distribution of the mass about the axis causes a change in rotational speeds. Now, at the top of the backswing we found that the mass (the club and the arms) was close to the axis. As we start the down­swing with the hip movement we should keep the angle of extreme wrist break that we had at the top. This means re­taining the angle between the left arm and the club shaft. If we do that we keep the club from moving away from the axis quickly. But if we immediately open up that angle we get some of the mass, even though it is a small amount, mov­ing away from the axis rapidly at the very outset and the whole rotation is retarded.

By the time we are halfway down, this retarded rotation, which was never very fast to begin with, has almost permitted the club head to catch up with the hands. When our hands reach the position in Photo B, the club has caught up to them and we get what is called the early hit. In reality it is the slow hit, because the hands never got moving fast enough to make it a fast hit.

Perhaps it will be clearer if you think of it in another way. Take a club and swing it back to the top without any wrist break whatever. It isn't easy, so do it slowly. Now try to swing it down fast, at your normal swinging speed. You'll find you can't do it, at your normal speed. You can't because you can't get it started as fast. And you can't get it started as fast because too much of the mass is too far away from the axis. It's like starting to turn a small wheel and a large wheel of the same mass. It takes more effort to get the big wheel started because the big wheel has most of its mass farther out from the axis.

The correct swing, retaining the wrist break, is like the small wheel. It's easy to get it started and the energy put into it produces a fast rotation. The poor swing, hitting too soon and opening the arm-shaft angle, is like the big wheel, hard to get started and never reaching much rotational speed.

Since the late hit is the fast rotation and the early hit is the slower one, the club head travels faster with the late hit and the golf ball goes farther.

How the Hands Help

This brings us to something else, the actual function of the hands. Up to now we have regarded them as nothing more than hinges or connecting links between the arms and the club. In a large sense that is true. We never should use the hands to forcibly straighten out the angle between the left arm and the club shaft. We have seen how conservation of momentum does this automatically. But the hands have their use, as does sheer muscular strength, as we shall see.

The original rotational system consists of arms and club swinging around a fixed axis midway between the golfer's shoulders. Now, as the downswing gets under way, the angle between the left arm and the shaft of the club remains (or should remain) what it was at the top. But as the downswing proceeds, this angle begins to open up, slightly. When it does we set up a secondary system of rotation, that of the club alone rotating around an axis formed by the hands. When the hands get down to the hitting position of Photo A the angle opens up very rapidly, as we have seen, until it reaches about 180 degrees (a straight line) at impact.

Within this secondary system there no additional feeding of momentum due to the mass moving farther from the axis; the club is rigid and nothing in it moves in relation to the axis. But the axis itself moves. The axis of this system is at the hands, and so it moves along with them in the same direction as the club. They are slowing down, to be sure, because they are getting farther from the primary axis, through the spine, but they are nevertheless moving. Their speed adds somewhat to the speed of the club head. The faster we can make our hands move, down in the hitting area, the faster we will move the club head. This is the point at which sheer muscular strength counts.

At this point COAM is "fighting" the muscular effort to make the hands go faster, Obviously, the stronger the person wielding the club, the greater the force he can apply from outside the system itself—which is what he is doing—and the faster he can make the club head travel.

Fig. 39. The secondary system of rotation at the hands. The hands are the axis of this system. The faster they can be moved in this area, against the mechanical principle which is slowing them down, the more speed the club head will have.

This, of course, is the point at which the human being swinging the club differs most from the ideal mechanical system on which the principle is based. There are no muscles in a mechanical system.

So the hands do have their part, although the role is not what most of us have thought. Few of us have ever en­visioned them as the moving axis of a secondary system of rotation.

With this new knowledge the deeper mysteries of the golf swing have been solved. We now know why the club head always catches up to the hands at the golf ball. We know why the late hit is better than the early hit. We know why hitting too soon, or hitting from the top, is so disastrous.

One of the tragedies of golf, if we may be permitted to use a term of that strength in relation to a game, is that men have tried for so long to make the club do what it would do of itself, if merely given a chance. By so trying they have ruined countless swings, tempers, and digestions, and pro­duced untold millions of bad shots.

The Final Proof

This final stage of the swing, as we all know, is a flashing action of such speed that the naked eye cannot hope to follow it. How then, do we know whether it has been executed correctly or not?

The obvious answer is the flight of the golf ball, If it goes straight, or if it starts just a little to the right and draws back a little to the middle, if, with a driver, it starts rather low and shows a tendency to climb at a point where the average shot begins to fall, it has been well hit.

The other way to tell whether the right movements have been made, is by the various positions in the follow-through. We have mentioned before that the good follow-through is the result of a good shot, never the cause of it. So, if we have hit the golf ball with a good swing, the follow-through must also be good. If the swing is bad, the follow-through never will or can be good.

The follow-through is the general position we are pulled into by the great momentum of the club after it has hit the golf ball. In the good inside-out swing the club tries .to. go out after the golf ball but can't because the right hand hangs onto it. So it goes up and around and then down, so that it would be behind the player if he hadn't turned in making the shot.

The player's weight is almost entirely on his left foot, with only the inside edge of the golf ball of the right foot on the ground. The hips have turned until they are facing the tar­get. The left arm is bent and has collapsed so that the elbow points toward the ground and the left wrist is under the shaft. The right arm, the hand of which has been hanging onto x the club, is extended and rather high but not straight  with the back of the hand in line with the forearm. In this and some other respects, the position at this stage of the follow-through is almost exactly the reverse of what it was at the top of the backswing.

If the swing has been from the outside, however, and the player has hit too soon, what follow-through there is will be entirely different. The right heel will be on the ground .with much of the weight still on it, the hands will be low and around the body, perhaps even below the shoulders, and the right knee is liable to be poking straight out toward where the golf ball had been hit. It's a horrible-looking position and it doesn't feel any better than it looks.

These are your check points, and they are strictly effects of the good swing or the bad one. No amount of effort to get a good follow-through, no matter how massive or determined it may be, will ever produce one. It will come only when the swing is good, and then it will come unconsciously.

There are a couple of other checks that the follow-through will reveal. If the swing has been correct, the grip on the ..club should be just as snug with both hands at the finish as it was at address. You will often find, however, that at the finish the left hand will be loose, that the club has come away from the last three fingers of that hand (Fig. 40B).

Figs. 40A, 40B.   At the finish of the swing the bonds should still be as tight, as in A, as they were at the address. If they loosen, as in B, with the left opening up, certain actions in the swing were wrong.

There are two reasons for this. If the player has "flipped" the club on the downswing, that is, tried to move the head to make it go faster, or if his hands have lagged, the end of the shaft will pull away from the last three fingers of the left hand, and they will be loose at the finish. The other reason is the result of trying to hold the club face square to the line after the golf ball has been hit, with the mistaken idea of steering it. When this is done the hands do not perform the fast climb-over action that they should, and the end of the shaft literally bounces away from the heel of the left hand. When it does, this hand is loose at the finish.

So if your left-hand grip is not tight at this point, look for one of these two reasons in your swing.

The Strap Treatment

In connection with hitting through the golf ball, there is a very useful little exercise. It not only gives you the idea of the climb-over of the hands after impact but it helps in other departments too.

We call it the strap treatment. This is not the strap treatment that might be given an erring offspring. It consists merely of swinging, and hitting the golf ball, with your right arm strapped to your side. A trunk strap is ideal, but a length of clothesline will do. Draw the strap rather tight around your body, enclosing your right arm just above the elbow—leaving the left arm free, of course.

You will find, once strapped, that you cannot take a full swing because your right elbow cannot get away from your body. You will also not be able to get much of a follow-through because the strap will hold your right arm back. Take a few practice swings to get accustomed to the restric­tion. Then hit some golf balls.

You will find immediately that in order to get the club back far enough for a decent swing, you will have to turn your shoulders. Next, you will feel that you must hit through the golf ball hard with your hands. Third, because you cannot let the club head follow out after the golf ball, the club head will turn over quickly, giving you the climb-over of the hands that always comes with a good shot.

Fig. 41. The strap treatment, a learn­ing aid for confirmed outside-inners and hitters-from-the-top.

And fourth, you will find that if you keep your head back but let your hips slide out to the left past the golf ball, you will hit from the inside. You cannot do anything else.

The feeling you will get from these four actions can be invaluable. With the strap treatment you are actually swing­ing in restricted miniature, and the restriction forces you to make and feel correct actions which you might spend months, or even years, trying to learn. The strap is a do-it-yourself gadget of remarkable value.

And now the final stage of the full swing has been com­pleted, its mysteries explained. The mere knowledge of the Conservation of Angular Momentum and the good it will produce, if we only give it a chance, should be a godsend to the struggling player. It should erase the mental block he has had, the feeling that he must make the head of the club move fast, that he must snap his wrists into the shot—many of the very things which have been preventing him from playing better golf.

The long, full shots are not the only ones there are in golf, of course. There are also the little shots, the short game, and the inevitable and highly varied trouble department, all of which we will now proceed to. But these big shots are a tre­mendous help. If you can hit the golf ball long and straight, at least half the battle for lower scores is won.

Are You Ready To Move Onto The Next Lesson? Click Here