Whenever we go to a golf tournament and see a really good player hit the ball, we receive two vivid impressions. The first is how far the ball goes with seemingly so little effort. The second is of a certain measured cadence in the upward and downward movement of the club. Both are accurate impressions.
Now if we happen to be on the practice tee, where we can watch this player hit shot after shot, we will notice two other things. One is that he swings all his clubs at about the same speed; he doesn't seem to hit the 3 wood any harder than he hits the 7 iron. The second thing we notice, when we let our gaze wander to other players practicing, is that while most of them are deliberate, there are differences in their swinging speeds.

Timing is the answer to the first accomplishment—the long hit with little effort. Rhythm produces the measured cadence in the upward and downward movement of the club. And the differences we notice in swinging speed among other players are differences in tempo.

Nearly all good players will give us impressions of timing and rhythm. The more graceful the player, the more vivid the impression will be. Sam Snead, among the moderns, is the perfect example. Among the giants of the past, Bob Jones's swing was once called the "poetry of motion," and the late Macdonald Smith was probably the most effortless swinger who ever played the game. The players of today swing harder at the ball than did their predecessors, with the result that theirs is more of a hitting than a swinging action.

Yet the ball still flies out much farther than it should, for the effort the player seems to be putting into it. This is very marked in the graceful players of smaller stature, such as Gene Littler, 1961 National Open champion, and Dow Finsterwald, former National PGA champion. Timing

The answer to the effort-distance puzzle being timing, just what is timing? For one thing, it is a word that has been used more loosely, perhaps, than any other in golf literature. We have been blandly told that we should work to improve our timing, that our timing is off, that without good timing we cannot hope to play well. But there, having given the word the once-over-lightly treatment, the oracles have left us. They have never adequately explained timing or told us what we should do to improve ours. Our private guess is that they don't know themselves what it is.

A dictionary will tell you that timing is: "The regulating of the speed of a motion, stroke, or blow, so that it reaches its maximum at the correct moment." In golf, obviously, this would mean regulating the speed of the club head so as to cause it to reach its maximum as it hits the ball.

The key phrase is "regulating of the speed." The better the speed is regulated, the better the timing; the poorer the regulation, the poorer the timing. It is here that at least 95 per cent of all golfers have their worst trouble.

They have it because the regulation of the speed depends not on how the club head is manipulated by the hands but on how and when other parts of the swinging system operate: the hips, the shoulders, the arms, the hands. If these move in the right way and in the right order, they will automati­cally regulate the speed of the club head so that it reaches its maximum as it hits the ball. It is, in effect, a chain reaction of movement, with the club head getting the final effect.

The reason the vast majority of golfers have such trouble timing a shot satisfactorily is that, subconsciously or con­sciously, they try to regulate the speed of the club head directly with their hands, without using the intermediary links of the hips, shoulders, and arms. When they do this they get an early but never very great reaction, in terms of speed, from the club head. This is the old familiar "hitting too soon" or "hitting from the top." When the intermediary links are used and the chain reaction is allowed to take its course, there is a late reaction by the club head, which then accelerates to great speed at impact. There is a common expression to describe the player who uses the chain reaction: "He waits on the club." It may not be grammatical but it is descriptive.

What this all comes down to is, the expression of good timing is the late hit. The expression of poor timing is the early hit. We have already, in previous chapters, explained the moves that produce the late hit and the early hit. Here, as we discuss timing, we isolate one key move that leads to good or improved timing. It is this: Let the body—not the hands—start moving the club on the downswing.

Once you can do this you are on the road to vastly better golf. You will have the feeling that you are starting down with arms and club close to the body—close to the axis— where they should be at this time.

So much has been written over the years about the im­portance of the hands in swinging the club, that many of us are entirely too hand conscious. A standing vote of thanks is due Bill Casper for stating, in a description of his swing as it reached the hitting position: "At this point my body is still swinging the club." Many of us have been sure of that for years, but Casper, to our knowledge, was the first of the top tournament pros with the courage to say it.

The hands will take over soon enough, as an automatic, reflex action. The problem is to keep them out while still keeping them moving. If we keep them out while our body moves the club from the top, our timing will be far better.

Rhythm and Tempo

Rhythm and tempo can be considered together, because in golf they mean very nearly the same thing.

We mentioned earlier that the rhythm in the swing of a good player is noticed because of the measured cadence in the upward and downward movement of the club. In his swing there appears to be—and there is—a definite relation­ship in time between his backswing and his downswing. It is measured in two parts, from the time the club leaves the ball until it stops at the top of the backswing, and from the time it starts to move again until it hits the ball. The club does have to stop at the top, of course, for the instant required to reverse its direction, whether we feel it or realize it or we don't. No object, not even a golf club, can be traveling in opposite directions at once.

These two segments of the swing can be accurately timed by a motion-picture camera, by the simple process of count­ing the number of pictures the camera takes during each segment. Such a count shows that the backswing of a good player takes almost exactly twice as long as the downswing.

This two-to-one ratio is the rhythm of the swing. The total time or tempo of the swing will vary with different good players, but the ratio or rhythm will not. Nor will it vary from club to club. The ratio will be the same for the 8 iron as it is for the driver. The tempo of the swing will not change, either, for the individual player.

This is why the good player looks so good when he swings at the ball. There seems to be a definite, unhurried, rela­tionship between the two parts of his swing. We sense it if we see him hit the ball only once, and it becomes more and more marked the oftener we see him swing. He has established a definite rhythm and he sticks to it. In fact, one of the things he does when he goes to the practice tee before a round is re-establish his rhythm, so that he hits a 5 iron, for instance, at exactly the same speed, with exactly the same effort, with exactly the same tempo, each time he swings it, whether the shot is simple or difficult.

We will always remember Jimmy Demaret playing the twelfth hole at Inverness in the National Open of 1957. Demaret was in contention and his drive on this hole wound up near the right edge of the fairway. It is a par 5 hole with the first half downhill, the second half uphill. Jimmy's drive had caught a slight downslope, so that he had a downhill lie. He was standing slightly above his ball. It was a most difficult shot to be made with a wooden club. To reach the green, Jimmy had to use the wood. His swing was as smooth and unhurried as if he had been hitting an 8 iron from a perfect lie to an open green. He hit it with his own estab­lished rhythm, and he reached the green with a perfect shot.

The poor or average player has no such established rhythm. Not only does he often have a different rhythm for each club but for different shots with the same club. He is prone to use a 7 and swing faster, when he should be using a 6 with a normal swing. He changes again to dig a ball out of the rough or a bad lie on the fairway. He slows down when he tries to steer the ball. He always speeds up when the situation of the round or match has increased his ten­sion. Most of these changes are noticeable in his backswing, which becomes faster, sometimes almost as fast as his down­swing.

This is why his swing looks so bad and the pro's looks so good.

Why, you may ask, should anyone bother to develop a rhythmic swing? Aside from how it looks, of what value is it?

It has two very definite values. One is that it promotes better timing. It doesn't assure or guarantee that we will time a shot better, but it helps. It makes good timing easier to achieve.

The second reason is that a rhythmic swing helps a great deal toward the goal of every swing, which is to strike the ball in the exact center of the club face—"on the screws," as the pros say. There is a very small area on the face, known to all golfers as the "sweet spot," which transmits the maxi­mum propelling force. When contact is made on this spot, the ball will go much farther than if the contact is toward the club's heel or toe.

Pertinent here are tests made for the United States Golf Association by the Arthur D. Little Co., a research organiza­tion, during the United States Amateur Championship at Brookline in 1957. Pictures were taken of the contact be­tween club and ball. These were compared with the distance attained and with the velocity of the club head at impact.

Among the conclusions drawn by the USGA was that ac­curacy of contact was highly important in gaining distance. By accuracy was meant contact with the exact center of the club face. Distance dropped, even with a faster swing, if contact was not made precisely at the center.

The average golfer rarely gets this perfect, flush contact, although most of the time he isn't conscious of not getting it. He thinks of it only when he hits the ball well out toward the toe or in toward the heel, or toward the top or the sole. The pros, on the other hand, hit many shots on the sweet spot, and many more which are very close to it. This is one of the reasons they hit the ball as far as they do. And one of the reasons they find the sweet spot and get close to it so often, is because their swings are grooved in a constant, unhurried rhythm.

We are not saying that everyone should swing the club at exactly the same speed. Each of us has his own tempo of doing things, depending on his individual temperament. Some of us drive automobiles faster than others, eat faster, walk faster. We are likely to have faster golf swings. The point is that whatever speed we use to swing the club, it should always be the same, regardless of the lie we have, the difficulty of the shot, or the length of the shot. If we have to change our rhythm to get a longer shot with a 5 iron, we should use the 4 and keep the rhythm the same. The good pro knows that he will get 160 yards with a 5 iron, and he will get it every time, not 153 yards once, 165 yards the second time, and maybe 160 the next, assuming he hits the ball squarely each time. He will get it because his rhythm is constant.

So determine your own rhythm, with the help of your pro, and then stick to it, for all shots and with all clubs. It will make the game a lot easier.

In arriving at a proper speed for yourself, you should not swing so fast that you cannot feel or sense each of the fun­damental moves that you make. These are the forward press, the immediate backward wrist break, the movement of the weight, the turn of the shoulders to the top, the lateral slide of the hips, and the slightly rocking action of the shoulders that start the downswing, and the definite feeling that the body is swinging the club until it gets near the ball. If, then, you can feel the hard forward swinging of the hands through the ball, so much the better.

We do not mean, we will hasten to say, that you should think of each of these movements each time you swing the club, or that you should feel each one separately every time you swing. What we do mean is... [Chapter Incomplete]

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