[G]od [O]nly [L]oves [F]ools

This simply will not do.

As Kev enjoys yet another week in Florida with his assorted kin, the remainder of us up here in the Great White North have been blanketed by the cold, miserable white gunk we call snow. I think it’s exceptionally cruel of wealthy landowners to have built golf courses up here and hooked us on the game when five months of the year we’ve got to deal with this type of thing, but at least Boom-Boom has escaped the geographical indifference of Canada and is enjoying himself on a course in the Sunshine State. Whenever I’m getting bummed out while looking out the window of my office here, I imagine Croucher on the teebox driving yet another one into next Tuesday. I live vicariously through him, you see. [I also burn with a jealous rage that knows no bounds, but that's not his fault.]

 So while we await his latest installment of Croucher’s Local Knowledge – I see he’s got drafts on Parkview’s Upper Course and the one he’s playing in Florida already underway – I’ve been putting down the wedge I swing in my office and picking up some books. One of them is one I’ve been meaning to talk about forever, as I’ve found it to be an almost invaluable asset to my game.

Swing The Clubhead by Ernest Jones offers perhaps the simplest ever approach to swinging the golf club correctly. It is a concise, clear, and completely uncluttered manual to achieving success at golf. Jones, a professional teacher from the 1920s and 30’s, was a British amateur champion before having his leg blown off in World War I. One week after recovering from his injuries and returning home to England, Jones shot a 70 at his home club on one leg, proving that physics and finesse and not physique were the clear elements to achieving one’s golfing goals.

I picked this book up on a fluke. Standing in a loading dock a few years ago at my last job, I found the book on a pile of hardcovers that were being thrown out by a resident. I’m glad I did: while there are so many different approaches to becoming a better golfer that it can get muddled together in your head, Jones cuts throwugh it all and teaches one simple message over and over again: swing the clubhead. Golf Online recites his teachings well:

HANDS DETERMINE SPEED
“Let us ask ourselves a few pertinent questions relative to the swinging of a golf club:

“First of all, what force causes the ball to swing away in its flight? We must inevitably come to the conclusion that it is the force applied by the clubhead itself — and that force alone.

“What type of force, then, can the clubhead develop? Careful thought will lead us to the discovery that centrifugal force answers our question. Centrifugal force can be developed only by swinging a weight through an arc or circle.

“What parts of the body affect the speed of the clubhead? The hands — and the hands alone. They are the only parts of the body which touch the club, and hence it is their action which determines the speed of the head as it comes into contact with the ball.

“All other motion of the body is related to the action of the clubhead only in the sense that it facilitates the work of the hands. Remember this the next time someone tells you to keep your left arm straight, to employ a lateral hip slide, to pivot fully. All these things may take place as responsive motions, but they are not primary actions.

“You will get a good deal further if you think only of swinging the clubhead with your hands.”

FOCUS ON THE ENTIRE MOTION
“Hitting a golf ball is not very different from driving a nail into a plank insofar as both involve the control of a swinging implement. Watch a carpenter as he swings his hammer so that the head acquires its maximum speed at the moment of impact with the nail. You can be perfectly sure that his mind is not cluttered up with thoughts of wrist cocking, pausing at the top of the swing, correct hand action, and the hundred-and-one other individual motions that make up the complete action of driving a nail into a board.

“If it were, the chances are that he would seldom, if ever, hit it at all. He has one thought in mind: Hitting the nail by swinging the head of the hammer in the most efficient manner possible. The rest takes care of itself.”

A SEQUENCE TO POWER
“Of course you have to hit, and hit as hard as ever you can. An expert axeman has to hit, but he has to learn to swing the axe to hit with. First you must know what the movement of the tool is. If you are trying to get the maximum force in the head of it, it must be a swinging motion, and, as I have explained, that can only be done through the medium of the hands and fingers.

“Next, get as much power into the motion, without overpowering the motion, of swinging, then get as much weight into that power, without overcoming the power you are trying to use.

“A blow must be in that order: motion, power behind the motion, and weight behind the power.”

FEEL THE RHYTHM OF A SWING
“Swinging in a golfing sense means moving the clubhead in a rhythmic manner under control through the sense of feeling in the hands. Learning to swing means learning to sense this control, so that you are able to know from the sense of feel whether the movement is a swing.”

CONTROL IS INTUITIVE
“Where do we get control to swing the club? Obviously once more it is possible to feel what we are doing with the clubhead only through the points of contact between ourselves and the club, that is the hands and fingers. If we have control, it means we can feel what we are doing with it. Mostly control is intuitive.

“For instance, in writing, we feel control of the point of the pen on paper, or in tossing a ball, we feel control to throw with the thumb and fingers. Thus we have to feel that we have the sense of moving the club in a pendulum motion, through or by means of the hands and fingers.”

Amazon is selling the re-released 2004 paperback for $9.56, but see if you can’t get the original Golf Digest Classic Series edition pictured above elsewhere.  It’ll look better on your shelf. I strongly urge all golfers to pick it up simply for it’s concise look at the game: even if you don’t love his approach, you’ll recognize it’s value.

- BC

Boomer gave me this book for Christmas, and it’s extremely fun. Ever read an Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader? This is just like that, but golf-related, and with all sorts of funky and somber facts packed into it all over the place. It’s a great little book to keep in the bathroom or on the coffee table so you can pick it up whenever you’ve got a second, and I highly reccomend it. It’s available HERE at Amazon.

Here’s some reviews:

“Golf is full of quirky bits and pieces along with stories and information. There’s something on every page of this entertaining book to interest and amuse every golfer. Not surprising with Lorne Rubenstein involved — one of the best.”
—Arnold Palmer

“A must-read for golf obsessives.”
—Nick Price

“Don’t open this book! It’s far too addictive.”
—Alan Shipnuck, author of Bud, Sweat, & Tees

“With A Season in Dornoch, Lorne Rubenstein, one of golf’s gifted modern writers, has done every fan of the game a great and entertaining service. . . . This tale of discovery will linger in the mind of any lover of the auld sod long after it’s finished.”
–James Dodson, author of Final Rounds

Book Description
The ideal gift for every golfer — pros and duffers alike.

The obsessive book about the obsessive game, and more fun to read than a green at Ballybunion. Written by two authors who have misspent their lives in thrall to the sport, A Disorderly Compendium of Golf digs into the odd, the fascinating, the historical, the random, the unexpected, and the curmudgeonly, and serves up hundreds of pages of lists, anecdotes, humour, surprises, and the sheer compelling minutiae of a game whose pleasure lies in the details.

It’s all here, including history (the oldest courses, top five money-winners at ten-year intervals), odd rules (did you know you may take a free drop from a fire-ant hill but not from poison ivy?), helpful tips and golf instruction (how to hit Phil Mickelson’s trademark flop shot), the lexicon (professional caddie nicknames, terms for an ugly shot, names of golf balls), gambling games, the grasses used in greens, unusual patents, Shakespearean quotes on golf, longest and shortest holes . . . and more, much more.

About the Author
Lorne Rubenstein is an award-winning golf writer, columnist for the Globe and Mail, and author of eight books, most recently, Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters. Rubenstein lives with his wife in Toronto and Jupiter, Florida.

Jeff Neuman has worked on golf books with, among others, Jack Nicklaus, Davis Love III, Butch Harmon, and Alan Shipbuck. He was the editor of Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book and has written about golf for the New York Times, Links Magazine, and Private Clubs.

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The question now is whether or not to buy John Daly’s “My Life in and Out of the Rough: The Truth Behind All That Bull**** You Think You Know about Me” or not. Personally, I think that if everything I know about Daly is bullshit, he’s probably the one to blame for that. Either way I’ll wait for the paperback.

- BC