The Natural Golf Swing (3 page)

None of us enjoyed losing. We really pushed one another.

My attitude was that I would succeed through technique. I wanted to minimize the influence of luck, to get to the point where I was secure about what I was doing. None of this “here-today, gone-tomorrow” business. I wanted some security. Even today I don’t know how people who play the game for a living manage without being certain of their methods. I knew I couldn’t live that way. So I looked for something that made sense.

At first, I imitated Beaven and others around the club. It was just kid’s play, but I did get a sense of the rhythm of the swing. Not that I had any idea as to what caused rhythm, or even what made the ball fly one way or another. Still, I really liked the whole idea of being able to control the flight of the ball one day. When I was thirteen, I shot 86 in the first junior tournament I played. That won my division; kind of neat, I thought.

Just after that tournament, I learned about a new-style grip the pros were teaching in Florida. Herb Quinn, an older member at St. Charles, had picked it up down south. Until Herb talked to me I’d thought the standard grip was where the V’s formed by the index finger and thumb of both hands went to the right shoulder. But he shocked me when he said, “No, son, they’ve got their hands on where they’re opposing one another. The thumbs are on top of the shaft and the palms face one another.”

This was a revelation to me. It meant that the way everybody was gripping the club wasn’t necessarily correct. It also meant that not everything was known about the swing. I suppose I should have realized this even as a kid, but I was then in my imitation stage. After I began to think about this new grip, I realized what was important; the former grip really didn’t make sense. Why would you want to hold the club with the V’s pointing to the right shoulder? I sensed that this would force you to
compensate during the swing if you were going to put the clubhead square on the ball. The most logical grip was hands-opposing, just as in prayer. As a thirteen-year-old, I didn’t understand how important this was to the development of a sound and sensible golf swing, but I’m glad I learned it early. I guess I figured that the best way was the most natural way. I let my arms hang in front of me with my palms opposing, so why not grip the club that way? Later, I realized that this was the centrepiece of the starting form; it represented a balanced means of holding the club. Ignore it and you can’t help but go wrong. The proper grip, though, is a fine means of assuring a balanced form.

Left
, old and unacceptable;
right
, new and acceptable.

Herb Quinn’s advice excited me. I realized there was more to golf than just hitting the ball. There were reasons things happened. He was a great old guy, about seventy then, and had seen plenty of ideas come and go. This one seemed worthwhile, and I’ve stuck with it since.

I soon became serious about practising and began to love my time on the range. After we got through our work around the range and shop, the boss would tell us to go play. I’d tell the fellows to go ahead and that I’d meet them after nine. I wanted to practise for the hour and fifteen minutes it would take them to play nine holes and I’d join them on the back side.

As much as I loved golf and was fascinated by the swing, I really didn’t give any thought to playing the game for a living until I saw the 1952 Canadian Open at St. Charles. That’s when I decided I’d like to turn pro. After the tournament, I told my folks that that’s what I wanted. I was lucky. They encouraged me right away. So did Les Beaven. My folks said: “If that’s what you want, go for it. Just don’t come crying if things don’t work out.”

A kid couldn’t ask for more support. My folks knew how much I enjoyed the game and that it’s good for a kid to go after what he wants. So what if you fail? Go for it. That was their attitude. Because of them I feel the same way. That’s how I teach. It’s not what you do that counts, but what you attempt to do. Get into every shot; that’s the pleasure of the game.

Hooked as I was on golf, I wanted to learn everything I could about the swing. Ben Hogan’s
Power Golf
was one of the first books I read. In it he talks about a “lateral shift,” where the golfer is supposed to whip his hips through the ball and around to the left. I tried it, but it didn’t work for me. Maybe it hurt too much. I didn’t want anything in my swing that hurt. I wanted the swing to feel good. Or maybe I misunderstood the material. That commonly happens when one golfer reads about how another one swings. It’s the problem of the golf swing being perceived as a personal swing. I think about the lateral shift today and wonder how I didn’t break my back trying it. Still, that was part of my experimentation.

One of the aspects I enjoyed most about golf was that I could be alone on the range or course. I spent hours out there trying to figure things out. Lots of people who love golf also thrive on being on their own. That was my nature. But I wasn’t only pounding balls; I was observing, asking questions.

As a youngster, I never seemed to catch the ball with the inlay on the driver when I set the middle of the clubface right behind the ball. I kept on catching the ball on the heel of the club, breaking the wood on the heel side of the insert. It annoyed me. I’d hit these ugly little shots, and I had trouble figuring out why.

One day, I decided to try to catch the ball way out on the toe of the driver. I set up the ball on the toe and figured that’s where I would make contact. It wasn’t the sweet spot, but setting the ball up on the sweet spot hadn’t been doing me any good either. So what happens? I hit this thing and it flies off the club like a rocket compared to what I’d been doing.

That got me thinking. “If I set the ball up on the toe, does it ever go.” I didn’t realize I was contacting it right in the middle of the clubhead. I’d been trying to hit the ball after setting it up on the inlay and had been smacking it on the heel. That’s why the wood was chipped. But suddenly, after setting the ball up on the toe, the ball was coming off the face solidly. I decided that the clubhead must be pulling out, and accepted that.

Setting the toe of the club to the ball to allow the clubhead to pull out.

It seems like such subtle stuff when I look back on it now, but I can see that I was struggling toward a conception of the swing that relied on natural laws. I guess I could have missed it all or tried to control what was happening. It didn’t seem logical to some people that you’d set the ball up on the toe of the club if you wanted to catch it in the middle of the face. But I didn’t fight it. I learned to make the adjustment. Maybe it was because I was a fairly little guy then. I didn’t want to overpower the game since I didn’t think I could. So the easiest way was to sit back and let it happen.

Weighing one hundred and nothing, it was easy for me to let the club take over. It felt like a substantial mass.

I didn’t know that I was suddenly catching the ball in the centre of the clubface because of the centrifugal force that was pulling the clubhead out and down. But that was the case. Eventually, I learned that centrifugal force is one of the laws of motion that enable us to make a natural swing. It’s behind that wonderful feeling we get when we swing seemingly without effort and then see the ball flying far and straight. Centrifugal force is also a terrific means of achieving a maximum swing arc, or extension. No wonder it became one of the principal ideas behind my concept of the swing.

It also encouraged me to continue looking at things my own way. Not that I was all that sure about what was happening, or what conclusions I might come to. I was still observing with a teenager’s eye, eagerly, but not critically. Nevertheless, these experiences were the beginning of my study.

I also observed other golfers. It was exciting to see the U.S. pros in the ’52 Canadian Open, all right, but I soon learned we also had a hell of a lot of talent at home. At first, I was only aware of Stan Leonard and Al Balding, but it didn’t take long to notice guys like Lyle Crawford and Moe Norman. I played against them in the 1954 Canadian Amateur and the next year in Calgary, when I won the Canadian Junior. These guys could play, but I didn’t see any reason I couldn’t do as well or better, especially if I could figure out the swing. I quit school to pursue that goal.

After deciding that golf was it for me, I didn’t see any reason to continue in school. I needed to learn out on the range and the course and the tour. So in 1957, when I was still an amateur, I caddied the winter tour. I worked
for Balding and Leonard and spent every extra minute watching players. What were they made of? What did the top players have in common?

Ben Hogan was on tour at the time. He’d nearly been killed in an auto accident in February, 1949 when he and his wife Valerie were hit by a Greyhound bus during a fog in western Texas. Nobody believed he would ever golf again; most people figured he wouldn’t even walk. But not Hogan. He had to recover from a double fracture of the pelvis, a fractured collarbone, a broken inner bone in his right ankle, and a broken right rib. Yet he came back better than ever. He won three U.S. Opens, two Masters, and one British Open after his accident. This had all happened by 1953, but in 1957 he was still the most precise golfer on tour. He’s still regarded as the most accurate player ever. I was fascinated with the man. I watched him every chance I could.

I’ll never forget the first time I set eyes on Hogan. I was nineteen, and had read that Hogan was going to play in a pro-am in Los Angeles. I knew I had to see this man play, so I went down there – and Hogan wasn’t even playing. It didn’t matter, because now I was determined to find him, and I did later that year at the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am, better known as the “Crosby,” in Pebble Beach, California.

Hogan was playing Cypress Point, my favourite course, along with Jimmy Demaret, Bing Crosby, and Bob Hope. If I had one round left in my life, I’d play Cypress at 7:15 in the morning when the fog was still in. I can still see the setting on the first tee. The fog is so thick that I can’t see the cypress tree that’s down there 240 yards on the right side, but I know it’s there. As I walk down the hill to my second shot, I’m looking up through the fog and I can see the sunlight and the green. I’m in heaven. And it
never lets up until you get to the clubhouse. This is the kind of place where I first saw Ben Hogan.

He didn’t disappoint me. Hogan was playing the fourteenth when I saw him. I caught him hitting his second shot and he put it in about six feet from the hole. The fourteenth happens to be one of the most gorgeous holes in the world to run into anybody, never mind Hogan. Anyway, it all started with that shot: I was quickly hooked on the way Hogan went about being a golfer. On the next hole, a three-par, he knocks it stiff and makes two. At the sixteenth, that stunning hole across the bay to a green surrounded by rocks and ocean, he hits a three-wood on the front of the green and chips in for another birdie.

Hogan had no fear as he stood on the tee at the sixteenth. It was just another shot. No anxiety; what a hole to be cool on. If you ever want to find out what kind of control you have, how anxious you are, walking to the sixteenth tee at Cypress will tell you. You’re shooting at this green 215 yards away and, surrounded by ocean, it looks like you’re shooting to a tabletop. With the wind conditions, it didn’t take long to find out who was secure and who wasn’t. People walk to that tee and you can almost hear their hearts pounding in anticipation. Most guys are such wrecks by the time they get there they can’t even lay up. Not Hogan, though. He had proper procedures, which make it just another golf shot from point A to point B. Develop the right procedures and the environment won’t bother you. People can get themselves in such a negative state because of the conditions. That’s when the golf course plays
them
.

At the seventeenth, Hogan sticks it in there fifteen feet. Birdie again. At the eighteenth, he hits it eight feet and hangs the putt on the lip. I think, “Hmmm, that’s Hogan.” From that day on, every opportunity I had to watch Hogan, I’d drop my clubs and observe him. I knew I could learn a lot just sitting
there quietly: I was watching the maestro. He made it look so routine all the time. He knew where the ball was going every swing. The other golfers had it sometimes and lost it at other times. Their games depended on their moods, their feel that day. Not Hogan. He had something nobody else had. When he set up over the ball, he knew the shot was going to come off. You knew it. Everybody knew it. And I wanted the same feeling, the same certainty. What did Hogan have that was unique?