THE SOUL OF GOLF

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE


THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO


THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.

TORONTO

GEORGE DUNCAN

The famous young Hanger Hill professional, one of the finest golfers, and probably the best golf coach, in the world.

THE SOUL OF GOLF

BY

P. A. VAILE

AUTHOR OF 'MODERN GOLF,' 'MODERN LAWN TENNIS,'
'SWERVE, OR THE FLIGHT OF THE BALL,' ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
1912

COPYRIGHT

TO

PHILIP REGINALD THORNTON

MY CO-WORKER IN IMPERIAL POLITICS

PREFACE

It is frequently and emphatically asserted by reviewers of golf books that golf cannot be learned from a book. If they would add "in a room" they would be very near the truth—but not quite. It would be quite possible for an intelligent man with a special faculty for games, a good book on golf, and a properly equipped practising-room to start his golfing career with a game equal to a single figure handicap.

As a matter of fact the most important things concerning golf may be more easily and better learned in an arm-chair than on the links. As a matter of good and scientific tuition the arm-chair is the place for them. In both golf and lawn tennis countless players ruin their game by thinking too much about how they are playing the stroke while they are doing it. That is not the time to study first principles. Those should have been digested in the arm-chair, where indeed, as I have already said and now repeat with emphasis, the highest, the most scientific, and the most important knowledge of golf must be obtained. There is no time for it on the links, and the true golfer has no time for the man who tries to get it there, for he is generally a dreary bore.

Moreover, the man who tries to get it on the links is in trouble from the outset, for in golf he is faced with a mass of false doctrine associated with the greatest names in the history of golf, which is calculated, an he follow it, to put him back for years, until indeed he shall find the truth, the soul of golf.

This book is in many ways different from any book concerning golf which has ever been published. It assumes on the part of the reader a certain amount of knowledge, and it essays to bring back to the truth those who have been led astray by the false teaching of the most eminent men associated with the game, teaching which they do not themselves practise. At the same time it seeks to impart the great fundamental principles, without which even the beginner must be seriously handicapped.

It does not concern itself with showing how the golfer must play certain strokes. That certainly may be done better on the links than in the smoking-room; but it concerns itself deeply with those things which every golfer who wishes really to know golf, should have stowed away in his mind with such certainty and familiarity that he ceases almost to regard them as knowledge, and comes to use them by habit.

When the golfer gets into this frame of mind, and not until then, will he be able to understand and truly appreciate the meaning and value of "the soul of golf."

This he will never do by following the predominant mass of false teaching. This book is a challenge, but it is not a question of Vaile against Vardon, Braid, Taylor, Professor Thomson, and others. The issue is above that. It is a question of truth or untruth. Nothing matters but the truth. It rests with the golfing world to find out for itself which is the truth. This it can do with comfort in its arm-chair, and afterwards it can with much enhanced comfort, almost insensibly, weave that truth into the fabric of its game, and so through sheer practice, born of the purest and highest theory—for there is no other way—come to the soul of golf.

CONTENTS