Seeing The Ball

When it comes to seeing the ball, I would ask you to consider a golfer at the lower end of the of the scale. How does a very good golfer see the ball? In my opinion, through his very highly developed sense of feel, he sees the ball (in some proportion) through his hands.

Sees through his hands? Perhaps the idea is not so fanciful as it might seem. I began to think about it first after I had read an article by Sir Herbert Barker some years ago. This is what he said: "We take our hands too much for granted. Their possibilities and powers are seldom discovered or developed. Most people pass through life with these two implements untrained, unexplored, unknown. . . ." Then he goes on: "When we take for granted the localization of our senses in certain organs we go too fast. Localized they are, but not completely so." Then at a later date my interest was reawakened by the declaration of Dr. Fougools, the French savant, that in the skins of our hands are potential eyes.

 He says that they are nerve eyes atrophied for the simple reason that we have developed two ocular instruments so much superior to them.  Now to my mind the value of that idea to the golfer lies largely in an idea which it promotes, that perhaps the greatest value of "keeping your eye on the ball" is the assistance which it gives in building up sight through feel.

For whatever may be the eventual verdict of science upon the tentatively advanced hypothesis of the two famous men quoted above, I can assure you that some sort of sight through feel is certainly possible. I have developed it myself, as have many other first-class golfers. I can see the face of the club and the angle it is at the top of my swing (when it is "out of sight" behind the back of my head), and long before I lift my head, I can see the ball fly away with the exact curve which I know my shot has given it.

But let us leave these metaphysical regions and come back to the ordinary golfer. Why is it that so often he can make perfect swings when the ball is not there, yet he becomes semi-petrified and makes the most ridiculous shots as soon as there is a ball, even a ball carefully perched on a perfectly prepared tee, for him to hit? And what would happen if you could put down an invisible ball for him? Is it knowing that the ball is there that upsets his swing or is it the sight of it?

Anyway the invisible ball reminds me of a story! A threesome had just driven off the first tee when a stranger to the players asked if he might join in. "Why certainly, with pleasure," they said. The stranger stuck his wooden tee in the turf, made a beautiful swing at an imaginary ball on it, and went half-way down the fairway and "played" his second similarly with an iron. His second "pitched" on the green, and he carefully went through the motions of taking one putt for a three!

Not unnaturally, his fellow-players asked him what was the idea of dispensing with the ball. He explained it simply enough. With a ball, he said, he never got around in less than 110, but without it lie could rely upon being somewhere in the low 70s. The next day he brought a friend along, and the threesome followed as a gallery. On the first green an argument arose, and the gallery came up to find out what was causing the trouble. Their companion of the previous day smiled at them and explained. "You see," he said, "I have laid him a stymie and he does not know the rulesl"

A charming story, don't you think?

If you think this too fanciful (though the tale is true), it was recalled to my mind by a very practical job which I have recently undertaken—the re-education of a golfer who had not played except in his imagination for fifteen years. He was married at about that time and one of his marriage vows was not to play golf at week-ends. He had little other time to play, so when now and again he was able to get away in the week he would lunch at the club and then play nine holes with an imaginary ball.

Something happened to the union, and he is now playing again. And I assure you that, with two or three lessons after his fifteen-year break, he was as good as ever he had been, and now, after a dozen or so, he is quite a few strokes better than he was when he renounced playing.

But we must come back (again!) to the ordinary golfer who finds that the ball has a devastating effect on his swing. Why is this so?

It is so because the ordinary golfer is an unrepentant end-gainer. When he sees the ball, he becomes obsessed with the idea of hitting it; the ball is made the climax or the end of his activity. That is to say, the highest speed attained by his club head is at the moment of impact, or, much worse still, he may try to stop the club head as soon as it has struck the ball. That is the effect of seeing the ball as something to be hit.