13. The Feeling of In-to-Out

It is now time for us boldly to approach a subject which we have already skirted round and touched the fringes of, the in-to-out theory about which so much has been heard in recent years. We have already con­sidered certain aspects of it in the chapters on "Golf Bogey No. 1," and "Preparatory to the Swing." Now in this chapter I want to help you to feel how to swing from in-to-out, a thing of which many people realize the importance without being able to put it into prac­tice.

Firstly what is this "in-to-out"? It is the feeling of swinging the club head not directly down the line of flight, but from inside this line as the ball is approached to outside the line in the follow through. The feeling that this is the path taken by the club head is essential to a good swing. Therefore the fact that scientific analysis can prove that at the impact the club head does actually follow the line of fligjit exactly can be ignored. You play golf by feeling, not by scientific analysis.

This feeling of in-to-out is intimately connected with that other feeling referred to in the chapter on "Preparatory to the Swing," that of being set inwards and behind the ball. The long straight drive that covers the pin all the way is the result of a swing which you feel travels from in-to-out. This is what we all refer to as an in-to-out swing; a shot in which the club head does actually take this path (as distinct from being felt to take it) is only played by the first-class golfer when he wants to put pull on the ball. And if you will think it out, that suggests why the in-to-out feeling is something that we teachers try to instill into every pupil.

The point being that, while an exaggerated in-to-out feel gives pull, the correct in-to-out feel gives straight-ness and no in-to-out feel (that is, the feeling that the club head goes along the line of flight) gives slice.

The advantage of the modern in-to-out swing is seen in both the flight and the run of the ball. Hit with the correct in-to-out feel, the ball is given the very mini­mum of backspin—consequently it "floats" through the air and, when it pitches, takes its natural spin forward, instead of kicking sideways as an undercut ball tends to do, as every lawn-tennis player knows.

To return to the subject of slice. The man who gave me my first job as a professional thirty-five years ago was the late H. L. Curtis—father of the present Pro at Queen's Park, Bournemouth. He told me many years later that he was doubtful about giving me the job, but having done so he started me off with a very sound piece of advice. "Now laddie," he said, "if you ever want to make good at this business, you had better find out how to teach people not to slice."

Those were the days before in-to-out! Consequently few players could get any draw on the ball, and mainly we just sliced our way around the course. Well, it took me a good twenty years to learn to correct that natural tendency in my own game, and then I had to learn to pass it on to my pupils. For make no mistake, everyone has to be taught; it does not come naturally. In some respects teaching golf is like fighting the Devil!

From the first time we see golf played to the first time we take a club in our hands, we have instinctively formed a false conception of the movement. We visual­ize the club head going up and over our shoulder and down onto the ball. You need only take any neophyte to see how he immediately takes the club up and down. His conviction that this is the correct movement is strengthened by the fact that he sees the ball soaring into the air and concludes that it must have been hit with an upward motion. So to make matters worse, he brings his hands into play also to assist the up-down-up movement—and is fully equipped for a career of scoop­ing.

Now here are two devastatingly false impressions, and it is astonishing how long in many golfers' lives they remain. We must not try to lift either the club head or the ball, and we shall never be good golfers until we can feel that we pull the club head along as we swing, along not up and down.

Let us put this in another way. If I were to ask you to:

(1)        Drive a wedge under a door

and

(2)        Drive a nail into the floor

—you would visualize two entirely different directions of hammer-head travel. Driving the wedge under the door is the direction we must feel at golf. The force must go along through the length of the wedge, along through the length of the ball.

With this in mind, it becomes clear that in swinging, the weight of the club head should be brought along from behind the ball, not from above it. This is what we call the wide swing, wide not high: a wide sweep that brings the club head in from behind the back of the ball.

Now another impression we get which impedes progress is that the club shaft goes up and above the right shoulder. In fact it does this not by arm or hand movement, but by the wrists being broken at the top of the swing. Consequently you must not try to get your club up by lifting it with your arms; you must feel at the top of the swing that your club and left arm are in a straight line and are waist high. Please ponder over this until you see its practical implications. You can try it out anywhere without a club and you will find that, if you are standing well up and your body is braced and you have the straight-left-arm-waist-high feeling referred to above, you will not be able to hit in a downward direction, but you will be able to swing the club head along through the ball—with power from feet and legs.

Now unless you have corrected your natural mis­conceptions of the golf movement by experience, you will have another feeling at the top of the swing. You will feel that the best you can do from such a posi­tion will be to drag the ball along the ground a matter of fifty yards or so! And because you have this power­less feeling, you try to help the club head down with arms and hands—this is "hitting from the top," one of the cardinal sins of golf.

The reason why you have this feeling of insufficiency (until experience has corrected it) is that the wide sweeping swing which comes in from behind the ball and drags it forward gives you no sensation of speed, and speed you feel you must have! The secret of this lies in the fact that speed of swing and speed of club head are entirely different, and oddly enough it is the slow swing which, by enabling the wrists to open at the correct instant, gives you maximum club head speed where you want it—beyond the ball.

The difficulty of accepting this is that it is opposed to the natural instincts raised by our desire to hit a long way. We feel we want club head speed so we must swing fast, not realizing that the maximum speed can only come when the momentum of the club head is free from our interference, when our opening wrists give it the speed and power of the fail.

That is why I tell you that there is no such thing as a good natural golf swing. The natural swinger is the golf rabbit!

This sort of contradiction in the interests of effi­ciency is not exclusive to golf. Consider swimming. Doubtless the original "crawl" stroke was natural; its development is unnatural as anyone who watches it taught can see.

Please do not think that I have forgotten that the subject of the chapter is the in-to-out feeling. That feeling is a somewhat subtle one, and it can only be induced by getting certain details of the swing right. So I must dwell upon these details. The direction of swing was the first and now the source of power is the second.

I have told you not to use your arms to hit with, that in fact you should not play golf with your hands and arms at all but with your feet and legs. Now this is an exaggeration but one that is necessary to correct the natural tendency to use our hands and arms to the detriment of foot and leg work. The arms want to work and will work, so it is necessary to emphasize the im­portance of foot and leg action in order to get proper balance. Also it is true that movement should start in the feet and legs.

Of course the arms and hands play an essential part in transmitting this power to the ball. So, if we are told that we "are hitting with the right hand" and are advised to correct this by holding less tightly with our right hand, we merely dimmish our chance of hitting a long ball. The long ball feels to come out of the right hand, but the power that gives it comes from the feet, the legs, and the hips.

So it is obvious that the proper use of the legs and hips is essential if we are to pull the club head in cor­rectly—at terrific speed into the back of the ball. Since action and reaction must be equal and opposite, we must pull against something, against some resistance. So at the top of the swing we must feel braced and very firmly set on the ground.

In a tug-of-war we can only use our weight and strength if we are well anchored. Also when we watch a boat race we are apt to think that it is the arms that are propelling the boat when actually it is the legs. But in both these cases the movement is simple, be­cause force is applied directly along the line of flight. Much of the difficulty of golf arises because the source of power (our body) is not in the line of flight but is away to one side of it—so we have to produce our power and use our weight by rotation. We are a coiled spring, wound up by our rotation, and the heavier and more powerful the spring, the greater the force that will be implanted into the back of the ball when we "unwind" onto it. Also the greater the re­sistance that requires to be set up to give the spring se­cure anchorage. That is why it is that the farther you drive, the more important "brace" becomes.

Brace is important here for another reason also. You will remember that it is brace in general—and the sev­eral directions of brace in particular—that hold you in such a position and condition that you feel you are "inwards and behind the back of the ball." From this position, and swinging not up and down but around and along, you will find that the swing that feels to be taking the club head from in-to-out becomes not only possible but natural.

So you see that we have achieved this essential feel not by trying to force your club head in the direction you know you should feel it go, but by adapting a set and a conception of the correct direction of the golf movement that produces it as the natural, the almost inevitable result.

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