Golf - The 'Point of Impact': A Young Man's Guided Journey

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Drawing A Line In The Sand

When I was young, I lived in a small town in the central lowlands of Scotland. It was what would today be called, a blue-collar town with a history of steelwork and coal mining, but with the boom times disappearing and a prosperity then sadly declining. It was a proud town though, determined to retain its independence and resistant to any attempt to see it linked to either of the major cities to the East and West.

Fiercely cold in the dark, and short, days of winter and seemingly incapable, even in the height of summer of existing without the strongest of winds, it was a place with the warmest of hearts. A place where children such as I, could walk the streets to and from school without fear; cocooned safe in a society that policed itself and where retribution for any act of violence would be likely to come swiftly on those responsible. It was a place with fewer Policemen than public telephone boxes!

It was a world for me in which really only two sports were played; soccer and golf.

I had played soccer at school and in Representative teams at District and County levels, and had briefly held thoughts of where my skills in that game might take me, but the reality was that I had not been blessed with the best of eyesight. I had no problem when it came to reading (although my teachers probably thought otherwise), or in the basic requirements of daily life, but poor vision at distance meant the use of spectacles from an early age, which meant that the playing of soccer - at least for anything else other than fun, was clearly out of the question. These were times long before the advent of contact lenses.

And so it was to golf that I turned.

I started, as many youngsters did, by using old clubs - in this case my Father’s. Of course they were all too long and heavy for me and they had hickory shafts, heads of iron and leather-wound grips, which quickly became devoid of traction at the first sign of moisture.

One of the benefits of living in a small town was that nowhere was very far from anywhere else. At first I practised in the local park, and then the school grounds; then, it was some land next to the local golf course which became my practise area: my sanctuary, my ‘home-away-from-home’. I would walk there after school, carrying my bag of clubs and a few balls and, family circumstances being what they were, usually had the luxury of being picked up and taken home by my Father in the small family car afterwards.

Although Father was a reasonably good golfer, his extensive work commitments prevented him from playing on a regular basis and, up to that point, he had not even bothered to become a Member of this local golf club. The land that had become my practise area was in fact owned by the Club, although I did not know that at the time, and my presence there was rather more tolerated than authorised. That said, no one ever stopped me and I passed many a summer evening - and even autumn evenings - into near darkness, with just my clubs, my golf balls and a few four legged grasscutters, as sheep were known, for company.

It would be fair to say that my interest in golf was probably increasing at the same pace as my ability to hit the ball and, although my friends at school openly talked of their joy each year at the approach of the Christmas period, the onset of winter was the most miserable time of my year. Daily practise was rendered impossible by snow on the ground and that it was near dark by the time the school day was finished. My yearly calendar could truly be broken down into ….times I can play golf and ….times I can’t.

One day, as the dreaded winter was thankfully migrating more fully into the next spring, my Father told me to get my bag of clubs and said he was taking me to the Club. Although I had been taken there in the car a few times before, I remember thinking it odd that he had emphasised that he was taking me to …the Club and not to my practise area. Had there been perhaps some problem or complaint about me? Or was there some other change that had taken place, over the winter period, which would mean that my practise area was about to be taken away from me?

Fortunately my concerns were groundless, because Father quickly expanded his initial comment by saying that he was taking me to the Club to see someone. Apparently I was going to ..meet an Old Man .

He said he had thought for some time that I had actually been starting to show a little potential in the game - certainly enough to start matching my interest in it, and that it would be a good idea for me to have my game looked at by someone. Unknown to me up to that point, some people had seen me diligently practising and had spoken favourably about me to Father; he had then, again without my knowing, come up several times prior to the winter break to watch me.

To say that I was surprised (and at the same time delighted), would be an understatement. Yet, not to put too fine a point on things, I felt very nervous about the whole situation, and the short drive to the course passed in almost total silence.

Even now, over fifty years later, I remember vividly what happened when we got there.

We got out of the car and Father went and spoke to a lady I had never seen before while I got my clubs out of the car, shut the boot, and walked over towards them.. Later I found out that she was the sister of one of the officials at the Club, and responsible for many of its administrative activities. As I approached, the lady shook hands with Father and turned to leave but not before nodding in my direction and giving me a giving me a wave and a warm smile.

She tells me he’s over at the Practise Area, Father said. Let’s get a move on.

Now, this was somewhere I had never been. This was a place for Club Members Only, as the large sign confirmed through what seemed freshly-painted lettering. I suppose by the standards of today it would be considered somewhat basic: it was after all just a flat area of land - perhaps about fifty yards wide and a coupe of hundred yards long - but it was, to my eyes, hallowed ground.

I was so engrossed in being there that I didn’t notice when Father separated himself from my side and went towards a small tree-shaded area to our left.

When I eventually turned, I saw him approaching a person who was then just rising from an old wooden bench. As he stood, I could see that he was about six feet tall with grey hair, and had an upright stance, the likes of which I had previously seen in people from either the Police or the military. I took this person to be the ‘Old Man’ who had been the subject of the earlier conversation. Although I have no real recollections of my thoughts at that time, I do still maintain that I had a the feeling that something significant was about to happen in my life.

As was the custom in those days, I was not involved in or welcomed into, this initial conversation between the two of them, but after a little time, Father turned towards me and said Laddie, I’ll be in the Club when you are finished. I expect you to listen and learn. And with that he was gone.

The Old Man and I did not shake hands but after my Father had made himself scarce, he simply said, Okay Laddie…let’s get started.

I am not sure what I had actually expected but I was more than a little surprised when he simply sat back down on the bench and said, Okay. Now leave your practise balls on the ground here, go a few yards over there, take some practise swings with any club you like, and let me hear what you can do.

Hear..? What did he mean 'hear'? I soon got the message.

His challenge to me was quite simple. I had to swing the golf club at low speed, backwards and forwards, making consistent contact with the ground at the point where he told me to imagine the golf ball would have been.

I could hold my wrists tight or I could allow them to flex if I wanted to. He didn’t instruct me in anything at all. In fact, he didn’t seem to care how I swung. All I had to do was swing fifty times - effectively twenty five swings in both forwards and backwards directions - and I was to count each swing out loud.

Never once through all this did the Old Man raise his eyes to look at me or at the contacts being made by the club on the ground. He just sat there on the old wooden bench puffing on his pipe…and he listened.

If he didn’t like what he heard - if I either missed the ground or made excessive contact with the ground - he would simply call out, One, and I would have to start the process all over again. He was looking for fifty contacts with the ground that were the same; fifty contacts which made the same sound.

Imagine my frustration at getting to about 45 swings only to miss the ground and hear him call out, One…

I’d never been asked to do anything like this before. As the session progressed he challenged me further. After a short break he asked me to increase the speed of my swings, again backwards and forwards, until I was very close to what would have been my then normal downswing speed.

I’ve no idea how long that part of the first session actually lasted but I do know that, pretty soon, I was both tired and sore.

By the time he called a halt to the exercise I’d worn a number of trenches into the practise tee and, although there had been periods of rest where we had talked some, and other periods when I had been allowed to hit some golf balls, I distinctly remember that I hadn’t hit nearly as many balls as I’d thought I would.

And even when I had been hitting golf balls, I was surprised to look over towards the Old Man and find that he was apparently paying no attention whatsoever. He either been sitting puffing on his pipe, looking in any direction but mine, or he had gone off, presumably to talk to my Father.

I remember feeling a little disappointed at what was going on. I’d gone there thinking that this person - whoever he was - would have wanted to see me hit lots of balls; that he would have told me why I was slicing or hitting the ball fat, thin or whatever, and that would be how he would go about helping me. I was sure that, at least, he would have wanted to see me swing the club and hit balls. But he hadn’t. In fact, later, when the session was finished and Father and he were discussing things, I overheard the Old Man say that he didn’t much care about my swing ! I distinctly remember being very disappointed in this comment and, even at the tender age of thirteen, being not that impressed with either that first meeting or the prospect of another.

Fortunately Father must have known something that I didn’t (which would not have been unusual), because he insisted that I go back! To this day I am grateful that he did.

Although the next meeting began - and certainly proceeded for a short time - in pretty much the same way as the first had, towards the end of the session the Old Man took us for a walk towards the recently constructed, new, seventeenth hole. Just off the fairway was an old bunker that had been part of the previous design and was now out of play. The really good sand had long since been removed to other bunkers on the course, leaving a hard-packed rough sandy base. Although it was clearly not suitable for the members to practise their bunker shots (as evidenced by the complete lack of footprints or impacts), it quickly became clear that this old bunker was ideal for the Old Man’s purposes.

After a short warm-up session, including a few ‘loosening-up’ hits which he had ignored in preference to filling and lighting his pipe, the Old Man asked me to join him in the bunker where, with the grip end of an old walking stick, he drew a line in the sand. He stood at one end of the line and asked me to stand at the other end, facing him, with one foot on either side of this line I was then to then take up an address position with the line as my target. My task was to take full-paced swings, walking a few inches forward towards him between each swing, each time aiming to hit the line on the downswing, just like in a real shot.

Given the length of the line in the space available, I could have about ten swings before I got close to him. His only comments, as to a measure of my performance, were that all contacts between the clubhead and the line had to be the same; all the divots had to begin on the line and they all had to be the same width and length. One contact not on the line, or one divot not to his satisfaction, and it was again a shout of One… and an instruction to smooth out the sand, draw another line and start all over again.

Over the next few months, and whenever I’d visit him again, many of our sessions would start with this exercise - or at least feature it at some point - and he’d have no qualms about shouting One any time he heard something which he didn’t like…or when he heard nothing when he knew he should have heard something: a condition which he liked even less.

All the Old Man was concentrating on in those early sessions, was my ability to put the clubhead exactly where it needed to be and to do so time after time and without too much conscious effort. His point was that unless I could find - and keep finding under any playing conditions - that single spot on the ground where the ball was, then I could never really expect to hit any quality golf shots on a consistent basis.

To the Old Man this was logic of the most basic kind.

And over all the years we worked together, the only thing that I ever saw consistently frustrate him was the tendency of many golfers to explain away a bad shot on the basis of the swing they had just taken or had seen. Whenever we’d hear someone on the practise area say, Oh, you hooked that shot badly because your grip is too strong, or Look at the slice, your feet were too open, I would cringe because I knew what he was going to do next.

It was not that the Old Man thought he knew everything. It was simply that he knew cause and effect, and was not averse to saying so. He also knew what he could prove.

On hearing a comment he did not like, made about the role of the grip, the stance, the swing plane, the elbow position or such things, he would walk up to those involved, take one of their clubs and prove that none of these technical aspects of the swing would necessarily cause the ball to do anything. On many occasions, I saw him take great pleasure in demonstrating this to anyone who was prepared to take a minute and stand and watch.

Taking each of these technical aspects to ridiculous lengths, he would still make the ball fly in a manner completely opposite to what would be expected. I can still see him standing there with his left foot drawn a full 12 inches back from a square position, making his stance a woefully open one for him as a right-hander; him then placing the clubhead so that it was pointing well to the right of the target, and asking, I should slice this, yes? Since the text books said ‘yes,’ that was what the golfers said, but the beautifully shaped draw he would then proceed to hit high into the darkening afternoon sky said otherwise.

After all of these demonstration shots he would tap the clubhead and say " This is all that matters…!’

His basic message was clear both to me and to those lucky enough to meet him: since the clubhead is the only thing which hits the ball, it was therefore logical to focus on that and a player’s ability to control that.

And through his demonstrations came the second - and perhaps more important - part of the message; namely that the clubhead being where, and how, it needs to be at the point of impact is more important than how it gets there.

As I heard him say many times in his slightly more eloquent moments, There is more to be gained from a study of the point of impact of the clubhead than from any study of its journey to that point.

Once I was able to hit the line on a basis consistent enough for the Old Man, and once my divots began to look better in terms of positioning, length and depth, I was told that the next stage would see us going over to the practise tee so that he could watch me hit golf balls.

Now, as is probably becoming clear but I will stress anyway, this point had not been reached either quickly or easily. To that point, me actually hitting golf balls had been done on the very clear understanding that I could hit some if I wanted to, but that he wasn’t interested in watching! So, for him to say that he actually intended to go with me to the practise tee, and watch me hit balls, had to mean something.

Hey..maybe I was progressing!

When it happened, the challenge was essentially the same. I had to hit the line - although now it was a line that had been painted on the grass of the practise tee - along which a few golf balls had been placed at about six inch intervals. Now, this was a real surprise.

Not only had I never heard of any player of my age being allowed to use the practise tee (it being reserved for adults), here I was - not even a member of the Club! These, together with the fact that I was about to be hitting balls from a line which someone had organised to be painted on the hallowed turf gave me the impression the Old Man was quite a somebody at the golf course.

Again the Old Man’s instructions were clear. I was not to care how, or where, the balls went. In fact he even encouraged me not to look up to see. When I swung the club, I was to look through the golf ball and see the line underneath. The image he wanted me to have was one of the golf ball simply getting in the way between the clubhead and the line underneath. To this day I can still remember how clear he made this image for me and how well the golf balls felt when I hit them, especially since I wasn’t really supposed to be thinking about trying to hit them at all.

In fact it was that ‘not hitting the ball’ feeling which really made the exercise fascinating.

I don’t know how long we spent doing this: time had a habit of disappearing on days like those. But I know I hit a lot of sets of ten balls, walked a long combined distance to pick them up…and I believe that the Old Man filled, smoked, re-filled and smoked his pipe in the period.

Although I was already capable of hitting some quite good shots, this thing that the Old Man was bringing to me - focusing totally on the point of impact - was raising my game to a whole new level. I still didn’t really know what he was doing - not in detail anyway, and it was probably better for me not to ask - but I had to reluctantly agree that it was working. And not once in all the work we’d done up to that point had the Old Man even mentioned the strength or weakness of my grip, how straight or bent my left arm was, or made comments on the width of my stance…nothing.

As the sessions continued, the routine changed a little. The Old Man moved away from his previous technique of just listening to the points