1957-1982 BRITISH CUSSEDNESS... AMERICAN DISEASE
Prior to his death in 2017, coaching institution John Jacobs talked about a spell when a rules schism on the size of the ball a ected swing technique on either side of the Atlantic and in Australia.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, golf technique became somewhat split into two camps ... separated by an ocean. As golf spread through America in the early 20th Century, the prestigious courses of the southern states began to find that the small ball – 1.62in – would nestle into their Bermuda grass. The clamour they made for a bigger ball bore fruit as early as 1931, when the United States Golf Association sanctioned the 1.68-inch ball. But in Britain, with its tight seaside fescues, the change was resisted. The smaller ball was longer, spun less and flew lower, and so was more suited to windy links golf. Not to mention all the British ball manufacturers, who were busy making fortunes with the small ball. Ultimately, the British PGA would not seriously experiment with the bigger ball until 1968; and though the R&A made the larger ball mandatory for The Open in 1974, they wouldn’t actually outlaw the small ball until as late as 1988. The British eventually
relented because there was no getting away from the fact that the bigger ball helped produce a technique clearly suited to better golf – a notion underlined by America’s dominance of the Ryder Cup throughout this period.
The small ball, you see, led to independent hand action, and its concomitant inconsistency. Course conditioning then was not what it is now, and on all but the tightest fairways the ball sat down in the grass. I’d compare it to hitting out of semi-rough today, with the ball’s equator on the grassline. You had to make sure you hit down, to pinch it out. It promoted a narrow, handsy action in which you just clipped the ball forwards. Neither did the ball spin, so we were having to pitch it short and judge the bounce. Sometimes it would stop and plug.
I witnessed the superior technique of the Americans first hand when I visited the United States in the 1950s. Americans like Byron Nelson and Ben Hogan clearly drove the ball forwards with both the body and the club; the right side came through as well. The Americans hit it forwards, the bottom of the arc fairly level. It was a swing that produced more height, more power and lower scores.
I left with the feeling that the British would always be in the second division until we changed the ball. Peter Alliss, for example, had a lovelylooking golf swing, but it was a bit narrow; he was one of the first to suer with the big ball. Henry Cotton was the premier player of the era, but he was all hands, hands, hands. But while this dichotomy was being played out, a golfer emerged who would have a massive eect on the way people swung the club – and not necessarily a positive one.
Jack Nicklaus burst on to the scene by winning the 1962 US Open aged 22. As he would later write in his book Golf My Way, Jack believed that the more upright the swing plane, the longer the club would stay on a straight path through the ball – and the greater the chances of a straight shot.
The concept of hitting the ball straight by keeping everything square for as long as possible is a seductive one, but in a game where you are hitting the ball from the side, it never made any sense to me. Yet Jack was no exception; throughout the years I have spent coaching good players, I have found that most are frightened to death of swinging flat. They mix upright with straight; “the straighter the swing, the straighter I’ll hit it”. I always felt this was wrong, and that the clubface position at impact will determine the shot more than anything else, and it is pleasing to discover that this has been backed up by modern launch monitors. It is also good to see that this hatred of swinging flat has changed hugely in more recent times, with Matt Kuchar and Rickie Fowler shining examples. Jack’s swing was pure rock-and-block. He set a very upright shoulder turn by bending over the ball, the nape of his neck parallel to the ground. “You’re supposed to be hitting it Jack, not sning the thing!” I would periodically tell him.
Going back, his shoulders tilted and the clubface stayed square to the target, but shut to the plane of movement. Most golfers, when they are too square, will run into their lead side coming down. But Jack managed to clear his body with an aggressive leg action. I never once saw him run into himself. This leg action dropped the club
NICKLAUS SET A VERY UPRIGHT SHOULDER TURN BY BENDING OVER THE BALL, THE NAPE OF HIS NECK PARALLEL TO THE GROUND. HE LOOKED LIKE HE WAS SNIFFING THE BALL.
underneath the ideal plane, a position that should have caused a block to the right, yet such was Jack’s strength and ability that he was able to save the shot consistently from here.
Eventually Jack would get a lot more orthodox, standing more upright and creating a more natural plane of movement. But as a result of his early success, golf was taught horribly for around 15 years. In 1970, Jim Flick and Dave Aultman’s book Square to Square recommended a weak left hand grip, and a maintenance of a square and flat left wrist dragged through by the legs and back. The technique caught on to such an extent that I labelled it “The American Disease”. The push fade, a miscue we rarely saw, was suddenly commonplace. And, of course, the strains put through the body, created by trying to swing powerfully straight through something while standing to the side of it, led to much pain and, sadly, the shortening of careers. Yet such was Nicklaus’ influence that its popularity endured. Seve’s early action borrowed much from Nicklaus. He got too much underneath like Nicklaus, but his brothers warned against changing him.
The early Nick Faldo was also too straight. I remember telling him to grab an 8-iron. “The bottom of the club aims at the target,” I told him. “Take a right angle from the top of the face: that’s the path for the takeaway. Just follow that line and you have a backswing.” Tom Watson has sworn by that, and I believe that has contributed to Tom’s longevity.
But then, in the early ’80s, David Leadbetter came along, turned Faldo into a major winner and the golf swing jumped again. The favoured technique got more rotary and, thankfully, its plane came down.
For a while people were taught to do everything but hit the ball. But golf has always been what the ball does, which is dependent on the impact. Watch the ball flight and know the impact. That was my view throughout this misguided period of golf technique – and has always remained so.
Next month: 1983-2019: Faldo, Woods and the rise of the machines.