Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1910-07-17
SETTLED STYLE ESSENTIAL
IN PRACTICING AT GOLF
Amateurs Have Tendency Of Taking to
Pieces Style Which They Have Ac-
quired- Swing May Vary Much.

NEW YORK, July 16.-According to a
well known student of golf, the first and
most important essential of practice is
that the player should have acquired
something like a settled style. This style,
moreover, must be the result Of close and
patient application, for before the educa-
tional advantages Of practice can be real
ICED with any permanent value all the
technique Of the golfers system of play
must be in effect consolidated.
One of the chief drawbacks to success
with majority of amateurs who devote
a great deal of time to practice throughout
the year is the tendency to engage In the
disturbing process of taking to pieces and
building up afresh many of the essentials
of such a style as they may have for
merly acquired. By so doing their style is
always undergoing a process or change,
with result that practice rounds under
taken with the object Of perfecting the
delicate difficulties of the golfing art are
found to be of little relative educational
value to the permanent progress of the
player If the object of sustained and
frequent practice is to make the player
more proficient as golfer 1t Is OBVIOUS
that some settled policy OF striking the
ball should have been previously adopted.
The swing may be either a full one
round the body, Or shorter one round
the shoulders, but in either case the es-
sential Of productive practice is that IL
must be based upon one or the other
style, or, at any rate, that the player
should have mastered the first elements
Of knowing how to grasp the club and to
address his body to the ball. 1t must ne
the height of folly on the part OF any
golfer in the course of his practice. either
in private matches or in the course of q
hn &c a
picking to pieces the methods In which
he already plays many shots satisfac-
torily, in order to substitute what ne
wrongly conceives to be a better method
of playing these shots.
Things to Be Remembered.
Practice carried out on such principles
as these must obviously become deleter-
ious. In the first place, the player had
formerly acquired the art OF playing
shots on a certain manner which was In
all respects suited to his popularity of
swing and physical attachments. With
the object of embodying in his style the
more SNOWY way Of playing shot by
another player, or by some professional
the player who is anxious to add this
shot to his equipment forgets that the art
has been acquired by a different system
Of practice, that 1t is due largely to IN
SIlnCClVe lIulIdtlOLl, anu ludl IL 10 OAiO "a
those inseparable pieces OF golHng char-
acter which are constantly revealed "
good as we'll as bad players
Another element Of practice not less
essential than that Of building it up on
some sort Of settled style is that it
should be carried out with the whole
hearted object of mastering the difficulty.
There are many golfers today who are
quite conscious of their inability to play
certain shots with any fair amount OF
success. They are not only conscious or
their own weakness, but they do not take
any particular pains to conceal from OPP
ponents that the best way in which to
overcome certain difficulties of lie are
quite beyond their skill.
Take, for example, one OF the most ire
Quently recurring difficulties wherein
practice Is rarely made a settled pchcy
on the part Of majority OF PLAYERS: II
is the art of getting ball out OF deep
sand pit with one shot. The new class,
of bunker which is being laid down with
SO much profusion is without doubt q
more fearsome hazard to the majority OF
present-day golfers than many Of the
renowned hazards which have hitherto
played a poetical and terrorizing part In
the tales of our golfng literature.
Those Difficult Traps.
These new traps are not only being
made deep, but they are for the most
part built up with a high perpendicular
face on the side approaching the hole.
If one cares to spend a few minutes here
and there on one of those green's watch