Iron (golf)

“ Even on the stillest of still days the shot is one which can scarce be approached without a tremor. The distance can be compassed with a firm pitch with an iron club of moderate loft, and the green is undeniably of adequate size, but it is ringed round, save immediately in front, with a series of bunkers very deep and horrible, and, to increase our terror, the ground ‘draws’ unmistakably towards them. Often as we stand on the tee in a frenzied attitude, trying to steer the ball to safety with vain gesticulations of the club, we see it light upon the turf, and breathe a sigh of relief. ”

“ There was also a weapon known as the driving putter, which was just like the ordinary putter save that its shaft was longer and more supple. It became, in fact, very nearly a short shafted driver, and its special purpose was to drive a low ball against the wind when there was no bunker to carry. Of iron clubs there were the cleek, the iron and the niblick. It was even then possible to go into the niceties of driving-iron and lofting-iron, but many a golfer thought his set perfect and complete with a single iron, for all purposes. ”

“ Now in both these cases, when the greens are very slow and when they are extremely fast, the best putter for them is one with very considerable loft on the face, and it will often be found that there is nothing better than a fairly straight-faced iron, or an ordinary cleek, if it is big enough in the face to suit the player. With this club and its great dragging power, the effect seems to be practically to reduce the distance between the ball and the hole. ”

“ To push the ball too far out to the right is to make our second shot unpleasantly long, and it is a hard shot, one that we desire to make as short as possible. Bunkers guard the corners of the green, and the putting is billowy and difficult; in fact, a four is far more likely to win the hole than to halve it. There are plenty more good holes: the ninth, a short hole, which demands the most accurate of iron shots, and the fourth, with its green on a sloping, narrow neck among the hills. ”

“ However much a club were laid back it would be impossible to play these shots properly if no under-spin were given to the ball, and it seems to be a great advantage of having the faces of iron clubs grooved or dotted that it helps the club to grasp the ball thoroughly while this under-spin is being imparted to it, so that the full amount is given to it, and none is wasted through the ball slipping on the face. ”

“ It is, therefore, no longer necessary to say that golf is not a highly developed and scientific sort of hockey, or bandy-ball. Still, there be some to whom the processes of the sport are a mystery, and who would be at a loss to discriminate a niblick from a bunker-iron. The thoroughly equipped golf-player needs an immense variety of weapons, or implements, which are carried for him by his caddie—a youth or old man, who is, as it were, his esquire, who sympathizes with him in defeat, rejoices in his success, and aids him with such advice as his superior knowledge of the ground suggests. ”

“ If, indeed, we can send the ball flying like an arrow from the bow, we may make for the little narrow neck, where safety lies; but it is far more probable that our ball will trickle gently down hill to the left, where a stream and a surrounding marsh await it. Save, therefore, when with a strong wind behind we may hope to get over all our troubles with one vast blow, we must play prudently from the tee with an iron club, and we shall still be able to reach the green very comfortably in our second. ”

“ In the lawn-tennis ball and racket one gets a wonderfully firm grip, and it is astonishing with what accuracy one can place a lawn-tennis ball by means of cut, but the vast majority of iron clubs which are used are insufficiently and unscientifically marked. ”

“ I gave for it, in exchange, an old and much mended spoon, and it was that iron putter which I have used for forty years since, which has been copied countless times, of which the replicas are in many hands and many lands, and one copy of which, adorned and glorified, used to lie, and may so lie still, for all I know, on the table on the occasion of the dinners of the Match Dining Club. At that first date of its [Pg 39] resurrection (Mr. Lamont could give no account of how it came to his possession) it was greeted with unhallowed laughter, and so too whenever I brought it out to putt with it. ”

“ After this slight alteration the ball flew splendidly, whether off wood or iron clubs, neither too high nor too low, but quite straight, and with the very slight rise towards the end of its carry that is the essence of perfect flight in a golf ball, some of the carries when measured from the tee being well over two hundred yards. ”

“ They also go remarkably well off the iron clubs, and thus make the game easier by placing the player within an iron shot of the hole at a distance at which he would have to use a wooden club if he were playing with a solid gutta-percha ball. They also tend to make the game more easy by the fact that if they are at all mis-hit they go much better than a gutta-percha ball similarly inaccurately struck. As a slight set-off against these qualities, the ball, because of the greater liveliness, is not quite so good for the short game as the solid ball ”

“ A few men of the old school, as Sir Robert Hay, continued to play it to admiration, but the genius of young Tommy Morris had already initiated a whole school of disciples into the mode of approaching with iron clubs, so that the baffy was out of vogue. The professionals that came from the north to visit us at Westward Ho! as well as our resident Johnnie Allan himself, were all followers and exponents of the relatively new mode of jabbing the ball up to the hole with the iron clubs and with a great divot of turf sent hurtling into the air after the ball. Thus the green was approached ”

“ Speaking roughly, the brassy is first choice, followed by cleek, medium iron, lofter, mashie, and niblick, the last being used only in the most desperate of straits, and where nothing more is expected than to get the ball upon the course again.
The fascination of golf lies in its variety and difficulty. If it were only a question of holing balls, one long hole laid out over a smooth meadow would be all that would be necessary. ”

“ Obviously, when either of these faults is committed, the club head is twisted, and nothing is more impossible than to get in a perfect iron shot when these things are done. I am making much ado about what may seem after all to be an elementary fault, but a long experience of the wayward golfer has made it clear to me that it is not only a common fault, which is accountable for much defective play with the iron, but that it is often unsuspected, and lurks undiscovered and doing its daily damage for weeks or even months. The sole of the iron must pass over the turf exactly parallel with it. ”

“ The fault I have to find with the iron play of most golfers is that it comes at the wrong time. I find them lunging out with all their power at full shots with their irons when they might be far better employed in effecting one of those pretty low shots made with the cleek at the half swing. It is not in the nature of things that the full iron should be as true as the half cleek, where there is such a reserve of strength, and the body, being less in a state of strain, the mind can be more concentrated on straightness and the accurate determination of length. ”

“ There are many varieties of every class of iron clubs, and their gradations of weight, of shape, of loft, and of all their other features, are delicate almost to the point of invisibility; but the old golfer who has an affection for a favourite club knows when another which he handles differs from it to the extent of a single point in these gradations. Some golfers have spent a lifetime in the search for a complete set of irons, each one of which was exactly its owner's ideal, and have died with their task still unaccomplished. ”

“ When I mention that useful iron-headed club that goes by the simple name of iron, I am conscious that I bring forward a subject that is dear to the hearts of many golfers who have not yet come to play with certainty with all their instruments. For the iron is often the golfer's favourite club, and it has won this place of affection in his mind because it has been found in the course of long experience that it plays him fewer tricks than any of the others—that it is more dependable. ”

“ On the green her actions are as characteristic as ever. In running the ball up to the hole she either hits the ground behind it and sends it six inches, or plays a shot which necessitates the departure of her long-suffering partner, niblick in hand and scarlet in the face, to an adjacent bunker. Short putts she invariably holes out by an ingenious and unblushing push-stroke, which no one has the heart to question or the courage to criticise. So the game proceeds. It is not golf, but then you never expected it to be. ”

“ It is easy to take light balloons and give them back-spin and show that it influences their trajectories to such an extent that they will go behind the point where they were struck, but a golf ball is a very small, hard, and heavy thing, and by the time that its back-spin begins to exert its influence in a marked manner on its flight it has travelled a considerable distance and the rate of spin will have materially diminished, so that no golfer need ever be afraid of applying too much back-spin to his drive. ”

“ After a golf course has been in use for a short time, it will be noticed that the parts which suffer most are the places from which approach shots are made to the greens, and the putting greens themselves. The use of heavy irons is very injurious to the soft turf, and players should always make it a point to replace any sod they may have torn up by careless or poor strokes. When a green gets badly worn it is usually advisable to change the location of the hole to another part, and replace it in its original position after the turf has recovered some of its original good condition. ”

“ Now with regard to putting drag on a long put, it should be obvious to any one that, considering the roughness of the green, the extreme roughness of the ball and its comparatively light weight in proportion to its size, it would be impossible to make that ball retain any considerable measure of back-spin over any appreciable distance of the green. The idea is so repugnant to common sense and practical golf that it has always been a matter of astonishment to me to think that it could have prevailed so much as it has. ”

“ But when there are none of these difficulties besetting him, it may be said that generally the stance most suited to a stroke with the niblick is similar to that which would be taken for a long shot with an iron, except perhaps that the player should stand a little nearer to the ball, so that he may be well over it while making his swing. The most important respect in which the swing differs from that of the iron is that the club is brought up much straighter. ”

“ For all ordinary stymies it is without doubt the most delicate and accurate stroke which can possibly be played, and the manner of playing it, after a golfer has once conquered the force of habit which tends to make him raise his club from the earth immediately he leaves his ball, is very simple. The mashie is drawn back from the ball in a perfectly straight line, and with the sole of it practically brushing, or no more than just clearing the green. ”

“ The distance to be covered is always well within the capabilities of the club, or it would not be employed, and the average golfer of whom we speak, who has still a handicap of several strokes, is usually tolerably well satisfied if with it he places the ball anywhere on the green, from which point he will be enabled to hole out in the additional regulation two strokes. And the green is often enough a large place, so the iron is fortunate in its task. ”

“ In all games of skill, and in all sports where the object is propelling anything to a given point, one always tries, almost instinctively, to get the eye as much in a line with the ball or missile and the objective point as possible. This is seen in throwing a stone, aiming a catapult, a gun, or an arrow, in cueing at a billiard ball, and in many other ways, but in golf it is impracticable. The player must make his stroke with his eye anywhere from four to six feet away from his little club face. One may say that this is so in hockey, cricket, and lawn-tennis. ”

“ If one desires to put any run on one's ball more than is obtained by the method of striking it which I have stated, it is always open to one to play the put a little after the club has reached the lowest point in its swing,—that is to say, as the putter is ascending, but this is practically unnecessary. If one requires a little more run on the ball it is best obtained by making the stroke a little stronger. Any attempt whatever to do anything by altering the angle of the face of the club during impact is utterly beyond the realm of practical golf. ”

“ Before driving he is privileged to place the ball on a tiny mound of earth or sand which is called a “tee.” The players drive in order and then continue making shots toward the hole until finally they have all “holed out” by “putting” their balls into the hole, and the lowest score wins the hole.
Golf is a game in which form is more essential than physical strength and which is adapted for elderly people as well as the young. The wooden clubs are usually made with either dogwood or persimmon heads and with split hickory handles or shafts. The handles are usually wound with a leather grip. ”