MIND CONTROL.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 18888, 31 December 1926, Page 13

MIND CONTROL.

IMPROVING AT GOLF. VALUE OF COMPETITIONS. (crrcuLi/r written ion th* pRBSi.) (By Harry Tardon.) The mental attitude towards golf is unquestionably an important factor in the player's progress, or lack of progress, at the game. People there may bo who cannot bring their temperaments under control. I onco had a pupil who. alter having been counselled many times not io swing back so furiously last, said with an exasperation as impetuous as his up-tnko of the club: —"I've been quick at everything all my life, and you can go to Iho Blue Alsatian Mountains (or something to that effect) if you want to make me slow now.'' But most people can be induced to master hot-headed instincts on the links. There are times when every one of us, champion or long-handicap player, has to luce a more than ordinarily important situation at golf. These occasions occur frequently in competitions, which constitute as fine a course of steps towards improvement as any in which the golfer can engage. The first thing that matters in such circumstances is iho frame of mind in which the player approaches the shots. Decisive independence of thought is a vital necessity.

As he walks up to his hall, he observes the kind of stroke that is needed. It, at this stage, he begins to think about alternative methods or to pay too much attention to the wellmeant advice of a caddie, the chances are that he will become confused. And then his nerve will go. Critical Putts. Let me tell a little story illustrating the value of what wo may call an undivided mind. In the first championship I ever won (and the first is by far the hardest to win) I had to play off with J. H. Taylor at Muirfield for tho title. We had tied in the competition proper. bearing the end, it was still a question as to who would triumph, and on ! the seventeenth green I was faced by a long putt which had (o be played over undulating ground. Immediately I decided just which slopes I should take in order to reach the hole. My brother Tom. who was carrying for hie, pointed out a line which was entirely different from that which i! fancied. It was a critical putt, for if one went the wrong way the ball might start off a slope and finish a considerable distance from the hole. I had the profoundest respect for my brother's gifts as a putter (there have been few better than Tom on th« green), but I did not want to I* shaken at this stage. '-'No," I said, "I'm going my own way." The putt was holed, and it practically settled the championship. Just cusedness, perhaps, but it is a useful trait in the golfer. I have seen men almost trembling with excitement a* the critical point in a contest, and yet possessed of such command over themselves as to observe at once the best thing to do and to play the shot perfectly. For the great majority of persons, it is in connexion with tdiOrt putts that nerrefl attain their most painful activity. There is nothing else in Sport quite like the short putt at golfYou know that there can bo no reasonable excuse for failing to knock n bull into a hole four feet distant, and yet that there is a considerable chance of failing. Here, perhaps, I may bo permitted to remark, that the higher the reputation of the player, and the more, therefore, that is expected of hfm. tile greater are tlie trials of the short putt. For all the skill that it require?, lie has no advantage over th# 2-1-liandieap man. and lie realises that, if lie misses it. thorn will he no ehsnee !of recovery. It will be a hota lost or ti stroke gone. Forgetting the Rival. The best frame of mind for a competition is one in which the player sets out with the quiet resolve io accomplish the' shots just as he would do in a friendly round on an odd afternoon— tr> concentrate on his own game rather than to watch his rival. I must confess"that, every now .and again, it is difficult. When J. •B. Taylor and I fought out the finish of the open championship at Prestwick in 1914, a "nerve-jump" in my right arm that had disappeared for months «uddenly reasserted itself. We were coupled on the last day. He was as well aware as I that if the distress became serious I could miss putts down to six inches; it was strange to be walking along obsessed with the thought that not the smallest inkling of this development must be allowed to reach Taylor's ears, lest it should stimulate him to believe, as almost certainly it would have done, that he had me as good as beaten. Perhaps it was just this diversion from the knowledge of the possibilities <it the "jump" itself that enabled me practioally to overcome it and to struggle home first.

As a test of nerve that last day's play at Prestwick was far and away the most trying that I remember. In know I played one shot without seeing the ball at all. It was buried in fine, loose sand in a bunker to the left of the eleventh green, and olose to the face of a hazard. The sand was scraped away from the top of the ball, but it was so loose that it dosed over the object again. I could not wait; I swung, guessing and hoping, and war fortunate enough to' hit the shot all right. That was an exceptional occasion. In the ordinary way, I bear constantly in mind trie conviction that the best way to win an important event is to play just as one would play a private round at home, and not endeavour to accomplish the performance of a life-time. There i.« such a thing as trying too hard. It begets anxiety, which is usually fatal. I wa» guilty of it in the United States open championship at Brooklyn, Massachusetts, in 1913. and paid the penalty. That was a lesson I shall never forget.