GOLF.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 193, 4 January 1913, Page 7

GOLF.

Mr. P. A. Vaile's book, "The Soul of Golf," has now been published, and is, together, .with the New Zealand author's 'criticism of Harry Vardon's la-test book, "How to Play Golf," causing.mucli controversy. The strongest charge which Mr. Vaile anake's against the leading professionals, Braid, Taylor and Vardon, and the two famous amateurs, Messrs Walter-J. Travis arid Horace Hutchinson, is thait they play the game one way and write it another. In "The .Soul of Golf" Tie selected these five players, and showed that they instruct their readers to put'their weight on the right foot and leg at the top of the swing, which Mr. Vaile has declared in "'Modern Golf" and his recently .published book to be utterly unsound golf. The Times', in the course of a review of ''The Soul of Golf," says in this connection that Mr. Vaile has ''"been happily inspired in exposing the fallacy of the weight being all upon the right foot at the top of the swing." In "How to Play Golf' Harry Vardon explains that the push shot, which he declares to be the master stroke in golf, is played by conning down on top of the ball, and then twisting the Wade of the club to get backspin. Reviewing the great golfer's book in the Empire Magazine, Mr. Vaile showed that this was an' error. This so nettled Vardon that he issued a challenge through Golf Illustrated to Mr. Vaile to meet him on the links and play the shot in the way Mr. Vaile says it should be played. But the -New Zealand author pointed out that the question was not -the way he played the shot, but the way Vardon plays it. and 'has offered to meet Vardon on the links and show hitn that he cannot play his shot nor the pull in the manner in which he describes it in his book. As regards the push shot, the Field says that it does not believe Vardon's explanation can possible be correct, and it adds: ''Clearly the ball must •be struck below its centre, or it would not rise at all." It will thus be seen that in two most important particulars Mr. Vaile has already, as the American say,, "made good" against formidable opposition.