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By James M. Lane, USGTF Contributing Writer
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How It Began
Various authorities have credited any number of peoples
- Celts, Romans, Huns, or a band of leisure loving Visigoths - with the invention of golf
in its earliest form. But the story of golf instruction begins rightly in the medieval era
(no later than 1353), when golfers adopted the principle of allowing each team to hit a second
uninterrupted shot. Previously, teams of players would alternate hitting a ball back and forth
across a field. Strategy and technique went no further than devising the most efficient means
of bashing a ball over the heads of the opposition, preferably in the direction of the goal
line, or at least into some abyss from which the other team could not extract itself.
Strategy
With the adoption of the second shot,
and with the principle of each team playing it’s own ball, this
primeval game became golf and at the same time acquired a strategy,
something that it’s medieval rival, football, did not until the
invention of the scrimmage in the 19th century. It also rapidly
acquired such a popularity, which so utterly eclipsed the sport
of archery (which was vital to Scotland’s preparation for national
defense), that playing golf in Scotland was made a criminal offense
punishable by hanging. No idle threat that, for at least one poor
golfer did pay this sorry price for his round - but ultimately a
peace with England was achieved and the Scots devoted their renowned
intensity to the study of what would become their national game.
 Even More Strategy
Since that time, there doesn’t seem to be any aspect
of ball-striking or mental technique that hasn’t come under scrutiny, particularly in our
own highly scientific 21st century. Stance, grip alignment, swing plane, waggle, wrist cock,
shoulder turn, and angle of attack have all been addressed by the parade of teachers, visionaries,
kinesthetic, scientists, engineers, mystics, duffers, and well-meaning Uncle Bobs who have
over the past 600 years plunked a ball on the turf and offered the magic phrase "let
me show you. . ."
Golf Balls and Instruction
The show-and-tell of golf instruction took on new
importance in 1848 when, with the invention of the gutta percha ball (or "guttie"),
golf became both exportable and cheap. Prior to 1848, golf ball construction was a laborious
and costly art practiced by a handful of cottage manufacturers in the vicinity of Edinburgh
- and if a ball was expensive, freight was prohibitive. Golf at this time simply had no
chance to expand beyond the Scottish lowlands. Since all of golf was compacted into such
a tiny area, golfers were able to learn simply by imitating the great players of the day
on the handful of courses then in existence.
Expansion of the Game of Golf
The guttie changed all that. By 1865, the game had
expanded to England, Ireland, France, and India. These new clubs hired full-time professionals,
many of them expatriate Scots, and with them came the flowering of formal golf instruction
as the canny professionals undertook the task of teaching golf in foreign lands and foreign
conditions. The first book of golf instruction can be firmly dated to this period, with
the publication in 1857 of A Keen Hand, by H.B. Farnie. The 19th century was a time of slow
advancement in technique, with concentration primarily on a long-running disagreement as
to whether an open stance or a closed stance was the better way to address the guttie, which
for all it’s low cost was something of a dodo and difficult to put into the air. The controversy
was only truly resolved when the modern wound (Haskell) ball appeared in the early 1900’s
and made the guttie obsolete.
Advancement of Golf Instruction
At roughly the same point in time as
the Haskell, golf instruction was advanced even more directly by
the arrival of the touring professional golfer. Soaring popularity
and plummeting travel costs ushered in the barnstorming era when
golfers such as Harry Vardon could earn a living from personal appearances,
tournament purses, and exhibition matches, avoiding the low status
and even lower pay of the golf club professional.
Vardon's Successful Techniques
Vardon's tournament success and his
proselytizing work in far-flung places such as Canada and the United
States led to popular adoption of two of his innovative techniques
- a steady, rhythmic, and utterly simple swing technique, and the
overlapping (Vardon) grip, which is still the most popular method
of gripping a club. Vardon did not personally invent either - but
his success stamped them first with legitimacy and finally with
a certain inevitability as he racked up six British Open crowns
and the 1900 U.S. Open title.
Next: Part II
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