Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1922 edition. Excerpt: ... Chapter V HOW TO USE THE MASHIE WITH HINTS ON PRACTISING AND SOME ADVENTURES THE mashie shot in golf is a specialised shot. In its main features it is a law unto itself. I have heard people say that the swing for every club in the bag is the same. They declare that the differences which present themselves to the eye in a first-class player's way of managing his set of implements--his less upright and more upright swings, according to the club that is in use, and the effects of those swings on the flight of the ball--are merely the results of variations in the lengths and lofts of the clubs. I do not desire to criticise that judgment at all severely. Once you know the correct swing for driving, you are on a very fair way to mastering all the shots in the game, and I agree that, when using the cleek, mid-iron, and kindred clubs for plain straightforward shots, you need not be conscious of attempting anything very different from that which you essayed with the driver. Such changes as are desirable are matters of stance rather than swing, as I have explained in the chapters concerning those clubs. When you take in hand the mashie, I do not suggest for a moment that you should blot out your prevailing idea of the swing and try to substitute another. But what I do say is that it is a specialised shot that you make with the mashie; that if the swing is the same, only on a smaller scale, as with the clubs of longer range, you are never so safe as when you produce that swing in a way specially adapted to the club. I am assuming that you do not take full bangs with the mashie, like a slogger at cricket making a death-or-glory swipe at the ball in the hope of carrying not only the fieldsmen and the spectators but the pavilion as well. Some golfers...