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The reason the vast majority of golfers have such trouble timing a shot satisfactorily is that, subconsciously or consciously, they try to regulate the speed of the club head directly with their hands, without using the intermediary links of the hips, shoulders, and arms. When they do this they get an early but never very great reaction, in terms of speed, from the club head.

This is the old familiar “hitting too soon” or “hitting from the top.” When the intermediary links are used and the chain reaction is allowed to take its course, there is a late reaction by the club head, which then accelerates to great speed at impact. There is a common expression to describe the player who uses the chain reaction: “He waits on the club.” It may not be grammatical but it is descriptive.

What this all comes down to is, the expression of good timing is the late hit. The expression of poor timing is the early hit.Here, as we discuss timing, we isolate one key move that leads to good or improved timing. It is this: Let the body—not the hands—start moving the club on the downswing.

Once you can do this you are on the road to vastly better golf. You will have the feeling that you are starting down with arms and club close to the body—close to the axis— where they should be at this time.

So much has been written over the years about the importance of the hands in swinging the club, that many of us are entirely too hand conscious. A standing vote of thanks is due Bill Casper for stating, in a description of his swing as it reached the hitting position: “At this point my body is still swinging the club.” Many of us have been sure of that for years, but Casper, to our knowledge, was the first of the top tournament pros with the courage to say it.

The hands will take over soon enough, as an automatic, reflex action. The problem is to keep them out while still keeping them moving. If we keep them out while our body moves the club from the top, our timing will be far better.

Rhythm and Tempo

Rhythm and tempo can be considered together, because in golf they mean very nearly the same thing.

We mentioned earlier that the rhythm in the swing of a good player is noticed because of the measured cadence in the upward and downward movement of the club. In his swing there appears to be—and there is—a definite relationship in time between his backswing and his downswing. It is measured in two parts, from the time the club leaves the ball until it stops at the top of the backswing, and from the time it starts to move again until it hits the ball. The club does have to stop at the top, of course, for the instant required to reverse its direction, whether we feel it or realize it or we don’t. No object, not even a golf club, can be traveling in opposite directions at once.

These two segments of the swing can be accurately timed by a motion-picture camera, by the simple process of counting the number of pictures the camera takes during each segment. Such a count shows that the backswing of a good player takes almost exactly twice as long as the downswing.

This two-to-one ratio is the rhythm of the swing. The total time or tempo of the swing will vary with different good players, but the ratio or rhythm will not. Nor will it

vary from club to club. The ratio will be the same for the 8 iron as it is for the driver. The tempo of the swing will not change, either, for the individual player.

Whenever we go to a golf tournament and see a really good player hit the ball, we receive two vivid impressions. The first is how far the ball goes with seemingly so little effort. The second is of a certain measured cadence in the upward and downward movement of the club. Both are accurate impressions.

Now if we happen to be on the practice tee, where we can watch this player hit shot after shot, we will notice two other things. One is that he swings all his clubs at about the same speed; he doesn’t seem to hit the 3 wood any harder than he hits the 7 iron. The second thing we notice, when we let our gaze wander to other players practicing, is that while most of them are deliberate, there are differences in their swinging speeds.

Timing is the answer to the first accomplishment—the long hit with little effort. Rhythm produces the measured cadence in the upward and downward movement of the club. And the differences we notice in swinging speed among other players are differences in tempo.

Nearly all good players will give us impressions of timing and rhythm. The more graceful the player, the more vivid the impression will be. Sam Snead, among the moderns, is the perfect example. Among the giants of the past, Bob Jones’s swing was once called the “poetry of motion,” and the late Macdonald Smith was probably the most effortless swinger who ever played the game. The players of today swing harder at the ball than did their predecessors, with the result that theirs is more of a hitting than a swinging action.

Yet the ball still flies out much farther than it should, for the effort the player seems to be putting into it. This is very marked in the graceful players of smaller stature, such as Gene Littler, 1961 National Open champion, and Dow Finsterwald, former National PGA champion.

Timing

The answer to the effort-distance puzzle being timing, just what is timing? For one thing, it is a word that has been used more loosely, perhaps, than any other in golf literature. We have been blandly told that we should work to improve our timing, that our timing is off, that without good timing we cannot hope to play well. But there, having given the word the once-over-lightly treatment, the oracles have left us. They have never adequately explained timing or told us what we should do to improve ours. Our private guess is that they don’t know themselves what it is.

A dictionary will tell you that timing is: “The regulating of the speed of a motion, stroke, or blow, so that it reaches its maximum at the correct moment.” In golf, obviously, this would mean regulating the speed of the club head so as to cause it to reach its maximum as it hits the ball.

The key phrase is “regulating of the speed.” The better the speed is regulated, the better the timing; the poorer the regulation, the poorer the timing. It is here that at least 95 per cent of all golfers have their worst trouble.

They have it because the regulation of the speed depends not on how the club head is manipulated by the hands but on how and when other parts of the swinging system operate: the hips, the shoulders, the arms, the hands. If these move in the right way and in the right order, they will automatically regulate the speed of the club head so that it reaches its maximum as it hits the ball. It is, in effect, a chain reaction of movement, with the club head getting the final effect.

With the early backward break you do not get a bouncing effect at the top. From the time the hands are hip high only the arms, actuated by the shoulders, are moving the club. The club itself is not moving fast as it reaches the limit of the back swing, and there is a noticeable but not violent pull on the hands and wrists when it gets there.

Hence there is no rebound. The club starts down solely in response to the shoulder and hip action—and we are off to a late hit instead of an early one.

Since the late hit is the true manifestation of good timing, you have, right there, one reason the early backward break promotes good timing. The fact that there is no rebounding from the top, and no hurried effort then to get the club head to the ball, is also why this system makes it easier to establish a good, even rhythm.

But, you will say, the pros have no trouble with the late break and this rebounding of the club head. No, they don’t, because they subconsciously time their movements with it and also because they “tame” the club head by keeping a tight grip at the top. This grip is tight enough so that the club never gets away from them. But for the average player the timing is much more difficult.

The feeling that you have to move the body to get the club down to the ball, has its origin in the fact that for the last half of the backswing you are moving the club largely with your body and shoulders.

You are not moving it by breaking your wrists. So, since you have brought the club back with your body and shoulders, the natural thing to do is simply to leave them in command and start the downswing with them. This is exactly what should be done—the hips sliding laterally, and turning and rocking the shoulders to bring the club down.

The wrists leading at impact with no temptation to pronate or supinate are accounted for largely by the position the early break puts the hands and wrists into, aided by the fact that the body is swinging the club during a large segment of the downswing. With the perfect late hit, when the club catches up with the hands at the last possible moment, the hands will always be slightly in front at impact. The club has caught up enough to strike a straight, solid blow, but it doesn’t get exactly even with the hands until slightly after the ball is hit.

This will vary among the top pros, but pictures of many of them, taken at impact, show the left arm and the club in a curving line, not a straight line. Bill Casper and Wes Ellis are two examples.

The fact that a solid contact is produced on the centre of the club face is, really, the cumulative effect of many of the movements which have preceded it. Whenever the hit is late and from the inside the contact is much more likely to be accurate than if we hit too soon and/or from the outside.