WORDS should always be handled with care, which isn't easy in these days of incessant nattering when a simple yes or no will never do if there is time to sneak in a Reith Lecture or two.
Americans – politicians in particular – have taken some awful liberties with the English language, but at grass roots level, they have an easy way with the terse phrase which is refreshing and effective.
The day after Jimmy Carter's ill-fated att
empt to retrieve some hostages from the desert in 19 oatcake, a TV interviewer was waylaying office workers in a New York street in an attempt to find out how the then President's actions were being received.
A very smart young lady hove in sight and was asked what she thought about things. "Aw, don't be too hard on the little guy," she said, "he's got the IQ of a fern."
On the golf course recently, I ran into someone who found it necessary to say something about my swing. He didn't have to say anything, but he just couldn't help himself. I can't get too het up about it, for I do it myself. Most golfers do it from time to time.
They notice something about someone else's swing and are overcome by an irresistible desire to step in and explain to whoever's doing the swinging, what he or she is doing wrong – or even right, it matters little. Either way, it can be upsetting for, though it might be well-intentioned, advice thus proferred can set in train potentially damaging thought processes.
Usually, the unsought advice has been triggered by a fault and, therefore, tends to be offered at the worst possible moments – moments when the swinger is at a low ebb and has reached the point where he loathes all human company and particularly the company of those he's playing with. Most of all, he loathes the warm, caring and sympathetic specimen who writhes before him insisting on telling him what he's doing wrong. It would be different if the person doling out the advice was Tiger Woods, but it rarely is. Often the adviser is playing worse golf than the golfer being "helped" and that simply deepens the rift between the two. The phrase: "Physician heal thyself" springs to mind, though in this case it might well be amended to "shoot thyself".
As it happened, I fell foul of my latest dose of on-course advice at a time when I'd been in reasonable form. I'd gone back to the closed stance of my boyhood and it was working in so far as the swing felt freer, the backswing fuller and there was a zip about the whole thing which gave grounds for optimism.
On the day in question, I hadn't been doing too well, but then that is not an unusual state of affairs. I don't do too well most of the time, and because I hadn't been doing too well that day was no reason for the sort of emergency infusion of helpful hints to which I was subjected.
I'd pushed a tee-shot out a bit when my playing partner made his move. The shot was not badly struck, just pushed right. Straight, but squint, if you follow. "Just stay right there," intoned my companion. "Do you know the line between your feet points away out to the right? No wonder you've pushed it out there. You're standing all wrong." As he said it, he had about him the kind of smugness Archimedes might have exuded when he stood up in his bath and yelled: "Eureka, I have found the soap."
It was annoying, because I knew I was aiming right. That's what a closed stance is all about. The right foot was drawn back from the line and I was aiming right. I didn't need anyone to tell me that. The point is that the method had been working well until the push and, of course, it had to be the day Sherlock was in attendance. The damage was done and it's been uphill ever since.
During the 1972 Wills tournament at Dalmahoy, Peter Thomson was using a strange putter, one with a long-bladed bronze head, and someone wondered if he'd been having trouble on the greens. Had he been told, he was asked, that he had a tendency to address the ball on the greens with the toe of the putter off the ground? The five-times Open champion replied that all was well on the greens and that the only time anyone told him the toe of his putter was off the ground was after he'd missed the odd putt. When they were going in, nobody said a word. He then went on to win the tournament with customary aplomb.
As might be expected, Ben Hogan was careful with words. The story goes that in 1956 when he was flying back to the USA after he and Sam Snead had won the Canada Cup at Wentworth, Hogan said to Snead that he reckoned it would take only a small swing alteration to make Snead the greatest golfer in the world. "What is it?" asked Sam. After a moment's thought, Hogan shook his head, said "Naw," and went back to his book.
The full article contains 890 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
