If you find you are going off your game these are the things you must run over in your mind and in the order of their importance. Do not change your stance and swing. Apply these three items in this order and you will get "back" again.

It is the confusion between pushing and lifting, of which the player is perfectly conscious through his sense of touch or feeling, which makes the "timing" of the maximum effort so difficult to accomplish. Very few players have thought out these two distinct efforts, and it is the struggle of the two sets of muscles for mastery which is responsible for so much lost power, those which are used in lifting being opposed to those which are used in pushing.

If you were to grasp with both hands a pole about an inch in diameter, firmly fastened to the ground and to the ceiling, and attempt to push it downward you would find that it would use one set of muscles and to lift or push it upward would use an entirely different set. When you pushed downward it would take most of the weight from your legs. When you tried to lift or push up-ward it would leave all your weight upon your legs, and in addition the amount of extra weight corresponding to the amount of energy you were exerting.

A golf swing is one of the most complicated things to study, because the motion is made in a circle, but the maximum power is exerted in either one way or the other, lifting or pushing down, according to the peculiar physique of the player and the style he has adopted. The dub tries to use beth at once. The average player compromises and tries first a little of' the down-ward push and then a little of the lift, and to do this he has to shift his head and body to allow for whichever set of muscles he is compelled to use. This moving or shifting results in disturbing the view of the ball, preventing him from seeing it clearly, and naturally makes it extremely difficult to hit it accurately.

Players must make up their minds that either one system or the other must be sacrificed. If you are to use a lift, you can accomplish nothing by attempting to lift before your club head reaches the ball. If you are going to push, you must hold back your maximum effort until the club head reaches the ball, or you will have nothing in reserve to keep the club head against the ball long enough to accumulate power and the follow through is of no use.

Mere motion, when not backed up by weight, will not transfer much energy to the ball. In other words, it would be just as easy to drive a ball a great distance with the club head attached to a string if it were not for the fact that there is not much more than one chance in a million of connecting at the exact point of the natural balance of the club.

The great difficulty in hitting the ball with the club at the exact balancing point makes necessary a firm grip to overcome the in-equalities in the blow. This inequality is distributed partly in the player's frame, partly in the club shaft, and partly in the ball.