This is an illustration of how simple a rule will cure all, or nearly all, golfing ills if it is properly, observed. If the player can actually control his effort to the point where he actually sees the ball from the start until he hits it, never shifting his gaze for the least instant, he will never have any trouble in hitting that ball, no matter what his form may be.

If that one point is observed it will cure stiffness in the swing, swinging back too far or too short, or hitting too soon. Don't look up an instant or shift your gaze until your club head reaches the ball. When you have a particularly hard shot to get off put your whole mind on this one thing.

The best plan is to practice hitting a ball a few times in this way and you will quickly gain confidence. Shifting the glance is as bad as looking away from the ball. Keep it on the one spot on the ball throughout. Do not look at your club to see if it is squared to the ball or allow your eye to follow it as you draw it away. The ball and the ball only is the one thing to look at.

Now if you will consider the matter of the centrifugal force and will remember the old figure of swinging a stone around your head at the end of a string, you will remember that the stone will gradually leave the ground and go higher and higher as you increase the speed, until when you get up high speed the stone will be about as far from the ground as the hand which is whirling it.

As your club shaft is stiff you are able to get up a very high speed at once, and you have the same effect upon the club, due to the weight of the club head, that the stone has upon the string. In addition to this you have a complication due to the fact that you are de-scribing an upright circle as well as a horizontal one, and consequently you must direct the power so that these two circles synchronize.

One very natural result of the player's discovery of this fact is the effort to get the shoulders up nearly in a line with the eyes in order to see this line. He should remember that the eyes are about a foot above the pivotal center, and raising the shoulders is not the remedy.

The more you can get away from taking a sight of the ball along the line of the shaft of the club and the nearer you can come to getting a bird's-eye view of the ball, keeping the line along which the power is directed below the line between the eyes and the ball, the greater will be the absence of disturbing elements along the line of vision and the more compact the muscles and the greater the flexibility throughout.