If you will try the experiment of using your cleek every time you think you have a full mid-iron shot and put your attention to hitting your ball absolutely- true you will make a curious discovery; not five per cent of a hundred shots will be over, and of that five per cent not one-half will be as far over as you are accustomed to be short with your mid-iron.

Players will often boast that they have reached a certain green with a drive and a mid-iron, when the real point is that they were so surprised at the fact themselves that it was worthy of comment.

How much more often they will reach that same green easily with, a drive and a sleek, and not be required to force either shot. It is the number of strokes used in playing a hole and not the number of yards that counts. I know from experience that the tendency is to try for distance, and only repeated failures have driven home the lesson that it is the accuracy you obtain in playing whatever distance you are capable of which makes lower scores.

When you comment upon a really well-played hole, one which leaves the most lasting impression, the real fact is that you have placed your iron shot close enough to get down in one putt. No one cares whether you used a mashie or a sleek.

How many times a player will, take a club to play safe-to avoid the risk of getting into a bunker, say-and then swing easily and carefully at the ball, hit it perfectly true, and find himself in the very difficulty he was trying to avoid!

This has happened to many players, and their surprise is usually very great. They say: "why, I played that safe on purpose, and there I am in the bunker." The fact is that the player is not familiar with the distance lie obtains with a correctly hit ball. He so seldom hits a ball really true that he is not accustomed to see it go so far.
That is the one thing to learn, hit the ball true!

It doesn't make much difference whether your grip is right or wrong according to some theories, or whether your swing is upright or flat, if the club meets the ball with the center of the face, that ball is going to go off pretty well.

I have 'observed that those players who have trouble in playing the mid-iron will invariably try to pick the ball up or off the ground clean, with the idea of not injuring the turf. Many players who get off a fairly good ball, but with a slice, have the same mental picture or they would not swing as they do. I have shown how the "squeeze shot," as I call that which takes turf after going through the ball, should be played.