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THE COMPLETE GOLFER




 THE
 COMPLETE GOLFER


 BY
 HARRY VARDON

 OPEN CHAMPION, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1903
 AMERICAN CHAMPION, 1900


 WITH SIXTY-SIX ILLUSTRATIONS


 SECOND EDITION


 METHUEN & CO.
 36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
 LONDON




 _First Published           June 1905_

 _Second Edition            June 1905_




PREFACE


Many times I have been strongly advised to write a book on golf, and now
I offer a volume to the great and increasing public who are devoted to
the game. So far as the instructional part of the book is concerned, I
may say that, while I have had the needs of the novice constantly in
mind, and have endeavoured to the best of my ability to put him on the
right road to success, I have also presented the full fruits of my
experience in regard to the fine points of the game, so that what I have
written may be of advantage to improving golfers of all degrees of
skill. There are some things in golf which cannot be explained in
writing, or for the matter of that even by practical demonstration on
the links. They come to the golfer only through instinct and experience.
But I am far from believing that, as is so often said, a player can
learn next to nothing from a book. If he goes about his golf in the
proper manner he can learn very much indeed. The services of a competent
tutor will be as necessary to him as ever, and I must not be understood
to suggest that this work can to any extent take the place of that
compulsory and most invaluable tuition. On the other hand, it is next to
impossible for a tutor to tell a pupil on the links everything about any
particular stroke while he is playing it, and if he could it would not
be remembered. Therefore I hope and think that, in conjunction with
careful coaching by those who are qualified for the task, and by
immediate and constant practice of the methods which I set forth, this
book may be of service to all who aspire to play a really good game. If
any player of the first degree of skill should take exception to any of
these methods, I have only one answer to make, and that is that, just
as they are explained in the following pages, they are precisely those
which helped me to win my five championships. These and no others I
practise every day upon the links. I attach great importance to the
photographs and the accompanying diagrams, the objects of which are
simplicity and lucidity. When a golfer is in difficulty with any
particular stroke--and the best of us are constantly in trouble with
some stroke or other--I think that a careful examination of the pictures
relating to that stroke will frequently put him right, while a glance at
the companion in the "How not to do it" series may reveal to him at once
the error into which he has fallen and which has hitherto defied
detection. All the illustrations in this volume have been prepared from
photographs of myself in the act of playing the different strokes on the
Totteridge links last autumn. Each stroke was carefully studied at the
time for absolute exactness, and the pictures now reproduced were
finally selected by me from about two hundred which were taken. In order
to obtain complete satisfaction, I found it necessary to have a few of
the negatives repeated after the winter had set in, and there was a
slight fall of snow the night before the morning appointed for the
purpose. I owe so much--everything--to the great game of golf, which I
love very dearly, and which I believe is without a superior for deep
human and sporting interest, that I shall feel very delighted if my
"Complete Golfer" is found of any benefit to others who play or are
about to play. I give my good wishes to every golfer, and express the
hope to each that he may one day regard himself as complete. I fear
that, in the playing sense, this is an impossible ideal. However, he may
in time be nearly "dead" in his "approach" to it.

I have specially to thank Mr. Henry Leach for the invaluable services he
has rendered to me in the preparation of the work

 H.V.

 TOTTERIDGE, _May 1905_.




CONTENTS


                                                                  PAGE


CHAPTER I

GOLF AT HOME                                                         1

The happy golfer--A beginning at Jersey--The Vardon family--An anxious
tutor--Golfers come to Grouville--A fine natural