I do not want to be understood as advocating a stance for a drive with the heels together, but I do say that when you find yourself hitting too soon, looking up too soon, or hitting too hard, you should bring the feet closer and closer together until you have overcome the tendency. This rule applies also to the playing of short shots and should be followed without the slightest hesitancy. The shorter the shot the nearer the feet should be brought together.
A fact which requires careful consideration is that if’ you stand a little nearer to the ball than you are accustomed to, you are naturally more over it, or at least it brings the head more over it, which amounts to the same thing. Naturally you cannot make a very great effort without digging into the ground behind the ball, because the centrifugal force generated in the downward swing will carry the club beyond or below the ball.
This may appear to be wrong, but it is not. The reason it is not is that it makes you hold back your maximum effort until your arms have room to go out to the limit of your reach which enables you to apply the greatest power at the right time; that is, after you have connected with the ball. In other words, you first connect with the ball when your arms and shoulders have not been ex-tended to their limit.
You have some leeway still to follow up the blow by letting the arms and shoulders go out after the ball and keeping the club head against it. If you try to keep your club head against the ball steadily, when the arms and shoulders have reached out to their limit, you must yield somewhere in order to do so, because when the arms and shoulders have reached their limit the club must start upon its upward journey, and as the ball moves out in a straight line while the club is moving upward on a curved line the only way that the club head can stay against the ball is for you to yield somewhere.
The moment you yield with the body your head moves and your muscles must stop work or you will fall over forward.
This is exactly what the average player does. He has no leeway to follow up the blow of the first impact of the club, and that is all the power that is exerted upon the ball. In other words, the ball is slapped away instead of having a steady, accumulating pressure against it. You are compelled to look up because you cannot continue your effort. Your eye, as well as your sense of touch, tells you that you are going beyond your ball, and you involuntarily let up on the power because you know you will not connect with the ball if you keep up the effort, and as I have shown in a previous chapter, you will always let up when your principal purpose is accomplished. You cannot help doing it.
