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There are six immortals in the game of golf.
All the analytics tell you is the further you hit.
It right, the better you are. And you know that's become the modern golf swing, a kind of bludgeoning.
If you play golf, you know the deal. You take lessons, you take a tip from YouTube, you practice, you integrate, and then it works until it doesn't and you're back at square one. Simply put, you've joined the quest for the perfect swing. So if you're obsessed with breaking eighty or ninety, lasting it to eighty, or hitting it down the middle, you've come to the right place. This is golf smartest, correct and mistakes, and now here's your home.
Josh Cart Today, I'm lucky enough to have Stephen Practor, who is a golf history in here with us to talk about the history of the golf swing. Stephen, thank you for taking the time to do this.
I'm delighted to be on. I really appreciate the opportunity. It's always fun to talk about the history of golf for me.
Yeah, well, you've written several great books about it. So where do we start, Andrews.
Yes, No, that's the beginning, and I would say that you have to think about the swing as something that evolves with the course conditions that you played in, with the technology that was available to you, in particular the evolution of the ball. So the first ball, the feather ball, you couldn't strike it in the way that you strike a modern ball, or it would just explode and you look like you lost a pillow fight, and feathers would be flying everywhere. It needed to be swept off the ground.
But you couldn't have that downward strike that you have in the modern age. It was a very sweepy swing and in order to get distance on it, you need to have quite a long turn of the club around your body. So it was a very arms and wrist focused motion. If you look at John Daily or Brooke Henderson, who take the club all the way around in that way, that was the way the golf club was swung at the beginning, so you could get as much force on
that sweepy swing. He played exclusively with long nosed wooden clubs. But I think if you're thinking about the modern golf swing, you need to start with what I would think of as the first modern ball, and that's the gutty ball, the hard rubber ball that you could you could strike that ball, you could hit it. You know. You almost never used an iron with featheries because they might burst if you were close to the green and you could ship it. Certain players they know, they well, they did go.
They did get airborne, but not like the height of a ball, be like a little below quail high. They'd be, you know, flying quite low under the wind, and all from the game would be played mainly on the ground. So the Saint Andrews swing is not very closely related to the swing as it exists today. Modern swing really begins with the introduction of the gutty ball in eighteen fifty.
And the thing about the gutty ball is you could hit it with irons, and so irons start right away to become the predominant club, and as a result, the swing begins to evolve. The big moment is the arrival of young Tom Morris, the first player that decided that a way to hit a golf ball was to absolutely lash at it, hit it as hard as you could, as far as you could, with every single swing. And the result of that was that he shortened the swing
to generate more power and more force. And that's where the modern swing starts to evolve, and you know, fearlessness being a big part of it. You know, hazards were really really hazards in those days. There was no such thing as a bunker rake. If you got in a bunker, it was a disaster, So people were cautious. Whereas he would throw, he didn't have any game for caution at all.
And that's where the thing begins to change, and it wins to epically change with the introdution of the askeoball at the turn of the century around nineteen oh two or so, were.
Young Tom Morrison and Varden contemporaries of each others? Or what where did they? Because I know Varden had a big inact on how the club was swung. Yes after Morris, Yes.
They're not contemporaries. Tommy precedes him by fifty years or thereabouts. Tommy dies in eighteen seventy five and Garden wins his first championship in eighteen ninety six, So a generation separates them.
I think if you want to look for the antecedents of the modern swing, you have to start with Carnousti, because around the turn of the century, Carnousti sends hundreds and hundreds of men to the United States to be golf professionals, two hundred and fifty through the US alone, four hundred to become golf oppressionals at various other places
in the world. And the Carnousti swing was a swing, and that was much more upper body turn focused, the kind of swing that you see a modern golfer making begins there and certain key teachers come to the United States,
namely Stuart Maiden and Alex Smith. Stuart Maiden was the model for Bobby Jones's swing, and he also was the teacher of Alexa Stirling, who was one of the first breakthrough women golfers in the world, one of the first women to really lash at the ball in the way that a man did, cecil Leach being her contemporary in Britain.
So those two men, Stuart Maiden, Alex Smith, and a lot of other Carnoustie teachers begin to take this idea of this Carnoustie swing that's more upper body turn focus, meant to deliver more power and strength to the strike of the ball. I think Stuart Maiden's basic instruction was hold your hands this way, stand up to the ball this way, and now hit the hell out of it. You know, that was one of the things they want, a strong and powerful swing. And then you mentioned Varden.
So along about eighteen ninety Varden comes along and he and all the players from Jersey have a considerably more upright swing. And Varden was one of the first people to make a very very upright swing, and his swing was considered to be picture perfect in that age. And so that's another really big step along the road, is the arrival of Varden. Part of the reason that it is such a big step is that in nineteen hundred spends most of a year playing golf all over the
United States. I forget the exact number of exhibitioncy but he's put on, but I think it was around one hundred exhibitions for you know, golf courses all over the United States. And that is the thing that really gets golf going in America. The first permanent club in America was founded in eighteen eighty eight, so Varden arriving becomes the basic model for Americans learning the game. Also right,
and I think the other thing that is important. Americans took the game in a way different way than Scots or Englishmen ever had, or any British person. British people did not practice. Of most classic golf facilities have no practice area or have had to create a practice area somewhere within reasonable driving distance of the club because the
original clubs people just didn't practice. In Britain. What they meant by practice was if they were having trouble with their mashie, they would take it out to a quiet corner of the course in the evening it hit about eight shots with to try to figure out what was going on. That was practice, as far as British were concerned, Americans practiced. They practiced assiduously, They built facilities for the purpose of practicing, and in that way Americans really begame
the first significant analyzers of the swing. You know, mostly it was taught in a natural way in Scotland. Even the Carnisty players and stuff but Americans started to die it much more technically and that became quite popular across the pond in about nineteen twenty or nineteen thirty as well.
Was that a cultural difference that you know, Americans started practicing like crazy too.
I do think it is a cultural difference. You know, Americans have a culture that's very individual, excellence focused. I will succeed on my own, whereas Britain. Golf, in particularly in Britain, is much more a team focused thing. Most people played foursomes as opposed to score play golf. The members of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society began to
get really interested in American ideas. And there's a book that's written by Joyce Weathered and Roger, her brother, called Golf from Both Sides, and part of it was a chapter about Roger having gone to America to see what Americans were doing with the golf swing and to try to understand why Americans are starting to beat the British all the time and for me and they'd never been able to do that, but now they've elevated the swing and the practice and the mentality about golf to a
point where they're starting to win and Roger devotes a whole chapter to why Americans' ideas are working better than our ideas and it's just fascinating to see. And you know, once again, technology is deeply involved, because starting about eighteen eighty you could take photos that would stop in sequence, and then the breakthrough time really is in nineteen thirties, when Bobby Jones is excelling, Joyce Weather it is excelling.
You can actually get a movie now that shows your swing and can stop at every certain number of seconds to show you precisely where your club is going at every moment. We haven't really gotten off that track from that moment to this, We've merely continued to perfect it to the point now where an average golfer like me can if they were that sort of person, which I'm not. I need to point out that my you know, knowledge of the swing is very strictly academic, as anyone has
ever seen me play nos. But you can have TrackMan on your range, you can see where your clubs go, you can see anything you want.
I've had the horrifying experience of seeing my swing on a video camera directly next to Ernie l swing. Yeah, and it's nothing I ever want to see again. I did take a lesson where they had an indoor facility with the track man, and it was un believable. You do learn a lot just of basic stuff. I can't imagine how for somebody who's doing it all the time, who's not a pro. It's got to be just totally overwhelming all of that information.
I would think, so for me, it wouldn't work for me. One of the most formative books written about golf is called Shape Your Swing. The Modern Away by Byron Nelson to test golf balls and golf equipment is called the Iron Byron because it replicates the first person who have perfected and understood the completely modern swing. Nelson got very
close to the perfect swing. And of course Nelson had huge influence over the game because he helped to teach Watson, and he helped to teach Venturi, and he was a mentor to many stars in the game in terms of how their swings developed and how they moved the golf club. And then Hogan, I think, becomes the you know what I would call the final mountain of the modern swing. You know, he gets to where it's you know, very near absolute perfection.
Now with Nelson. The big factor, as you were saying, was you know, you've got equipment, you've got you know, the places they're playing, and a bunch of other factors. And I know the steel shafts were really the big change for Nelson, right, he had to learn how to swing with a steel shaft as opposed to a hickory shaft. Was that not the catalyst that made this news thing?
Yes, that's a huge evolutionary aspect of the modern swing because obviously a steel shaft going to produce more power, you know, have much more likely much more flex in it than a hickory cheft, which does have a fair amount of flex. But no, Nelson is the first generation of people to use one of the first to use it, because nineteen thirty, nineteen twenty nine, I believe, is when
they are made legal. You know, Bobby Jones stayed with his hickory clubs, Joyce Weather had stayed with her hickory clubs. Many people did, but you know, the new generation went to the steel and Nelson was you know, that was very influential on how the swing went on to develop and the you know, more powerful dimensions of it that have continued to evolve into the modern age, where quite a lot more emphasis now is put on, you know, hitting the ball hard.
They read a good article about about Nelson changing and I think one of the things he said was that with the Hickory clubs you had to rotate the head open and then rotate it back again closed, and that that was not he could be much more vertical right with these or maybe vertical is not the right word, but less of that action with his hands.
Well, it's much the modern swing just got much more focused on rotating around an axis and not have movement of your head or your body or whatever, you know what I mean. Percy Boomer put out a book called on Learning Golf, which is, you know, a very esoteric book, and I think it was published in the nineteen thirties,
but I'd have to look it up to remember. But you know, a lot of what is taught in the modern game comes from the intellectual ideas that Boomer puts forth in that book, and a lot of it has to do with connection between mind and body. So the mental aspects of the swing start to get introduced into it. And you know, that's another hugely influential book that people like Tommy Armor and other people who wrote great instructional
books were heavily influenced by that. Ernest Jones and some of the other great teachers.
As reading where you know, Nicholas said he never even hit a shot of the practice range that he didn't visualized before. Do you know at all? When that kind of mind body visualization, the whole mental approach to the game became a formal thing that people were, you know, or not even formal, but just you know, who are the first players that were really trying to take a mental approach to the game rather than than just playing the way you play.
I would say two things about that. One is there's always been a thread of that in golf instruction from the earliest days, because every book from the beginning would have a chapter on the mental approach that you have to take to a metal round, stroke play round as opposed to the mental approach you take to a match
play round. So probably around nineteen fifty nineteen sixty, you know, Nicholas and those people you know are you know, there's this long evolution of how you get better and better and better, and of course the mental dimension then enters into that more and more I've just been reading Golfer's Gold by Tony Lima right, which is published in nineteen sixty four about his entry onto the tour, and one of his chapters is about how the turning point from him as a golfer was learning to be in control
of his mind. That's when he realized everybody can swing, everybody can putt. It's the guys who have control of their mind and their emotions and are able to withstand the psychological and emotional pressure of going low. Those are the guys who win. I think it's really something that really starts to emerge in the fifties and sixties, as Americans continue to think more deeply about the swing the game. You know, teachers are always building on the generation that
came before them. I don't know when golf is not a game of perfect came out, but it's always been under the surface. It's not like a totally new idea.
No, It's like somebody like Nicholas was doing that way back, you know, way back when. Okay, so we were talking about Nelson. He developed kind of the one piece takeaway, right, Yes, was not also one of his innovations.
Well, I mean, I think that's always been a part of the modern swing, say from even before him, Jones and those guys, they were going back you know pretty you know one Piec I would say, you know, straight left arms been a kind of a concept that's been there for a long time. I just think, you know, Nelson, you know, was basically focusing more on body rotation and
stillness in every other way. He says, you have to think of yourself swinging out from under your head, you know, so that you keeping your head in the same spot and your shoulders are coming under your chin and then your head is pulled up by them as you're swinging out from under your head. A lot of us who struggle with the swinging too fast on the down swing. That's because we swinging so fast that our arms are lifting our head up before our shoulder ever gets to
our gin, you know what I mean. And we're just getting way out in front of it. And I like to focus on that concept of swinging out from under your head. I just think that's one of his more revolutionary ideas that he had.
Yeah, that's I mean, as I'm setting your listening, you said, I'm like, that's actually a great swing thought, right, I mean, and there aren't a lot of great swing thoughts because they're usually so technical, and that's a real feel kind of thing, you know, which I think, at least for me a lot easier to process as a player.
One of my favorite things I recite to myself is from the very first and what I would call pure instructional book that was written in eighteen eighty six by Horace Hutchinson, and it just is you should keep your eye fixedly on the ball from the moment your club is lifted until the moment the ball is actually struck. And I think that's about as pure and clean as it can be stated. And I particularly like the use of the word fixedly. You should keep your eye fixedly
on the ball. And in a lot of ways, that is telling you the very same thing that Nelson is trying to tell you about the modern swing. He's expressing it as swing out from under your head, so, in other words, don't let your head move, And Hutchington is expressing it as keep your eye fixedly on the ball until you actually strike it, keep your head still, keep your eye fixedly on the ball, go back slowly with your club, don't press right.
Okay, that's it's interesting too, I mean about the you know, the pressing aspect of it. I would think if you're a five or maybe an eight handicapper below, that's great advice, go ahead and kill it.
But for the rest, no, I mean for me, I'm a I am a don't press guy. Still, I still think of that as sound advice for about ninety percent of amateur players, you know, but if you seek to be a pro golfer, that's a different matter. And you know that was the first thing Tommy tossed out, which don't press. No, I mean I'm gonna press on every swing,
not just some swings, all of them. And you know, he would do things that people would never think of, Like if you played a certain hole at Musselburgh, you know there was a road that ran alongside it on the left hand side of the hole. Most people thought of it as the worst thing that could possibly happen to your ball would be that it would get in the road, because it could be in an unspeakable lie
from which you would have real difficulty extricating it. Tommy's idea was hit the ball onto the road, because if it hits the road, it's going to run like it stole something, It'll just go forever and who cares what lie it's in at the end of that. And you know, I don't see that big of a stretch between that concept and the concept of Bryce and De'shambo. Who is I'm just going to knock this ball into outer space and wherever it lands all play from.
Yeah.
Yeah, So the ideas exist for a very long time and they get iterated on I guess is all I'm saying, you know, because that's what's Tommy's idea. I'm just going to hit this ball as far as I can every time, and we'll see what happens. Yeah.
And it's funny too, you know, because you know, I just only think of this because I interviewed somebody about Arnold Palmer the other day. I mean that was really Palmer's approach was just hit the hell out of it, find it, hit the hell out of it again. And then contrasting that to Nicholas and there somebody was saying that he would always have something in reserve so that when it was time to break somebody's back and he was in the right position, he would just go for it.
So it's interesting that idea of you know, just going for it all the time, which I think, like you said, I mean, that's what Bryson does that these guys today and all the analytics tell you tell them right that the big advantage is the further you hit it.
Better you are. Yeah, and I and you know that's become the modern golf swing. I think Gil Hans described it as a kind of bludgeoning, which I thought was really spot on.
Yeah, to get to this bludgeoning, so we go kind of Hogan Nelson era. Yes, the next development is what Nicholas.
Yes, definitely Nicholas, you know, elevated the game power and distance. He was one of you know, he was the longest player of his age by a million miles. The other thing is Nick Nicholas is one of the very first players a yardage book, long before yardage books were a common thing, and so Nicholas had a holistic approach to preparing for a tournament. Strength and power would be the biggest thing. And I think Nicholas was one of the first times that the longest player on tour was the
most dominant player. There have always been long players, but they weren't always as dominant as Nicholas was able to become.
Right, right, Was he the first great non really self taught player, you know, because I know he had Jack Krout and Hogan and Nelson and Snead all taught themselves really.
Right, Yes, I'm trying to think of whether I can think of a player who was very care carefully taught by someone other than themselves that became as well. I mean, obviously, in the women's game, Glenna Collette became one of the great golfers in history, and she was a complete creation of Alex Smith. She took lessons with Alex Smith for multiple years and then she she's the most dominant American woman player in history. And so I would say, you know,
and that's nineteen twenties. So I'm sure that there are others that are carefully taught that are not coming to our minds before Nicholas, because you know, obviously Glenna. You know, basically Glenna was a prodigious driver even as a child. Just she just was had a great movement, natural movement for the ball. I think she was like seventy pounds. She hit her first drive one hundred and twenty five yards when she was like fifteen or something, and just
brew everybody's minds, and this was the Hickory Club. So that's a long way with the Hickory when you're a tirty little thing. And she then played in some local tournaments, went to go see Alexa Sterling play, inspired by Alexa, decides she's going to be a golfer. She plays in a tournament. A very famous golf writer named Dicky Martin watches her and he comes up to her afterwards and says, you know, sees it. She can hit the ball a mile, but she's got no game. You know, she doesn't know
how to play golf at all. And he asked her, what do you think of your game? So I can hit it far, but I can't do anything else. And she goes, I got a guy that could teach you, And so she gets connected with Alex Smith. And I think probably there are a lot of stories in the early history of American golf that would line up with
that one, in both men's and women's golf. Certainly, Alexa Sterling completely taught by Stuart Maiden every bit of the way, and Glenna taught by Alex Sabith every bit of the way. So you know, I'm sure there are people in the men's game that suit that same thing. I just their names aren't springing immediately to mind, because most of my study has been in Britain, where nobody practiced or even studied.
I read that Nelson would hit a couple, you know, hit maybe twelve to warm up before he played, didn't practice after he finished, and that he really felt he had locked in that swing. I mean, is that accurate or that.
Is completely accurate? And you know the thing is practice at the Hogan level was not something that was known in Hogan's age. Most people were in more nearer to
the Byron Nelson camp where they they practiced. You know, they warmed up extensively before around, they practiced on the days when they weren't playing, but they didn't practice eight hours a day, ten hours a day, right, Hogan practice You know that mentality, which is I would say is pretty commonplace now is the level of practice that Hogan puts it up?
Now, what follows Nicholas? What's the next big development?
And I would say after that, as Tiger, you know, Tiger comes along. Tiger is the next of the immortals. The way I look at it, there are six immortals in the game of golf, The first one is young Tommy, the second one is Harry Varden. The third one is Bobby Jones, then Ben Hogan, then Jack Nicholas, and then Tiger Woods. And those, to my mind, are the six generations of the game that what you would think of
as the modern game. Pro golfer needs to be an athlete who is as fit as a football player or as fit as a baseball player or whatever.
Right. I remember reading an article about Nicholas and probably like you know, seventy seven and Sports Illustrated, and you know, the thing was always, you know, instead of his fitness, it was, you know, how much he weighed, right, And I remember he was going at a celery soup diet and that was the big development. You know, they're like Jack's going on the celery soup diet. He's lost fifteen
pounds already. And then I met somebody had who had been within fifteen feet of Tiger and he said, you know, you know you saw him at Stanford and he's a skinny kid. He said, he is built like an NFL safety.
Yes, that's a relatively new idea. There's a thread that's never been part of golf, you know, to be physically trained in that way for the game. It's you know, I don't know of any other person in history. Maybe Frank Stranahan was probably the first one, really the amateur player. Frank Stranahan was a muscle builder and worked out at that level. But it's been very rare occurrences, and nobody had the influence to make it widespread the way that
Tiger did. So, you know, but Tiger changed the world in that way.
For sure historically. I mean even when I was, you know, in high school in the early eighties, if you played baseball, you were told not to left because it would make you, you know, construct your ability to move. And I know it's all Bay said the same thing. How much do you think that you know, because you and I and every other amateur out there don't have a nutritionist, we don't have a stretching coach, we don't have a strength coach,
and we don't have personal swing coach. How much of the modern swing when when you're watching Bryce on Rory and you see that swing and you know, and you think, oh wow, should I be swinging the club that way? It seems to me that is a theory that is being taught by a lot of people that is absolutely unachievable for somebody who doesn't have all that kind of physical training.
I would agree with that one hundred percent. That I would say makes complete sense. The gap between the modern professional golfer and even the very high level amateurs has never been wider in the history of golf than it is right now. You know, there are very very few, even high level amateur golfers that can generate the kind of swing speed and distance a Rory mcelroory or Bison to Shamba where somebody can generate. So I think there's a growing gap in between those and the wider that
gap becomes less applicable. What a pro is doing with their swing in the men's game is to what maybe you, the person on the weekend, should be thinking about for your own game. I would say that that seems it certainly seems true to me. If I'm watching golf of the idea of trying to learn anything, I would watch the LPGA just because I think the shot choices that they face, the distances that they hit the ball are so much more in line with the distance that a
person like me is hitting the ball. Well, I mean, at least they're in the same universe, you know what I mean. And I don't know if other players feel that way or not, but I don't feel, you know, that most people could. I mean, there's you know, a very high level amateur, you know, somebody who's excellent, like a four or three or two. You know, probably they, you know, should aspire to do what those players do.
But I would think any anybody who's not single digit probably doesn't have much to apply on what a pro does.
What one of my kids caddied in the Western Amateur It was played at a local club, and he caddied for a kid who was like the Division III champion, and they had maybe ten caddies from the local club, and then all the other caddies were just brought in and he said, the biggest problem for everybody was that they couldn't even follow the ball the way these guys were hitting it, and you had to, like the first round was all just adjusting how far they hit their drives.
And these are kids, you know, who've been on that course a thousand times, and he's like, you know, they've never seen anyone hit a ball, even from these championship or tournament teas He's like they would hit the ball and you just go, I don't know where the hell that thing went. It went so far. They're just playing a completely different sport. I have one last question for you,
and thank you for this. This has been a great interview, not in terms of influence or anything, but who is who has your favorite swing of anybody who's ever played the game.
Joyce weathered by a long shot, and anybody who's interested can google Joyce Weather It's swinging. They will show her hitting various types of clubs, irons, and woods. I've just published my latest book is called Matchless Joyce Weathered, Glenniclette
and the Rise of Women's Golf. And Joyce played in one hundred and sixty six matches in her lifetime that were prominent matches, so not a ton of golf, because she retired early and often and just didn't have much use for it once she felt she'd proved what was necessary. Of the one hundred and sixty six matches she competed and she won one hundred and fifty two of those.
She have two others, so she had one hundred and fifty four times she was either one or was or halved and twelve times that she lost career wise, so winning percentage wise, that's ninety one percent, which nobody can even get in that stratosphere. And she Jones twice from the men's tea, and both times she was within a couple strokes of him. Both times he said he was in awe because, as he put it, somebody asked him, after,
have you ever played a better woman golfer? And his exact response was, I have never played any golfer, man or woman, amateur or professional, who made me feel so completely outclassed. It was impossible to believe that miss Weatherward would ever miss a shot, and she never did. And so I think of her swing as the most perfect, as perfect as can be developed. I would say, the other swings I think of as very near perfection or at perfection would be Mickey Wright, Bobby Jones himself, and
you know, and Hogan and Nelson. You know, those are some of the other ones I think of as as perfect as perfect can be. But you know, Joyce has got as good a swing as there is, and she was able to repeat it over and over and over under pressure. And she's playing with Hickory Cubs, and she's playing from the men's Tea almost exclusively all her life, a golfer of exceptional ability.
Got it. I'm going to go look up that swing right after we get off. Now, when does your book come out? And repeat the title again so people know about it?
Sure. The new one is called Matchless Joyce whether it Glenna Collette and the Rise of Women's Golf, and it's already published. It can be purchased online from Amazon or Barnes and Noble online. And the other two books are Monarcha of the Green, which is about young Tom Morris. It's called Pioneer of Modern Golf where the discussion that
we had today begins. And the second one is called The Long Golden Afternoon, which explains to you how golf left Scotland and moved around the world and evolved into the modern game you know today through the great players who made that occur, which is always how the game changes. Somebody comes along like Tiger, lists the game up on his or her shoulders, moves it into a new age and all we go.
Well, thank you for taking the time to do this, Steven, this is really terrific.
I enjoyed it very much. Thank you for having me.
My pleasure,