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John Jacobs

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Copyright

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

77–85 Fulham Palace Road

Hammersmith, London W6 8JB

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in 2005 by Collins Willow

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

John Jacobs asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Illustrations by Rob Davies

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Source ISBN 9780007193936

Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2014 ISBN: 9780008118259

Version: 2014-10-02

Cover

Title Page

Foreword

A Lifetime’s Philosophy

Chapter 1: Understanding Golf’s Fundamentals

Chapter 2: Building a Better Golf Swing

Chapter 3: The Short Game

Chapter 4: The Art of Putting

Chapter 5: How to Cure Golf’s Most Common Faults

Chapter 6: Trouble Shooting

Chapter 7: Answers to Frequently Asked Questions

Chapter 8: Golfing Greats (and what you can learn)

Chapter 9: Playing the Game

Chapter 10: I Had Some Fun Along the Way!

Picture Section

Notes

About the Publisher

Foreword

Nothing meaningful in this life is ever achieved without hard work, but one always needs a little bit of luck. John Jacobs deserves his success in golf, because he invested plenty of the former and, as he freely admits, was blessed with a little of the latter, too. His talent took care of the rest. His journey is extraordinary.

John started his professional golfing life in his father’s shop at Lindrick Golf Club in Yorkshire. He would stoke the fires in the grate on Monday mornings to burn out the snapped hickory shafts of clubs broken over the course of a weekend’s play. He grew up to become one of golf’s most influential figures – tournament winner, undefeated Ryder Cup player, captain of the Ryder Cup team, founder of the PGA Tour, OBE, past President of the PGA of Europe, a member of golf’s exclusive Hall of Fame and also the Teaching Hall of Fame (itself a rare double honour), and winner of the prestigious Geoffrey Dyson Award for Sporting Teaching Excellence in 2002. Most recently Jacobs was awarded honorary membership of the R&A. The list could go on further, were there space.

Above all, though, John Jacobs is one of golf’s all-time great teachers – a true legend of the game who is in the unique position of having taught hundreds of thousands of amateurs around the world how to play better golf, in-between passing on his words of wisdom to the world’s greatest players of the last 50 years. No other coach has had more success in making the best even better. The same could be said for his influence on today’s leading coaches.

John himself is far too modest to even suggest that a list of tributes from great players through the years be included in this book, but as his collaborator on this project I am happy to relieve him of this burden, for I think it is entirely appropriate that within the remit of this foreword there is scope for personal contributions which put in perspective John’s impact on the game of golf.

‘It is an unrelenting insistence on understanding and applying the fundamental objectives of the swing, plus his remarkable ability to explain them clearly, that makes John Jacobs such a great golf teacher. Because his logic is unarguable and his reasoning so understandable, his success rate with all levels of golfers from beginner to tournament player has been and continues to be outstanding.’

Jack Nicklaus

‘John Jacobs has been a friend of mine for many years. He is an outstanding teacher and has also been an excellent golfer and a fierce competitor on the course. However, of greatest importance for me is that he is a true gentleman and an asset to the game.’

Gary Player

‘John Jacobs has contributed a great deal to the game and he is considered one of golf’s premier teachers. In building my own career, he was certainly one of the instructors I studied and he has an outstanding ability to analyse golfers’ problems through their ball flight. He is one of the game’s real grandmasters.’

David Leadbetter

‘John is the nicest person I have met in my 25-year amateur and professional career. He really is a true friend. As a golf teacher he is without doubt The Master. Simplicity is the word I would use to describe his teaching. His theories on the golf swing and the lessons he gives are so crystal clear and understandable that he makes the game of golf seem easy. His advice helps bring better golf within everyone’s grasp.’

Jose Maria Olazabal

‘I was just 14 when I first saw John Jacobs on the practice ground at Dalmahoy. It was not his swing that caught my eye, or the way he addressed the ball, but rather the fact that he never had time to practise himself because so many of his colleagues kept asking for advice. As always it was given freely. John remains the supreme enthusiast gaining his pleasure from helping fellow pros and amateurs – thousands over the years – play the game better and enjoy it more. I seek out John two or three times a year to have a look at my swing and he has never let me down. Come to think of it, I’d question whether he has ever let anyone down.’

Bernard Gallacher

‘The two biggest influences are my dad and John Jacobs. I like the way John talks about the swing path all the time. The way he makes everything very simple and straightforward – that’s the way I like to teach.’

Butch Harmon

‘John’s achievements are endless as a player, teacher, writer, communicator, golf course designer, and executive director of the men’s European Tour. I can think of no better host, or better companion.’

Mickey Walker

John Jacobs isn’t just a great teacher, though. He could play a bit himself and was, at times, good enough to beat the best. He competed in the Ryder Cup and won tournaments, including the Dutch Open in 1957 and a memorable victory over Grand Slam winner Gary Player, in the final of the South African Matchplay Championship.

John had an equally significant influence on the administration of the game, having been instrumental in setting up what is now the European Tour. Indeed, John sees this as perhaps his greatest achievement, a view endorsed by Mark McCormack in his World of Professional Golf Annual in 1973. McCormack wrote of the haphazard affair that constituted the British Pro golf scene and the plan devised by John Jacobs to overcome the crisis situation.

‘The Jacobs plan worked. The crowds did come back. Public interest was reawakened. And the ultimate proof that golf was back in favour was that both the BBC and the independent companies returned coverage of PGA tournaments to their schedules. The outlook for pro golf, which had seemed so desolate twelve months previously, had taken a decided turn for the better. The mood among the players was buoyant. Golf had begun to believe in itself again. I for one do not doubt that 1972 was a year of high significance. It might be no more than slight exaggeration to say that these twelve months saw British golf progress by a quarter of a century. And that is quite a trick.’

John has also authored numerous bestselling books on how to play the game, many of which are still considered benchmark manuals, revered and studied decades after they first went into print. For the record, these include:

Golf, first published in 1963, with a foreword by Laddie Lucas. This was made up of a collection of articles which first appeared in the pages of Golfing magazine during the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Play Better Golf, published in 1969, based on the manuscripts from the hugely popular Yorkshire TV series of the same name. John made a series of thirteen 30-minute programmes, followed by two further series, during which time the director suggested he write a book to go with it. It went on to sell well over half-a-million copies.

Practical Golf, first published in 1972 with a foreword by Tony Jacklin, went on to become a bestseller. John considers it ‘the most important book I wrote.’ It contained many articles from the first ten years of Golf World and was compiled by that magazine’s editor Ken Bowden, who later went on to edit Golf Digest in the US and write much of Jack Nicklaus’ published work.

John Jacobs Analyses Golf’s Superstars, published in 1974, in collaboration with Ken Bowden. This was perhaps the first book of its type, focusing as it did on the swings of the leading players of the day, with analysis from John and words of wisdom to help the average golfer learn from the greats.

Golf Doctor was first published in 1979 and entitled Curing Faults for Weekend Golfers in the US editions (a title which incidentally killed it from a sales perspective, because people thought it was simply a band-aid), with a foreword by Jack Nicklaus and co-written with Dick Aultman. John says he wrote this as much for the pro to teach, as for the pupils. However it is interpreted, there is no doubt that a quarter of a century after it first went into print, it remains golf’s ultimate ‘self help’ manual.

The Golf Swing Simplified, first published in 1993 and again co-written by Ken Bowden, was a wonderfully succinct study of the golf swing, devoted to its most critical component: the action required to strike the ball most effectively from the tee and then on to the green.

Golf in a Nutshell, first published in 1995, was written with the legendary golf journalist Peter Dobereiner. This project came about when Dobereiner wrote an article in Golf Digest magazine praising the talents of John Jacobs and highlighting the merits of Practical Golf, the bestselling golf book of all time until Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book. John suggested to Peter that they write their own little red book … and this was it.

The 50 Greatest Golf Lessons of the 20th Century is John’s most recent book, published in 1999, which I had the pleasure of collaborating on. Rather in the style of John’s earlier book on golf’s superstars, this work featured a biography on the great golfers of the 20th century with insightful analysis from John on the way they played the game and how we mere mortals can benefit.

This is an appropriate moment to go right back to the start, though, to John’s first ever instruction book, Golf, for it was in the foreword that John’s good friend and former Walker Cup captain Laddie Lucas wrote: ‘John teaches the skilled and the average, the illustrious and the humble, with a success which has earned him, deservedly, the pseudonym ‘Dr Golf’. I have a feeling that this substantial treatise is only the forerunner of what may flow from this fertile mind.’ How prophetic that statement proved to be.

Now for the first time ever, the collective works of John’s books, as listed above, are brought together in this one volume – 50 Years of Golfing Wisdom. It’s the best of the best, in every sense. It represents an unmissable opportunity for golfers of all abilities to benefit from one of the keenest, wisest, most knowledgeable minds in golf.

50 Years of Golfing Wisdom includes all of the lessons and advice that made John the original, and many say still the ultimate, golfing guru. Where appropriate, we’ve even included contemporary drawings from the relevant book. Every department of the game receives the Jacobs treatment – in other words, simple, easy to understand, effective advice on how to maximize your potential and play your best golf. From the fundamentals, to problem solving, and curing your bad shots, to instruction on hitting every shot from the longest drive to the most testing putt, and everything in between. There are also studies of some of the great players in history and what you can learn from them.

50 Years of Golfing Wisdom is so comprehensive, so packed full of good advice, it may just be the only instruction book you’ll ever need. As Tony Jacklin said in the foreword to Practical Golf, ‘Putting golf technique down on paper is extremely difficult. I think Jacobs does it superbly. This book is a wonderful distillation of an exceptional man’s knowledge, and I don’t see how it can fail to help any golfer play better.’ My sentiments exactly.

Steve Newell

A Lifetime’s Philosophy *

Golf is what the ball does, which is totally dependent upon what the club is doing at impact. The variants at impact are:

The clubface: which can be open, closed or square (strong or weak).

The swing path: which can be in-to-out, out-to-in, or straight.

The angle of attack: which can be too steep, too shallow, or correct for the individual club.

The clubhead speed: to suit the shot in hand.

These dimensions, the clubface, swing path, and angle of attack, all of which determine the flight of the ball, are very influenced by the set-up at address.

The grip has a direct bearing on clubface control at impact.

The clubface aim and body alignment has a direct bearing on the swing path at impact.

The body posture at address has a direct bearing on the degree of shoulder tilt during the body turn, affecting the swing plane and therefore the angle of attack at impact. This does not mean that everyone will set up to the ball in exactly the same way. As teachers, prescribing the correct set-up for the individual is our greatest teaching tool.

Turning to the swing itself, which is conditioned by the position of the ball relative to the player, which is to the side and on the ground. The fact that it is to the side requires the club to swing through the ball from the inside back to the inside with the swing path on line at impact, with the clubface square to that line. The correct body action facilitates this arc of swing.

Since the ball is on the ground, at the same time as the body turns, the hands and arms swing the club up, down and up again in unison with the body action.

The above, I believe, is applicable to every player, allowing for individual variations.

The shape of a golf lesson would normally take the form of: diagnosis, explanation accompanied by demonstration and finally, correction. The pupil is best viewed down the line to facilitate this approach. The set-up to the target can be observed and the subsequent swing path through the ball can be clearly seen. The flight of the ball relative to the swing path will give a valid indication of the clubface at impact. This is not to say the side view for players of all levels is on occasion very appropriate.

It is vital that the correct diagnosis is made and that the explanation and accompanying demonstration be fully understood by the pupil in order to encourage the necessary perseverance since any correction is likely to be, initially, uncomfortable.

CHAPTER 1
Understanding Golf’s Fundamentals

On reading golf

One reason, I have always thought, why golf can become such a difficult game is simply because there are so many different ways of playing it correctly; and that one secret, for any golfer striving to improve, is to decide first which is his or her own correct way. It is my sincere hope that this book will help any reader to do just that.

The correct way, I’m firmly convinced, is invariably the simplest. What may prove simple to one, though, may not necessarily be simple to another. One of the difficulties in studying golf in books lies in learning to select from other people’s experiences, ideas and theories, and adapt them to your own personal needs. I think I have found truth in almost every book or article I have read on golf! Yet, in spite of that fact, there is often one thing or another in any particular book which, read by the wrong person, could cause a real setback in his or her game.

As an illustration of this I remember two ladies, both good performers around 8-handicap, who arrived for tuition. Both were accustomed to playing together. One lady hooked her shots, the other sliced. Here were two ladies with faults that I must tell each other to copy! I wanted each to try to do precisely what was wrong in the other! In other words, my instruction was of a completely contradictory nature.

It had to go even further than that, though. Needing contrasting advice, it followed that since they were both avid readers on golf, they also needed different advice on what to read. I told Lady No.1 with her too-flat swing and hook, to read Byron Nelson’s book, because he was an upright swinger; and Lady No.2, with her too-upright swing and slice, to read Ben Hogan’s, because he was a rounded swinger. This was 50 years ago, of course. Today, I might replace these two role models with, say, Colin Montgomerie (upright) and Ian Woosnam (rounded).

The point I’m trying to make is that it is as well to appreciate what we are doing wrong before we seek remedies by reading, from no matter how impeccable a source. The golfing public has been saturated with golf books, most of which have been very good, in many ways. I feel, however, that the titles have been wrong. Most of them should have been called How I Play Golf – and how the writer of each book plays golf may not be the easiest way to teach each of his readers.

I sincerely hope that this book will make it easier for you to decide which is your own best way of playing. As with every lesson I’ve given, I hope to teach people not just to hit the ball better but to understand why they’re hitting it better.

Swing, or move from position to position?

Should you really swing the club? Or should you merely move through a series of contrived postures, a pattern of carefully thought-out conscious movements, a set of deliberate muscle contortions? The question may seem silly but it is of prime importance, especially if you are new to the game or have never achieved the golfing prowess of which you feel yourself potentially capable.

A Rolls Royce without an engine might look impressive, but it’s never going to get out of the garage. In exactly the same way, a golf swing without an engine, however beautifully contoured each part might be, is never going to move the ball very far out of your shadow. To do that, your swing, whatever else it lacks, must have power, motivation. It must be a swing. In the simplest of golfing terms, you must ‘hit the ball’.

Am I stating the obvious? I think not. Most of the great golfers up to the early 1960s learned the game as caddies. They watched the people they carried for and tried to copy those who played well. They were copying an action, a fluid movement. It would never have occurred to them, even if they had known how, to break the swing down into parts and study it segment by segment in static form. Golf was action, and was learned as such.

Now the camera plays an increasingly large part in the exploration of golf technique, with the result that today a great many people tend to learn golf as a ‘static’ game rather than as a game of movement. Instead of watching good players in the flesh, and trying to emulate the action of a good golf swing, they study static pictures and try to copy the positions in which the camera has frozen the players. They are learning positions which, in themselves, without the essential motivating force of swinging, are almost useless.

This does not mean to say that the very excellent action photographs published in golf magazines and books are of no value in learning the game. But undoubtedly the biggest danger in static golf, in learning from still pictures, is that body action becomes overemphasized. Photographs cannot show motion, but they show very well how the body changes position during the golf swing. It is these positional impressions that the beginner and the poor golfer is apt to copy and frequently overdo.

Body action is important in golf, but is complementary to the swinging of the clubhead, not the dominating factor of the swing. The body movement must be in sympathy with the clubhead as controlled by the hands, not try to take over from the clubhead as the function of striking the ball. For the club to swing down and forward at over 100 mph, the arms must swing. Arm and hand action also promote feel, and this too can only be learned by swinging.

The grip takes care of the blade

The first thing to understand is that there is no such thing as one single grip, correct for everybody. Men and women with many different grips have all played winning golf. What I try to do is to put a man or woman on to the easiest grip to use with his or her natural swing tendencies.

Any grip that provides for the player to connect with the ball with the blade square to the target at impact while simultaneously allowing for full use of the hands and arms, is correct.

If the shots are curving in their flight, even when the stance and swing are right, then the trouble is usually in the grip. Generalizing (and taking no account of special cases), if the ball is curving in its flight through the air towards the left, then the hands are likely to be turned too far over to the right and the correction needed is to move the Vs between thumbs and forefingers inwards past his right shoulder; even, in some cases, until they both point towards his chin, but usually not as far as that.

The converse goes for a man whose shots are curving to the right.

Anywhere between chin and right shoulder can be correct for the Vs, if it works for the player. Experiment helps to find out precisely what is best in every individual case.

Setting up your stance

Most golfers ruin many of their shots before they even begin to swing, simply because they set themselves to the task in the wrong way. It really is absurd for an intelligent person to make no effort to get things right from the start. Yet most golfers don’t. And here is one simple way in which they could get a much better grip on their game.

The set-up of a shot can be learnt consciously and without any great mental or physical effort. With a little care and application, any one of us can set up a good swing. Make the effort – and a good swing becomes a probability rather than an impossibility.

a) Stance essentials

1 The first thing to aim is the club-blade, square to the target.
2 Then lines straight through the shoulders and feet should aim approximately parallel, across country, to the line through the clubface to the target.
3 The shoulders must be tilted: that is, the left shoulder must be higher than the right (or vice versa for left-handed golfers).
4 You should never be tense. Your stance should, though, be firm; there should be a feeling of power, almost of the feet trying to grip the ground.
5 The stance is wider for the longer shots than the short shots; approximately shoulder-width for woods, and progressively narrower down to approximately 12 inches for a 9-iron.
6 The way many people take up their stance they might just as well be sitting in a chair, for all the help they get from their feet and legs. The right stance gives one more of a feeling of resting on a tall shooting stick, with the back still fairly straight, and the leg muscles ready for action.

b) Aim and the Shoulders

To me, standing ‘open’ (body set to make it easier to hit to the left of the target) or ‘shut’ (to the right of the target) means much more whether the shoulders are open or shut, than whether the feet are.

If the ball is in the wrong position, the shoulders are likely to be wrongly aligned, whether the feet are correct or not. If the ball is actually too far back, drawing the shoulders to the right, you will then aim to the right with the club as well. Contrarily, a ball too far forward makes you aim to the left. There, quite simply, you have one cause of hundreds of thousands of hooks and slices every weekend!

Basic involuntary hooker’s position: ball back, shoulders closed, blade aiming right.

Basic involuntary slicer’s position: ball forward, shoulders open, blade aiming left.

Note the cause here of much baffled infuriation: the man who aligns himself to the left of target will then tend to swing across the ball – and slice it to the right! He may then try to correct this by consciously aiming further left; this will probably make him swing even more wildly across it and the ball will slice even more! The converse can just as easily happen to the man who aligns himself to the right of the target.

c) Summing up

At the address, the blade should face the line to the target exactly. The shoulders should be parallel to this line, with the left shoulder higher than the right.

Too simple? Well, may I suggest you take a close look at the address position of the next three weekend golfers you play with. If more than one of them has just these three points of aim correct, then you are obviously playing in very good company!

I’m not saying that the right stance will guarantee a good shot. It won’t, of course. But it will make it a great deal easier, just as a wrong stance will make it a great deal more difficult. After all, it is the stance that aims the swing.

Getting it all on track

Picturing a golfer standing on one track of a railway to hit a ball sitting on the other track is one of the most popular teaching analogies. It is used so often because it so perfectly conveys the ideal of aligning one’s body parallel to the target line. Such a set-up encourages swinging the clubhead through the ball along, rather than across, the target line. Also note the posture: the golfer bends from the waist with his back straight. His arms hang free and easy. His knees are slightly flexed. Overall, his posture conveys a sense of readiness and resilience.