golfing journals about, but he was picking up the technique of the
game.
'What happened then?'
I told him in a word.
'Your stance was wrong, and your grip was wrong, and you moved your
head, and swayed your body, and took your eye off the ball, and
pressed, and forgot to use your wrists, and swung back too fast, and
let the hands get ahead of the club, and lost your balance, and omitted
to pivot on the ball of the left foot, and bent your right knee.'
He was silent for a moment.
'There is more in this pastime,' he said, 'than the casual observer
would suspect.'
I have noticed, and I suppose other people have noticed, that in the
golf education of every man there is a definite point at which he may
be said to have crossed the dividing line--the Rubicon, as it
were--that separates the golfer from the non-golfer. This moment comes
immediately after his first good drive. In the ninety minutes in which
I instructed Mortimer Sturgis that morning in the rudiments of the
game, he made every variety of drive known to science; but it was not
till we were about to leave that he made a good one.
A moment before he had surveyed his blistered hands with sombre
disgust.
'It's no good,' he said. 'I shall never learn this beast of a game. And
I don't want to either. It's only fit for lunatics. Where's the sense
in it? Hitting a rotten little ball with a stick! If I want exercise,
I'll take a stick and go and rattle it along the railings. There's
something in that! Well, let's be getting along. No good wasting
the whole morning out here.'
'Try one more drive, and then we'll go.'
'All right. If you like. No sense in it, though.'
He teed up the ball, took a careless stance, and flicked moodily. There
was a sharp crack, the ball shot off the tee, flew a hundred yards in a
dead straight line never ten feet above the ground, soared another
seventy yards in a graceful arc, struck the turf, rolled, and came to
rest within easy mashie distance of the green.
'Splendid!' I cried.
The man seemed stunned.
'How did that happen?'
I told him very simply.
'Your stance was right, and your grip was right, and you kept your head
still, and didn't sway your body, and never took your eye off the ball,
and slowed back, and let the arms come well through, and rolled the
wrists, and let the club-head lead, and kept your balance, and pivoted
on the ball of the left foot, and didn't duck the right knee.'
'I see,' he said. 'Yes, I thought that must be it.'
'Now let's go home.'
'Wait a minute. I just want to remember what I did while it's fresh in
my mind. Let me see, this was the way I stood. Or was it more like
this? No, like this.' He turned to me, beaming. 'What a great idea it
