Especially for addicts of the smothered hook

A tip that really seems to help my members is the one I use on the practice tee to cure players who are afflicted with quick or smothered hooks. The players who are vulnerable to the smothered hook are almost invariably very right-hand conscious. To drive home to them the proper use of the left hand, I get them to learn to take the right hand completely off the club as they enter the hitting area—which is approximately when the hands pass the right hip on the downstroke.

The practice tee is the place to do this. At first many players find they can't release the right hand. After five or six tries, though, they can get the right hand off the club at the desired time and can swing through perfectly with only the left hand. This comes as a shock to them—they would never have thought it possible. Hitting balls for half an hour or so using this right-hand release gives the player a totally different concept of the golf swing. After he returns to hitting the ball with both hands, he no longer clutches the club in a death grip with his right hand and he goes on to develop the correct feeling he's learned of hitting the ball with the back part of the left hand.

from JOHN THOREN, Myopia Hunt Club, So. Hamilton, Mass.

TWO PHOTOS

ILLUSTRATION

Hitting through with left hand only

Point at right-hand release

Hitting through with both hands

NEXT WEEK: GARDNER DICKINSON JR. ON ACTIVE LEG WORK