What Is Wrong With Your Game?

Helps to Happiness in Matters Athletic

S. ASHLEY HOCKENHULL

FOR many years there has been something wrong with my games. I do not mean "game" in the singular. The usual expression "something wrong with my game" is too exclusive. In my case the wrongness has applied to every game I have essayed from ping-pong to polo. Between ourselves I have never tried polo, but it sounds impressive; in any case I am sure I should be, or should have been a dub at it before my discovery of just where the trouble lay.

At last I have solved the riddle which has puzzled me and exasperated my partners for twenty years, the reason for my. amazing ineptness at athletic games. The trouble has been with my equipment.

I can readily imagine the reader laying down this well-bred magazine and saying "the poor fish! does he imagine that golf-clubs make the golf player, or the tennis-racket the tennis champion ? Officer, send for the wagon."

Well, that is exactly what I do mean. Of course, I do not go so far as to say that with Gene Sarazins, clubs I could beat Jim Barnes, but the point I wish to make is that, with a proper set of tools, a man's excellence at any particular pastime can not only be brought to its highest development, but that this highest point will be far beyond anything he has dreamed himself capable of.

Far be it from me to state this without strong supporting testimony. For many years I have suspected that the fault was not entirely with me, but with the implements I was trying to use, but I did not like to say this. It seemed craven; a bit like begging off. Thus when one of the Yale crews lost to Harvard last June because the Yale boat broke in two, nothing was said about it. The Harvard men gallantly offered to run the race over again. The reply of the Blue captain is historic.

"Why?" he said.

Of course the Cambridge lads were too well-bred to specify and so the matter rested. It is a delicate incident.

The Hole in the Racket

THIS is all very well where institutions are concerned but in the case of individuals I feel that it can be carried too far. For years I have been shamed into silence; now I am resolved to speak out. As a small, boy the finger of scorn used to be pointed at me because I would occasionally say when I missed a ball at tennis: "There was a hole in my racket." I felt very bitterly about it at the time and I am still resentful, though philosophic, at this late date, because I realize that I was right.

A day or two ago I came across the ancient racket with which I used to play and how I ever hit a ball with it, is beyond me. It was manufactured by a theoretical young man whose idea was that for the "cut" game which was then in vogue, the rackets of the day were all wrong. Owing to the desirability of giving a tremendous slice to the ball and sending it over the net in the shape of a lemon, he had decided that the striking part of the utensil should be elliptical, with the handle meeting at the end of a diagonal axis. If this is too technical I can only say that the completed result looked like a kidney on a stick. The inventor was said to perform very well with a similar design, which only proved that he could play tennis with a kidney-bat and I could not.

This brings me back to my starting point, namely to the fact that every individual requires a different sort of club for golf, tennis, base-ball, polo, or what you wish, and nine out of ten of them haven't got it.

In Professional Ranks

I HAVE spoken of supporting testimony for my theory. Let me first point to professionals. Take base-ball for instance. We are not apt to think of base-ball players as sensitive, temperamental people. And yet they are nothing if not that. With their high salaries and big audiences we find in them all the uncertainty jpeculiar to prima-donnas. In no way is this more evident than in the care with which Jhey select the particular bat with which they hope to smite the ball. A large array of these weapons is laid out on the grass for their selection. When eventually advance to tne plate they always take, not one bat,"but two! A popular reason for this is that the weight of two bats makes one seem as light as a feather and gives the hitter an added sense of power. This is absurd. The truth is that your highly organized ball-player can not make up his mind until the very last moment just which bat he will use. Even then he often makes a mistake.

Early this season at the Polo Grounds I saw Babe Ruth do this. After swinging two bats for several minutes, he struck out. As he wandered slowly toward the dugout to an accompaniment of chivalrous "boos" from the audience, he passed clo$e by my seat.

"Too bad, Babe," I called. "You chose the wrong one."

He gave me a look of understanding so sad that it was almost savage. I could see that he understood. For a moment I thought he was going to climb into the box and shake my hand.

On another occasion I watched a Yale fullback muff a foot-ball during an important game. The precision with which he muffed that ball time after time, was uncanny. Staticians figured out afterward that if he had let every ball drop without touching it, Yale would have won. One of the coaches with whom I talked after the game threw a great light on the subject.

"The ball was the wrong shape," he said. "What that guy needs is a ball built like a life-preserver with a hole in the middle so that he can stick his arm through it." The advantage of the right kind of equipment, you see! The advantage of not having it cost me twenty dollars on this particular occasion, so the lesson was brought home to me.

We expect violinists to be fussy about their instruments and they are. A friend of mine recently organized a dinner party of the highly-paid musical set, among others a violinist who makes the old ladies at the Biltmore "mornings" weep all over their fichus. When my host met me before dinner his eyes were bulging with excitement.

"I brought my brother's fiddle along," he whispered. "May be when he"—indirating the celebrity—-"has had a few drinks he'll play something! He's had four cocktails

All went as per schedule up to the coffee. The maestro didn't miss a dividend or an original issue and was in rare mood. Immediately after the coffee my friend seized the violin, which was one of those red ones and held it out, bowing before his guest. The latter looked at it a moment and then smiled graciously. "Thank you", he said, "but I do not smoke."

He thought it was a cigar-box.

Moral: Always have a little Stradivarius in your home.

More Evidence

MORE important than these individual instances is the evidence which may be adduced from the tendency of the modem dealer in athletic outfits. Here we see the writing on the wall, plain and clear, for, after all it is only when an idea begins to function eco^ nomically that it may be considered an established fact.

It is then, no longer a theory with these astute business-men that what the modern purchaser wants is individual treatment. The American merchant is a keen article and the chance to do the right thing, if there is a profit of, say, 50 per cent in it, is not going to escape him long.

Characteristically he goes straight to the root of the matter. Lying before me is a folder from one of our leading athletic houses. The topic is golf. The style is that of a questionnaire.

"Are you off your game?"

"Are you short on your drives?"

"Are you long on your putts?"

"Do you slice?"

"Or pull?"

"If you can answer 'yes' to all these questions, stop in some day and let Tom MacDougal look you over. Bring your old clubs with you."

I let Tom do it next day. He was a serious Scot with a professional air. "Will ye leave it to me?" he asked dourly.

"Aye, aye." I said, just escaping hitching my trousers in nautical fashion, a trick I. have had ever since I played Dick Deadeye for one night only in '97.

"Aye", I repeated. "Gang awa' hoots McTavish."

He went away and came back with an attendant to whom he handed my old clubs, the ancient "lofter", the first and last club of its kind I have ever seen, the broad-faced spoon with the widest hilting surface in the world, the old 'meat-axe', a mid-iron which must have been built for a giant so great were its mowing powers, all these he passed to his assistant with the simple command "Bash the lot."

The attendant went out and I heard a splintering sound which I took to be caused by the bashing. MacDougal then proceeded to measure me. Handing me a golf club, he made me address an imaginary ball while he announced various dimensions which were entered in a book.

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"Ye'll come on Tuesday for a fittin," he said.

On Tuesday my new clubs were in the rough. MacDougal made careful adjustments of shafts, noted changes in the face of drivers, pitch of mashies, etc. The completed clubs were sent in a new bag to my apartment a few days later. The new putter is a fair sample of his individual treatment. The shaft is curved to fit the bulge of my figure. I always put with the handle of the putter straight up and down and the butt end is forever sticking me in the turn. MacDougal has given the shaft a tricky bend that entirely does away with this conflict. The wooden clubs are equally clever. There are two drivers, one to use to correct a slice, the other designed to do away with a pull. If only I don't get them mixed I am sure they will improve my game tremendously.

The Plugless Tennis Ball

NOT only in the matter of clubs but in the balls also,golf experts are making great strides. I have read the spedfications for some of the new balls and I don't see how I can possibly do over 80 with any of them. According to the ad they "fly straight and are absolutely reliable on the green." That is the kind of ball I have been looking for for years. There is another variety, which is sold at the five and ten-cent stores, a resilient rubber affair that leaps into life at the slightest touch. A card on the bin said "If you can drive straight with these you can drive straight with anything."

This sounded encouraging so I bought tnree dozen, I am not in a position affirm or deny the justice of the manufacturer's claim as I have only driven eighteen so far and none has been recovered. Still I am buoyed by the thought that if they did go straight they went so far that I have not reached them yet.

It's the same way with tennis. Have you run across the new plue-less tennisball? Do you realize that what has in the past, made a tennis-ball bound crooked and get by you is that it was made with a rubber plug inside it and that the plug gets loose and rattles about and makes the ball leap to the left just as you leap to the right? You've probably done this without knowing the reasoin.

Well, the reason is the plug. AND now they are making a plug-less ball that simply .can't escape your racket Fire me three or four of these new balls and one of these steel-framed wirestrung rackets that "adds power AND accuracy"—the only two things my game has ever lacked—and I will challenge the world. And to think that all these years I have been thrashing about a court missing impossible shots be cause the bamed ball had a plugin it! Part of my idea is still theoretical. I have not yet had an opportunity to try my new golf-clubs or my new tenis bat and balls. But I am sure that they cannot hurt my game and if they do not improve it tremendously it mrely means that I have not yet found the right fit and style. I am prepared to do my best as to muscular exertion etc. The rest is up to the experts and and manufacturers. To do them justice I must add that they show even evidence of being prepared to co-operate with me as long as I am able to pay for it; perhaps longer.