Jacobs
A Life Full Of Lessons
My best tips, favorite stories, & how I knew I was right
EDITOR'S NOTE
For more than 60 years -- as an English club professional, at his eponymous schools, consulting various national programs and advising the greats of the game -- John Jacobs has taught more golfers well than perhaps any instructor who has ever lived. The charismatic Yorkshireman has done it with wit, charm and empathy, but most important by imparting a breakthrough unifying principle: diagnosing swing faults by looking at how the ball flies. Because he cut to the game's essence, a who's who of today's top teachers, including Butch Harmon, David Leadbetter, Hank Haney, Jim McLean and Jim Hardy, name Jacobs as one of their most important influences. Along with a record of success, Jacobs' experience testing technique in the fire of competition -- he played in 14 British Opens and won his singles match at the 1955 Ryder Cup over then-Masters champion Cary Middlecoff -- gave him added credibility with the best players. Over the decades Jacobs has "had a look" at, among many others, Peter Thomson, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Jose Maria Olazabal and Ernie Els. "It's frightening, because you could do real harm," says the 2000 World Golf Hall of Fame inductee. "But I would go forth because something inside that I could not ignore told me I was right."
Awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1997, Jacobs also achieved fame as a television commentator, author of several books (including the best-selling Practical Golf), a two-time Ryder Cup captain, and, from 1971-'75, the first director and chief architect of the modern European Tour. Senior Writer Jaime Diaz visited Jacobs, who turns 86 in March, at his home in the south of England. One of the game's great givers is about to share with you some brilliant nuggets from his vast, accumulated wisdom.
WHY MY TEACHING WORKED
I explain well because I was a dunce in school. I've never been so miserable in my life as I was on the first day of class after the glorious summer break. But it's why I became a good teacher. I was always so bored and confused in the classroom, so I know exactly what it's like to not understand. I make sure to give people a careful, logical explanation, along with some fun. I don't want their time with me to remind them of school. But I want them to understand.
Now in his mid-80s, Jacobs keeps himself in good shape and still gives the occasional golf lesson.
I FOUND I HAD A GIFT for feeling like the people I was teaching. Watching their movements, I could put myself in their bodies and even their minds. Probably because I had so wanted to be a great player, I'd already experienced just about every possible problem in the swing. But mostly it's a sixth sense.
MY TALENT TURNED OUT to be teaching, but I wish I'd been given Peter Thomson's talent for competition and winning. He had all those Open Championships, and I sometimes think I'd trade all the teaching for one of those. But in the end I don't think I would. People love when you help them hit it better. You make a million friends among the hackers and choppers. It's an intimate experience, and I've been able to go on and on. I count my blessings.
IN MY FIRST BOOK, Golf by John Jacobs, I remember that the first thing I wrote down on paper was, "Golf is what the ball does." That was my breakthrough as a teacher. I look at what the ball's doing, and then I ask, "Why?"
THE GOLF SWING has only one purpose: to deliver the head of the club to the ball correctly, and to achieve such impact repeatedly. Many unorthodox players achieve correct impact -- so long as it's repeatable, it's OK. If golf were about getting into correct positions throughout the swing, then the greatest players in the world have had it wrong. The only position that matters is the club's at impact, which is determined by the clubface alignment (the most important factor), the path of the swing, the angle of attack and the speed of the clubhead. The biggest step in becoming a good player is understanding how the flight of the ball teaches the correct geometry of impact.
I'VE FOUND TRUTH in just about every book or article I've ever read on the golf swing. But there's usually one thing or another in any particular piece of writing that, when applied by the wrong person, could cause a real setback.
GOLF INSTRUCTION has two distinct phases. There are basic principles, which can be presented as fairly hard and fast and form the skeleton of a good swing. The other has to do with different methods of playing the game, about which a teacher cannot be too dogmatic.
MANY THEORIES HAVE come and gone. Most of them I've disagreed with. Many arise from the originators being focused on fixes that apply to their own games. When the Square-to-Square theory was unveiled in the late '60s, advocating that the takeaway should be initiated with a counterclockwise curling under of the left hand, I found that both co-authors -- my good friends Jim Flick and Dick Aultman -- had flattish actions begun by rolling the face open. If I'd been teaching them, I might have advised them to feel as if they were curling under. But that doesn't mean that fix should have been given to the golfing population at large.
BEN HOGAN'S The Modern Fundamentals of Golf kept me in business. High-handicappers would buy the book and immediately weaken their grips and begin rolling the club open. After that, all they could do was hit a glancing blow 50 yards to the right. The book should have been called How I Play Golf, and it would have been a great anti-hook book. But the title suggested it was good for everyone.
THE FEELING OF WANTING to take the club straight back, rather than on an arc, is intuitively human, but it's the core of many faults. We think the longer we can make a straight line, the straighter the ball will go. But golf is a side-on game with the ball on the ground, so it's the opposite.
THE HARDEST THING about golf is that the natural correction is wrong. Slicers see the ball go to the right and aim farther left. It only makes their slices bigger.
THE CORRECTION given to a student is inevitably going to be uncomfortable because in all likelihood it's an exaggerated contrary of the student's fault. But the real challenge is imparting the fix so the particular individual will understand. Because if they can grasp the "why," they'll stay with it.
WE DON'T ALL react to words in the same way, and the differences in our imaginations, particularly about a thing so subjective as golf, make us more likely to grasp an idea in different ways. Put it one way, and maybe 40 in 100 will get it. Put it another way, and another 20 will get it, and so on.
I'VE FOUND THAT about 80 percent of players will underdo a fix and revert in the direction of their original tendency. Only about 20 percent will overdo it.
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