Opening Message from Arnold Palmer

            Perhaps the greatest attraction of the game of golf is that anybody can play it and enjoy it—from the youngsters barely big enough to swing a miniature club to the most senior of our senior citizens.  Men and women both.  Such is not the case with most other sports, which require a great deal of exertion or stamina or physical contact or a combination of these things. 

            The people at the extreme ends of life will not be the best golfers.  Just as in any other athletic endeavor, an individual must be in his prime physical years to really excel.  But the beauty of golf, unless a person is such that he has no patience with anything less than perfection, is that it can be enjoyed just as much by a player who shoots 125 as by the expert who breaks 70.  For one golfer the holing of a chip shot for a par can be just as exciting and exhilarating as is a perfectly-played eagle for a scratch handicapper.  Just being out in the fresh air, moving about a lovely, manicured golf course makes it all so worthwhile.  For many in their less active years, this may be their only real exercise—and that has to be good.

            But, there is much more to it than all of this.  In recent years, golf has become a source of great interest and enjoyment for millions of people who don’t play the game nor have any real desire to do so.  In years past, tournament golf had a relatively small hard core of fans, who, by and large, also played the game avidly, though with a wide range of skill.  Today, we professional golfers are blessed with tremendous followings.  My mail, my telephone and my daily conversations with people in all walks of life constantly bring out stories from and about non-golfers who are enthusiastic fans of the game.  One of my closest friends tells me that his grandmother, who is in her 80s, never misses a telecast of our tour tournaments, even though she has never set foot on a course in her long life.

              We can thank many people and many things for this.  General Eisenhower, a great American, had a true devotion for the game and the attention that cam naturally to his golf, particularly during his Presidency, transferred an interest in the game to so many people who had never really paid any attention to it before.  Television detected this growing spectator interest at that time and fostered it with greatly-expanded coverage of tournament golf.  Many of the newspapers and other periodicals also have upgraded their golf coverage.  Countless individuals and business and civic organizations who have organized and operated the tournaments around the country and world have provided the hundreds of “showcases” in which we players can display our talents and earn our livelihoods.  Certainly, too, the many great players have helped attract this attention through their accomplishments and their personalities.

            As I planned this first edition of my Handbook of Golf, I envisioned two people—the Player and the Fan—and attempted to incorporate material for the book that would be of interest and value to each, recognizing that many of my readers would be both players and fans.

            In this, the finished product, I hope that the player will find a tip or two in the instructional section that will help his game, something he didn’t know or understand about the Rules of Golf, perhaps even break a bad habit by which he was unintentionally breaching the etiquette of the game.  Maybe the fan will run across some facts and figures about golf around the world that will surprise him or make him better informed, thereby enhancing his enjoyment as a follower of the ever-changing tournament golf scene.

            Now, you players and would-be players, come along with me to the practice area.  I would like to conduct a golf clinic for you covering the fundamentals of the game.

Clinical Approach to Golf

            Millions of words have been spoken and written by the expert and the nost-so-expert through the game’s history on how to play golf.  Most of it have been sound, sincere instructional advice.  To me, though, it too often has been too complex and technical for the average student golfer.  I honestly feel that golf is a rather simple game that requires only the mastery of a few fundamentals and the use of that object that sits on top of one’s shoulders to enable anybody to play the game well enough to derive the great enjoyment it offers.

            In short, a person can play the game if he or she develops a good, sound grip, achieves a proper position of the feet, body and head and learns to take a smooth, compact swing at the ball.  So, in the Clinic, I will concentrate on those three phases—grip, stance and swing—giving you my advice on these fundamentals and illustrating them at times when words cannot fully paint the picture.