is taken too near to the ball there is a
great inducement to the arms to take a course too far outwards (in the
direction of the A line) in the upward swing. The position is cramped,
and the player does not seem able to get the club round at all
comfortably. When the club head is brought on to the ball after a swing
of this kind, the face is drawn right across it, and a slice is
inevitable. In diagnosing the malady, in cases where the too close
stance is suspected, it is a good thing to apply the test of distance
given at the beginning of the previous chapter, and see whether, when
the club head is resting in position against the teed ball, the other
end of the shaft just reaches to the left knee when it is in position,
and has only just so much bend in it as it has when the ball is being
addressed. The second method of committing the slicing sin is
self-explanatory. As for the third, a player falls on the ball, or sways
over in the direction of the tee (very slightly, but it is the trifles
that matter most) when his weight has not been properly balanced to
start with, and when in the course of the swing it has been moved
suddenly from one leg to the other instead of quite gradually. But
sometimes falling on the ball is caused purely and simply by swaying the
body, against which the player has already been warned. When the slicing
is bad, the methods of the golfer should be tested for each of these
irregularities, and he should remember that an inch difference in any
position or movement as he stands upon the tee is a great distance, and
that two inches is a vast space, which the mind trained to calculate in
small fractions can hardly conceive.

Pulling is not such a common fault, although one which is sometimes very
annoying. Generally speaking, a pulled ball is a much better one than
one which has been sliced, and there are some young players who are
rather inclined to purr with satisfaction when they have pulled, for,
though the ball is hopelessly off the line, they have committed an error
which is commoner with those whose hair has grown grey on the links than
with the beginner whose handicap is reckoned by eighteen or twenty
strokes. But after all pulling is not an amusement, and even when it is
an accomplishment and not an accident, it should be most carefully
regulated. It is the right hand which is usually the offender in this
case. The wrist is wrong at the moment of impact, and generally at the
finish of the s