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Welcome To Better Putts, Drives and Irons ‘How to Play Golf The Natural Way – Using Your Mind & Body’... you like playing golf and you want to improve your game. This is a book of long-lost forgotten secrets that will help you improve your game using your mind and body – and improve your current game one hundred per cent by playing golf NATURALLY.

You may think that the game has moved on and the contents of this book that was originally written in the 1950’s may well not help you.

Well like most sports golf hasn’t changed at all and the basics and the goals that you aspire to reach remain exactly the same. The mindset needed for golf and the little techniques remain the same too.

The only thing that could be rightly argued about the modern-day golfer is that the equipment used is superior to the technology available to golfers in years gone by.

This fact is immaterial because it does not matter at all what expensive custom fitted clubs you prefer to play with because this book is not about equipment or recommending it nor trying to sell you some.

It’s about playing golf naturally and explaining how if you master the techniques and advice in it you will notice a definable improvement in your golf game with better scores, more confident strokes and FAR less frustration....and dare i say it anger...otherwise known as golf rage.

If you want more consistency in your golf game, then you need to learn ‘How To Play Golf The Natural Way ...Using Your Mind And Body’.

The help and advice in this book comes from professional golfer Jack Burke who won 2 majors in 1956 The Masters and The PGA Championship.

In the year 2000 he was inducted into World Golf’s Hall of Fame. He played in 4 Ryder Cups for the USA and was playing Captain in 1957.

On the PGA tour he had 16 wins, he’s worked as Phil Mickelson’s putting coach and shares his permanent locker at Augusta National – the home of the masters with Tiger Woods.

This is what fellow professionals say about Jack and his methods....

“I knew Jack before he was old enough to chew bubble gum. I thought then that he might become a great golfer. After reading his book, I’m sure of it” – Jimmy Demaret – 3 times winner of the Masters.

“ Jack burke puts golf on a common sense basis.His book reads the way a golf pro talks. It doesn’t clutter up the readers mind with a lot of impractical theories. What’s more, Jack doesn’t teach you how to hit the ball and then leave you stranded on the lesson tee.

He steers you around the course, showing you what clubs to use and what shots to play.” – Byron Nelson the all time competing money winner.

“This is the handbook to big league golf. If you’re taking lessons, reading Jack Burke’s book is the ideal way to supplement them.” – Claude Harmon winner of the Masters in 1948.

“ Jack shows you how to play the game from the green back to the tee, which is the way golf should be played. I particularly recommend the chapter on putting.” – Lew Worsham World championship of golf winner in 1953.

“Jackie Burke is one of the few people left who really understands this game in its entirety,”He’s really current with the game. He’s seen all the great players. He knows how they hit it. He understands the golf swing, he’s made it happen and he’s been a great player in his own day.” Hal Sutton – PGA Championship winner 1983.

And here is a famous quote from Jack himself that may resonate with you “The average player doesn’t play golf. He attacks it”

What you are about to hear is the definitive way to play golf in the words of Jack Burke...study and absorb the advice and of course ...play well.

THE NATURAL WAY TO BETTER GOLF

by JACK BURKE
Illustrations by NORMAN TODHUNTER

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER 54-8924

FIRST EDITION

to my father, JACK BURKE, Sr.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE: Nothing new in golf?

CHAPTER TWO: Golf for relaxation and enjoyment

CHAPTER THREE: Changing your golf viewpoint

CHAPTER FOUR: How to hold the club

CHAPTER FIVE: How to address the ball

CHAPTER SIX: The shoulder stroke, secret to consistent putting

CHAPTER SEVEN: The chip, essence of the iron shot

CHAPTER EIGHT: The pause no swing should be without

CHAPTER NINE: The feet, motor of the golf swing

CHAPTER TEN: Learn to score with your woods

CHAPTER ELEVEN: The slice, its cause and cure

CHAPTER TWELVE: Starting a round of golf

CHAPTER THIRTEEN: How to play to the green

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Making use of your imagination

CHAPTER FIFTEEN: Trouble and what to do about it

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Adding up the score

CHAPTER ONE
Nothing new in golf?

There are a number of die-hards who insist that nothing can be said in a book about golf that has not been said before. They claim that, however you phrase it, hitting a golf ball consists of only three things: A slow backswing, Keeping your eye on the ball, and The follow-through.

It just so happens that I don’t think you need take a slow backswing, keep your eye on the ball, or follow through in order to hit the golf ball properly. This book, then, will not appeal to the die-hards, stubborn as they are in their belief that during the last half century no one has improved on the techniques of either hitting the ball or playing the game.

These people claim there just isn’t anything new in golf. They dismiss today’s lower scores with a toss of the hand. All due to improved equipment, they say—like the steel shaft and the sand wedge.

In the winter of 1952 I managed to win four tournaments in succession across the lower border of this country with a total score that was sixty-six under par. Half a century ago these same tournaments could have been won with sixty-six over par.

That’s a difference of 132 strokes. Make any allowance you want for the steel shaft or the sand wedge. That still leaves a hell of a lot of strokes unaccounted for.

Nothing new in golf?

In the past, too much emphasis has been placed on the science of the golf swing rather than on the art of hitting the ball. There are thousands of theories on the former, almost none on the latter. Golfers are becoming unbearably self-conscious about their pivots, the way they shift their weight, and (this one always stops me) how they look after they’ve hit the ball. The golf world is turning into a society of shadow-boxers, and the day may not be far off when all our golf will be played in locker rooms.

Too many people today want to look like golfers rather than be golfers. I have lost patience with those who believe that a newly discovered twist of the wrist can have them hitting 300-yard drives, winning endless national championships, receiving the plaudits of galleries that couldn’t be seated in Yankee Stadium.

Let’s face it. Golf cannot be reduced to anything as simple as a twist of the wrist.

Golfers should be learning how to relax and enjoy the game. Because this is the only way to win at golf. And if a golfer doesn’t play golf to win (though his opponent be only himself ), he shouldn’t play it at all.

In order to win you have to get the ball in the cup. In order to get the ball in the cup you have to play the game. And in order to play the game you have to hit the ball.

Whatever else goes along with this is so much foam on a glass of beer.

As I say, I don’t think it is necessary to try to take a slow backswing or to try to follow through. And yet, perhaps because I don’t try to take a slow backswing or follow through, I am told I take a slow backswing and follow through admirably.

The truth is that most self-taught golfers fail to distinguish between cause and effect. A follow-through, for example, doesn’t cause anything. Most golfers’ swings, then, are founded on principles which are largely myth.

I have no intention of inserting a fault into your swing in order to correct an even greater fault, of handing you an exaggerated hook, for example, in order to cure you temporarily of a slice. In this book you do as I say and as I do.

Golf is your pleasure, but it’s my business. This year, in tournaments alone, I will play forty golf courses in as many different cities. The prize money will total close to $900,000. One of them has a $50,000 first prize—the largest sum of money being offered anyone for doing anything in sports.

By the time I’ve completed this tournament circuit, I will have used a hundred dozen golf balls and have worn out — twelve pairs of shoes walking eighteen hundred miles of fair-way, the distance between Houston and Los Angeles.

My father was a golf pro—a player as well as a teacher. Some people who should know what they are talking about have told other people, who are careful what they listen to, that my father was the best combination of both they had ever seen.

I first played golf when I was three. I played again this morning. In between I have played every day I have been capable of getting out of bed.

I was pro at my own club when I was nineteen. Since then I have taught golf from San Diego to Westchester County, and played it from the banks of the Seine to the shores of the Philippine Sea.

Now, I’m going to tell you what I’ve learned.

CHAPTER TWO
Golf for relaxation and enjoyment

I once asked a well-known pro what he thought about when he hit the ball.

He scratched his head, pondered a moment, and then answered with the air of a man who has met a problem and come away with the only possible conclusion.

“Nothin’,” he said.

In contrast to this pro there is an old member of a club near my home in Houston who happens to be a judge.

The Judge knows almost everything there is to know about the subject of golf. He can quote the Rules almost verbatim, paragraph and page numbers included. He knows exactly how a golfer should fade the ball with a one-iron, how to play a brassie out of a sand trap, how to draw the ball off a downhill lie.

The Judge has been playing golf for over forty years. In that time he has taken lessons from any- and everybody—from Harry Vardon to the assistant caddiemaster at his club. Despite the fact he is an adviser to one national golf association and consultant to another, he will seek advice about his game from anybody at hand.

This could be his wife, who has a forty-four handicap; the other members of his Sunday-morning foursome, none of whom has ever qualified for the fifth flight in anything; or his caddie, who has never played golf in his life.

Asking the judge what he thinks about when he hits the ball would be like asking Einstein what he thinks about relativity. When it comes to golf, the Judge is the best man I know with a verb, and the absolute worst with a club.

On the golf course, the Judge couldn’t beat Tom Thumb with a hatchet. I doubt that he has ever thoroughly enjoyed a round of golf.

The difference between the Judge and our pro who thinks of “nothin’ “ when he hits the ball is that the Judge has complicated the game out of all proportion to what it ought to be while the pro has reduced its elements to their least common denominators.

Pre-eminent among them is the fact that those who play the best golf of which they are capable relax and enjoy the game—their own game. And those who relax and enjoy their own game play the best golf of which they are capable.

A better disposition is invariably followed by better golf.

What do golf pros do on their day off? They play golf.

Simply because golf is their business doesn’t mean that pros don’t enjoy the game. I have never seen a lawyer argue a case with a smile on his face. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t enjoy the law profession.

Any discussion of golf must break into two subjects: How to hit the ball, and How to play the game.

In my discussions of each there will be nothing foreign to you as a golfer. Anyone, champion or week-end golfer, has been faced with the problems of consistent putting, adding yardage to his wood shots, and recovering from a sand trap.

The better, more enjoyable golf I expect you to play after reading this book can be done with the swing you already have. No one can change his golf swing. The best he can do is take it apart to see what makes it tick, and then put it back together again. But it’ll still be the same old swing.

It’s your swing, and you’re stuck with it.

Realize that and you’re on a merrier way to better golf. The golf swing, as such, is an elusive thing, anyway. Ben Hogan, who can certainly speak with authority, confesses to having “fifty swings.”

There will be no weary repetition in this book of everything you must do in order to swing every club in the bag. What I outline applies to any club, unless otherwise noted. There just isn’t that much difference in the techniques of using the fourteen clubs.

In hitting the ball—whether it’s a three-foot putt or a 300- yard drive—there are certain things you must do. As shots vary, there are also certain things you need not do.

Why concern yourself with the latter? The system of instruction whereby you are first taught how to hit a full drive, then a fairway wood, then a long-iron, down the scale to the three-foot putt, seems to me to be an exercise in negativity.

You are first taught everything you must do in order to hit the ball properly, and then as you go through the other thirteen clubs you are given a long list of consecutive “don’ts.”

When I teach someone How-to-hit-the-ball I like to get to the heart of the matter. The heart of golf is the cup. The only club in the bag specifically designed to get the ball in the cup is the putter. Why not, then, learn it first?

Rather than end with the three-foot putt, I am going to start with it. I have found that there is nothing that goes into the procedure of hitting a three-foot putt that cannot be incorporated into the full drive. But obviously there is a great deal in the drive that is useless in the three-foot putt.