THE VIRTUE OF UNDERSPIN 59 



from this standpoint ; and his first discovery was that we were all wrong. 

 He told us that we imagined we knew all the laws under which a golf 

 ball flew, but that these laws were in themselves insufficient to explain the 

 duration of the flight, and that he proposed to find out what was lacking 

 in the sum of our knowledge ; he discovered in fact that there was a 

 problem to solve. Mr H. B. Farnie, and afterwards Sir Walter Simpson 

 had told us of the Art of Golf; the Professor detected that there was a 

 Science of Golf, and afterwards worked out and communicated the problems 

 which he had discovered and solved. There is a story that Freddie 

 demolished his father's arguments by driving a ball further than the limit 

 that had been set by the Professor. Freddie perhaps half believed that 

 he had created this joke against "the Governor," for he never studied his 

 father's articles very closely, as we can judge from the fact that it is not 

 till the end of 1898 that we find him writing to Jack to announce that 

 "the Governor's theory is underspin." The grain of truth that was in the 

 story was made into a good jest by the facile pen of Mr Andrew Lang. 

 The Professor indeed said in Golf, Dec. 1890, that from the theoretical 

 data it appears that to gain ten per cent, of additional carry a long driver 

 must apply nearly fifty per cent, more energy. But this statement must be 

 read with his explanatory remark in Nature, " I shall consider the flight of 

 a golf ball in a dead calm only, and when it has been driven fair and true 

 without any spin." The essence of the Professor's discovery was that 

 without spin a ball could not combat gravity greatly, but that with spin 

 it could travel remarkable distances. In the first place the Professor found 

 that a golf ball combated the attraction of gravity for a period nearly 

 twice as long as he had expected. By floating marked golf balls in 

 strong brine or mercury he found that they did not float truly, but wobbled, 

 and that the marked spots ultimately came to certain fixed positions ; from 

 this he gathered that the centre of gravity of a ball seldom, if ever, coincided 

 with its centre of figure. This fact, taken in conjunction with an assumed 

 rotation, at once explained the violent wobbling in the air occasionally 

 observed. Slicing and pulling proved the existence of spin about an axis 

 not truly horizontal ; and mathematical calculation showed that underspin, 

 by introducing a lifting force, would increase the flight of the ball. The 

 sufficiency of the omitted factor was made clear. This discovery has been 

 of the utmost importance to the golfer, and is in fact the groundwork on 

 which the modern school of scientific play has been built. 



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