338 



PETER GUTHRIE TAIT 



be regarded as totally unattainable; also that the position of the vertex in that 

 case is little more than three-fifths of the range from the tee. 



Next, let us simply take 10 for elevation and 240 for initial speed, and find 

 the results for various amounts of resistance or terminal velocities. Here they are : 



The only approach to the practical range of good driving is in the first column. 

 But the corresponding resistance is about one-sixteenth only of our estimate, and 

 the time is absurdly too small. Thus the ordinary resistance theory also fails to 

 explain the facts. When compared with them it breaks down almost as completely 

 as did the parabolic theory. 



In what precedes I have endeavoured to make it perfectly clear that something 

 else besides mere speed and elevation is required, if all the ordinary facts of long 

 driving are to be simultaneously accounted for. Great initial speed is required if 

 the resistance is great, and the larger these are the further is the vertex from mid- 

 way, but then the time taken for a range of 180 yards will be much too short. 

 In order that 180 yards may be covered in six seconds the average horizontal speed 

 must be only 90 feet per second, and gravity would cut short the ball's flight long 

 before it had reached the goal ; unless, by way of preventing this, we gave it an 

 extravagant elevation at starting. And, in all cases, the path will be concave down- 

 wards throughout its whole extent. In many fine drives it is concave itpwards for 

 nearly half of the range. The sole additional consideration to which we can have 

 recourse to help us in reconciling these apparently inconsistent facts is rotation of 

 the ball to which we are thus compelled to have recourse ! 



I have been very, perhaps even unnecessarily, cautious in leading up to this 

 conclusion ; and I have consequently been careful to fortify my position from time 

 to time by an appeal to the recognised maxim, Mundum regunt nutneri. I have a 

 vivid recollection of the " warm " reception which my heresies met with, some years 

 ago, from almost all of the good players to whom I mentioned them. The general 

 feeling seemed to be one in which incredulity was altogether overpowered by disgust. 

 To find that his magnificent drive was due merely to what is virtually a toeing 

 operation performed, no doubt, in a vertical and not in a horizontal plane is too 

 much for the self-exalting golfer ! 



The fact, however, is indisputable. When we fasten one end of a long un- 

 twisted tape to the ball and the other to the ground, and then induce a good 

 player to drive the ball (perpendicularly to the tape) into a stiff-clay face a yard or 

 two off, we find that the tape is always twisted ; no doubt to different amounts by 



