"On Learning Golf" by Percy Boomer

[iacas]

Discuss "On Learning Golf" by Percy Boomer here.

[The Tin Man]

"On Learning Golf" by Percy Boomer deals with teaching/learning "feel" by positioning. The book has one purpose and that's to teach a player how to find there swing when they loose it.

It's all Percy deals with - there's few pictures, no tips, nothing on equipment. This is good because the swing described is from the Bobby Jones era. However, it's easy enough to fit a conventional swing into Percy's words.

Take the shoulder tilt. He tells us to initiate it with a knee bend towards the ball, weight towards the target, rotating around the back leg -  followed by swing in a barrel with no hip slide!  So I add the hip slide.

He's really good with words, and best of all doesn't make up words, doesn't use medical terms - simple bone head English.

The same fundamentals are covered in unique ways (such as arguments with his students) throughout the book. You just need to update them a bit.

What's really an eye opener is how much the knees affect the club face. Nobody else talks about that.

It's out of print but Amazon has it, and it's not expensive. I discovered the book from all the 5 star ratings on Amazon. (There's far better written reviews then what I'm capable of.)

[The Tin Man]

A good companion book is "How to Perfect Your Golf Swing" by Jimmy Ballard.

Same phliosphy as Boomer - the golf swing is initiated from the ground up using feet/knees. Only Ballard has the diagrams and pictures. Ballard uses a more modern Hogan Swing as an example only he uses different words to describe the indescribable "feel" then Hogan does in 5 Lessons.

[The Recreational Golfer]

This is my favorite golf swing book, published in 1946. I read it every year and find something new each time. Golf Digest just came out with its list of 50 golf books every golfer should read. This one was #5 on the list. 

It's a sleeper. Highly influential even today, though everybody has forgotten the source. No, he didn't invent this stuff, but his explanations are masterful. Go to Amazon and read the reviews there. I can't recommend it strongly enough.

Boomer taught for most of his career in France, and won the Belgian, Swiss, and Dutch Opens in the 1920s. His brother, Aubrey, finshed 2nd to Bobby Jones in the British Open in 1927, and won numerous European championships.