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"Always make an effort to improve your game, and do not content yourself with the idea that you are on the links for the exercise only. It is no more difficult or less pleasant trying to play better than it is to go on continually in the same old way." Harry Vardon
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"Michael Hart, who died on September 6 aged 64, was the father of Project Gutenberg, a seemingly quixotic, scheme to copy the texts of tens of thousands of books into electronic form and distribute them for free; he thus gave birth to what has become known as the ebook revolution.
Project Gutenberg effectively began in 1971 when Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, was given an operator's account with a virtually unlimited amount of computer time at the university's Materials Research Laboratory.
At the time there was more computer time than people to use it; operators were expected to play around, to increase their proficiency. Computers of the era were cumbersome machines with whirring tape decks attended by acolytes dressed in white lab coats. The internet was two years old and was used only by academic and military researchers. Microsoft had not been born; email had yet to be invented; and the Web would not come along for two more decades.
But Hart decided that what he should do with his time was download historic texts — the works of Shakespeare, the Bible, the American Constitution and so on — and make them accessible in the public domain. As the United States bicentennial was coming up, he started by typing in the Declaration of Independence, which became Project Gutenberg's first e-text.
For the next 20-odd years Hart typed away in obscurity, stockpiling books on tapes, floppy disks, CD-ROMs and hard drives. By 1987 he had typed a total of 313 books. Then, with the help of a computer programmer, he began to recruit an army of sympathetic volunteers around the world. As a result the project was able to grow much more rapidly.
He kept Project Gutenberg going on a shoestring, begging and borrowing equipment; using home remedies rather than paying to see the doctor; and building computers from discarded components. As he did not own a car for many years, he carried equipment around on a cart attached to his bicycle.
Many thought that Hart was mad, and he faced numerous setbacks. Changes to copyright laws forced him to abandon some nearly-completed projects. Academics were, for the most part, hostile, refusing to donate texts to Gutenberg because of its policy of unlimited distribution. In the early days, even those with access to the internet made little use of his archive, as downloading something like the Bible used up too much computer memory
But as networking, computer memories and text scanning technology mushroomed, Hart's idea began to be taken more seriously. In 1991 he set himself the goal of giving away a trillion books by 2001, distributed to the 100 million computers he believed would be up and running by then. "I want a world where you can walk into a public library and get 90 per cent of the information you need copied on a disk that you don't have to return," he proclaimed.
Hart's freedom of information campaign provoked a fair amount of scepticism. But Project Gutenberg has proved a boon for both lay readers and academic researchers, aiding, for example, the linguistic analysis of Hamlet and the comparison of texts to throw light on who an anonymous author might be.
As of June 2011, Project Gutenberg claimed more than 36,000 items in its collection, in 60 different languages, with an average of more than 50 new ebooks being added each week - stored in plain text to make them accessible to all. They include everything from the Bible to the Tarzan books of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and from cookbooks and reference works to issues of periodicals." Ed. Also 'The Complete Golfer' by Harry vardon, published in 1905.
Source : The Daily Telegraph Obituaries, Michael Hart, September 8, 2011.
Insights
"To hit a good iron shot, your club must contact the ball before the sole of the club gets to the bottom of its arc.
This gets backspin on the ball, eliminates hitting behind the ball, and gets the hands ahead of the ball as the shot is hit.
Having the weight borne more on the left foot than on the right as you're coming into the ball is the way of getting the correct downward path of the iron."
Reference : Tommy Armour's book 'How To play Your Best Golf ALL THE TIME', Illustrated by Lealand Gustavson, Copyright © 1953, by Thomas D. Armour. Published by Simon and Schuster, Inc. New York, 1953.
"The more I teach, play and watch golf, the more convinced I become that the decisive factor in good shot-making is preparation: shot assessment, club selection, grip, aim, stance, posture.
If you can master these departments you have every chance of playing golf to the best of your full capabilities, whatever those may be."
Reference : John Jacob's book 'Play Better Golf' with John Jacobs. Chapter 12. Faults, Causes and cures reviewed. Final Thoughts on Learning Golf. Based on the Yorkshire Television Series written in collaboration with Ken Bowden. Stanley Paul & Co Ltd, Copyright © Yorkshire Television 1969.
"As I have said, your body does turn as you go back on these shots, and so the clubface does not remain in a fixed position with relation to the ball, as in a putt or a chip.
Yet the clubface does stay in a fixed position with relation to the body.
If on a pitch your shoulders, say, turn ten degrees to hit the shot, the face of the club has also opened ten degrees with relation to the ball.
In relation to the shoulders or body, however, it is still square.
In other words, there has been no pronation or supination of the wrists, independent of the body turn.
All the way up to the power shots the process is the same.
If the shoulder turn or pivot is a full ninety degrees, or even more, the clubface opens by that full amount, and that amount only.
Its position with relation to the shoulders is still the same as it was at address.
Let me repeat that the wrists never open the clubface by themselves.
Body turns does it (or more particularly shoulder turn, since on fuller shots they turn farther than the hips). Yes, it is body turn alone which opens the face, and then only with relation to the ball.
On the downswing the body, arms and wrists return to their original position, not stopping there, of course, but going on through.
On these pitch shots you must avoid all feeling of trying to help the ball up into the air. The loft on the face of the club automatically takes care of this for you.
The grip should be kept crisp enough to make for precision.
Shots of average height and average spin call for firmness, with the wrists uncocking only to their original position, and not past it in any sort of scoop.
As the arms swing on by the only subsequent wrist motion would be caused by the club's momentum, and not by any conscious effort of the hands."
Reference :Paul Runyan's book 'Paul Runyan's Book For Senior Golfers', The Pitch Shots, Chapter 8. Dodd, Mead & Company, Copyright © 1962 by Paul Runyan.
"So many things are responsible for slicing, either singly or collectively, that it may take even a first-class coach some little time to put his finger on the actual seat of the trouble, and the chances are that it will take you much longer, unassisted. Don't be discouraged, however. "Genius," Carlyle, I think, says, "is simply the capacity of taking infinite pains."
It may not be amiss to here recapitulate a few of the principal causes of slicing:
- Hitting off the heel.
- Pulling the arms in.
- Improper position of the hands in gripping.
- Gripping loosely with the left hand, and tightly with the right.
- Standing too far back of the ball.
Each of these faults has already been treated fully in a previous chapter."
Reference : Walter J. Travis' book 'Practical GOLF by Walter Travis. Illustrated From Photographs. New & Revised Edition. New York and London Harper & Brothers Publishers 1903', extract from Chapter VIII General Remarks page 99. Copyright, 1901, by Harper & Brothers May 1901.
"Walter J. Travis (January 10, 1862 - July 31, 1927) was born in Maldon, Australia and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1890.
Nicknamed "The Old Man" because of his late start in the game, aged 35 - was the most successful amateur golfer in the U.S. during the early 1900s. Travis won the U.S. Amateur Championship in 1900, 1901 and 1903.
In 1904, he became the first foreign player to win the British Amateur Championship."
"Do YOU realize that 95 per cent. of the people who play golf are slicers?
There are several reasons why a slice is so devastating. Since the drive on 14 of the 18 holes, usually, are with a wooden club, it means the slicer is getting off to a bad start on most of the holes every time he plays.
He may even lie three, four, or five by the time he finally gets his ball on the fairway. All chance of a decent score on that hole is gone, even though he plays his irons well to the green.
What exasperates the slicer even more is that the harder he tries to hit the ball straight, the more he slices. On the rare occasions whe he unconsiously hits a good shot, he doesn't know how he did it.
A wild hope surges, but this is dashed a few shots later, and the unhappy soul spends the rest of the round trying to figure out how he happened to hit that one good one.
What causes that exasperating curve to the right?
It is caused by the face of the club being "open" at the moment of impact with the ball.
By "open" we mean that the face points, or faces, to the right of the direction the club head is following. The direction of the club head determines which way the ball will start. The position of the club face determines whether the ball will curve, which way, and how much.
So the open face is what we are going to attack and eliminate.
How will we do it?
We will do it by teaching you what we call the Square Face System of hitting the ball. The outstanding feature of this method is that the face of the ball is square not only when it hits the ball.
It is square during the entire swing, from the moment it starts to go back, all the way to the top and down again at impact."
Reference : 'Stop That Slice' by Joe Dante and Len Elliott. Illustrated by Bill Crawford. Publishers London Herbert Jenkins Limited London S.W.I. Copyright © 1954. Introduction by Julius Boros, National Open Champion, 1952, Professional at the Mid-Pines Club, Southern Pines, North California. James J. Dante, for five years President of the New Jersey P.G.A., one of golf's great teachers and inventor of the Square Face System.
"The most commonly asked question to me is how do you stop a slice?
Everybody seems that they slice the ball and they want a solution. Well, there are several things I tell. The first thing I look at is the grip... A lot of the time, that's the only solution that's necessary for people who slice the ball."
Reference : Tom Watson's Lessons of A Lifetime DVD, Instruction from one of Golf's Greats, Your Step by Step guide to a better game in 44 lessons. Two Disc Set & Instructional Booklet © Copyright 2010 Tom Watson Productions, tomwatson.com.
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1. Sat 12/11/2011
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