The Art of Golf

This lithograph is inscribed by Jones to his close friend and fellow amateur golfer from Atlanta, Charlie Yates.

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Unknown artist, Robert T. Courtesy The Yates Family.

In the twentieth century, photographer Harold Edgerton found a way to scientifically break the game of golf down into its component parts. Inspired perhaps by the science of motion studies and able to exploit new technologies such as stroboscopic photography, Edgerton explored the science behind golf. He dedicated his career at Massachusetts Institute of Technology to photographing phenomena that are impossible to see with the naked eye or capture with traditional cameras.

He illustrated how the smallest nuance can have an exponential effect on the golf ball—a reality that instructors and equipment companies have long embraced. Patricia and Angus Macdonald work in a unique academic and artistic partnership, based in Scotland, researching, documenting, and interpreting the wide spectrum of cultural landscapes — land affected by human activities — mainly by means of aerial photography and accompanying texts.

This group of aerial photographs of famous Scottish golf courses was commissioned specially for this exhibition. The six-part artwork, Bunkered Terrain: Golf Landscapes, Scotland, , is part of an ongoing series titled The Play Grounds , which explores the landscapes of leisure activity both historical and present-day, in both rural and urban contexts.

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Bunkered Terrain portrays six golf courses representing two contrasting strands of golf-course design. Three are traditional Scottish links courses built around the natural features of the land; such courses are generally considered to achieve considerable harmony with the surrounding environment both visually and ecologically. Golf Landscapes, Scotland, six-part series , part of the ongoing series The Play Grounds , Lees carefully composed this complex scene, which includes over fifty individual portraits, using photographs of some of the golfers to help him.

Jointly owned by the National Galleries of Scotland and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, this masterpiece has never before traveled to the United States, though reproductions of it hang in golf clubhouses around the world. Displayed alongside the painting while at the High will be several preparatory sketches, all portraits of individuals who can be identified in the painting, and an early photograph by Hill and Adamson to which Lees referred as he composed his painting.

Charles Lees was born in Cupar, Fife.

He trained as a painter in Edinburgh with the eminent portraitist, Sir Henry Raeburn. After six months in Rome he returned to Edinburgh where he established himself as a portrait painter. Lees was elected a Royal Scottish Academician in From the s Lees built himself a reputation as a specialist in depicting sporting subjects; The Golfers was his first major sporting picture. Charles Lees Scottish, — , The Golfers , Organized by the High Museum of Art and the National Galleries of Scotland, The Art of Golf explores how European and American artists have depicted the royal and ancient game for more than four centuries.

In Scotland—the birthplace of the modern game—Charles Lees presented his masterpiece The Golfers in a heroic scale usually reserved for history painting, while in the United States, impressionistic landscapes by Childe Hassam and James McNeill Whistler underscored the relationship between golf, modern ideas about recreation, and genteel manners. Jones was a favored subject for artists throughout most of the twentieth century, having served as a bridge between the United States and Scotland—an ambassador, of sorts, beloved by both countries for his dedication, integrity, and love for the game.

The true masters of the game are successful because they hole more putts than their opponents. Firstly, I recommend the specification not type of putter to suit your needs.

Add the correct loft and lie and you have a comprehensive fit. You will notice here that I have a substantial forward pelvic tilt. I often see amateurs standing too close to the ball and therefore too upright, causing an imbalance to their putting stroke. The putter has a lie angle and therefore is manufactured to swing freely on an arc.

My elbows are now forced to the sides of my abdominals which, with the shaft of the putter, form a clean letter Y. Notice that my eyes are slightly inside the ball, not directly over the golf ball. Once again the correct distance from the ball can help you achieve this.

Arguably the most important note here, however, is that my hands are tension free. You should be applying pressure similar to what you would use to squeeze toothpaste from its tube. The stroke itself should be relatively compact with a fast tempo. Keep your head rock steady and accelerate through the ball until you hear the sound of the ball dropping into the cup.

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Most amateurs will struggle to get the ball closer than 20ft from the hole with their approach shot.