Still it is not advisable, neither do I look upon it as being golf in the truest sense of the word, for the knack of pulling or slicing to be cultivated, as I am afraid it is by a great many players. No compromise should be made with a fault.
Here we see that what Harry Vardon regards as the master strokes of the game, are looked upon by Taylor as faults.
I may say at the outset that I am not inclined to agree with Vardon at all in this matter of the master stroke in golf. If there is one stroke which stands out above and beyond all others in its demand for accuracy, and a perfect knowledge of the method of applying spin, also a supreme ability perfectly to apply that knowledge, it is the stroke which is commonly called a "wind-cheater"; that is to say a long low ball which flies very close to the earth for the greater portion of its journey, and rises towards the end of its flight to its greatest height.
Although this ball is called the wind-cheater, it is just as effective and just as useful on a perfectly still day as it is against a howling gale, for this stroke is, in my opinion, without any doubt whatever, the master stroke in golf, and if a man has this stroke he should be very willing to allow anybody else to have all the pulls and slices in golf. The supreme importance of this stroke is so pronounced that I have always wondered at the comparatively unimportant position which has been given to it in every book on golf, with the exception of my own works. Pulling and slicing, as golfing shots, may be said to be practically unnecessary if a man has full command of the plain drive without back-spin and the wind-cheater.
Very frequently when a man is called upon to pull or to slice, it is to remedy a previous error, and there can be no doubt that with the pull and the slice it is an utter impossibility to keep on the line in the same manner as can one who uses back-spin in the drive. The secret of the greatest golf of the future lies, in my opinion, in the proper application of back-spin in the drive.
I do not intend here to go fully into the effect of spin on the flight of the ball, as I shall do that at length in my chapter on "The Flight of the Golf Ball." Suffice it to say that the tremendous advantage of the ball with back-spin is, that being hit as the club is descending, and the hands at the time of impact with the ball being a little in front of the ball, the loft of the club is, to a certain extent, minimised, so that the ball is, in effect, struck with a club which has much less loft than would be the case if it were driven in the ordinary manner. This means that for the first part of the carry, the flight of the ball is very low, and as the club was not at the lowest portion of the swing when it struck the ball, the wind-cheater acquires a large amount of back-spin which asserts itself later on, and causes the ball to reach the highest point in its trajectory towards the end of its flight.