Billy Casper's Golf Tips [Paperback]

This handy book will be a must for all golfers to carry around - with advice from one of the great legends of the game!

Golf is the greatest game in the world. It is frustrating, humiliating, humbling and exciting. It can get you down and make you scream and it can give you satisfaction and joy. Golf teaches us about life and ourselves; putting our characters to the test; requiring patience, restraint and skill.

I first started to understand this on June 16, 1966. It was the first time I learned the value of restraint. All sorts of thoughts were going through my head on the sixteenth hole at the Olympic Club in San Francisco during the US Open Championship. Only a few holes before, I had been a hopelessly beaten man. Paired with Arnold Palmer as the tournament’s leading twosome, I had fallen seven shots back with only nine holes left to play. My only hope at this stage appeared to be avoiding complete disgrace. Suddenly, the match took an unbelievable turn.

I snaked in a putt on the 13th, then on the 15th I birdied and Palmer bogeyed. Suddenly, I was only 3 shots back and for the first time I felt that I had a chance to win. On the 16th (604 yard, par 5, dog leg left) I teed the ball up and looked down the narrow canyon of the fairway with large trees lining it and an inner voice said to me " Go for it! This is no time to be chicken". Tension gripped me and I was so shaken that I stepped away from the ball. I said to myself, "Just play your game, play within yourself." I took a nice easy swing and the ball sailed through the air right down the middle.

Palmer teed up and his drive struck a tree 180 yards down the fairway. Arnold has always been a great competitor and he has thrilled crowds with the way he attacks a golf course and swings a club. He grabbed a 3 iron and tried to get the ball back in position, but found himself hitting his 5th shot from a bunker close to the green. On the other hand, I played a nice easy 2nd shot and then a nice mid iron 13 feet from the hole. Arnold got down in two from the bunker for a six and I sank my putt for a birdie 4 putting me only one shot behind. We subsequently tied for the title and the next day went into an 18 hole playoff. Arnold came in with a 73 and I won the tournament with a 69. I often wonder what the result might have been if I had given in to my first impulse and tried to go for it.

My first advice for anyone wishing to play golf is to both enjoy it and play your own game. The professionals at your local course are there to help you find your game and can be of great help. Do not try to kill the ball. Relax. Swing easy and learn to play safe and score. It was the great Bobby Jones who said, "Golf is a game played on a five inch course – the distance between the ears". Ben Hogan expressed the same philosophy in a more direct fashion. He said, "Golf is 30% physical and 70% mental". Golf is different from a lot of mainstream sports. In other sports, there is a certain amount of automatic reflex because of the moving ball.

In golf, you are hitting a stationary ball toward a fixed target, which brings a much more mental aspect to the game. But the brain cannot process too much information at the same time and so it stands to reason that if you are about to hit a shot and you’re thinking: "My hands need to be here and my wrists should be cocked at the top and I should swing easy and keep my eyes on the ball", etc. this endless list can crack up your game. The goal of a tournament golfer, and any golfer for that matter, is to cultivate a swing that you can repeat over and over again, without having to think too much about it. You should be thinking about the playability of your shots and the course and not get lost on the swing itself!

The main purpose of this book is to outline the basic fundamentals of golf and some of the various shots you might find yourself taking on the course. I have won a lot of events and made a considerable amount of money doing it but a good golf swing for me is not necessarily for you, so please use this book and learn from the tips, tricks and shots outlined but use your own particular style: the style that makes you hit the ball the same way over and over again. Remember you have only one brain and over a thousand muscles! Don’t think too much, and learn to hit all the clubs in your bag. There is a reason why you’re allowed 14 clubs, so use them all.