How to Play Your Best Golf All the Time

The great Tommy Armour played his best golf quite a bit of the time, winning more than 30 times on the PGA Tour, including three majors. "The Silver Scot" retired from professional golf in the 1930s, then became one of the game's most highly sought instructors.

How to Play Your Best Golf All the Time

In 1929 he took over the post of golf professional at the Boca Raton Club, in Florida, where over the next quarter of a century his instruction ranged prom teaching duffers how to break 100 to brushing up the games of the top tournament professionals when they couldn't iron out their own difficulties. Armour always claimed that the instructional part of his golf career was the best -- the part he enjoyed the most. The instruction would be good for a beginning golfer, there were a few tips scattered throughout for the long time player. 

Armour's tone versus his contemporary is quite authoritative and at times almost condescending in his depiction of the `average' golfer and his urging to play within their limitations. He models the early chapters after a visit to his golf clinic in Florida, speaking always as the teacher and never a peer. It was his stated intention to produce a thin volume of the absolute minimized, efficient teachings about golf.

 The genius of the book is that the techniques Armour suggests are easy to remember while you are actually out there in the process of swinging the club.

The Gist of Golf

The Gist of Golf

Harry Vardon was arguably the first golf "superstar." He was the first to hook up with an equipment company and produce eponymous golf clubs; he was the first British golfer to barnstorm the U.S. and draw huge crowds; and he was one of the first to write his own instructional book. Vardon's book is a great look into the thinking about golf that existed in the early 20th century.

 This book was originally published prior to 1923, and represents a reproduction of an important historical work, maintaining the same format as the original work.

While some publishers have opted to apply OCR (optical character recognition) technology to the process, we believe this leads to sub-optimal results (frequent typographical errors, strange characters and confusing formatting) and does not adequately preserve the historical character of the original artifact.

We believe this work is culturally important in its original archival form. While we strive to adequately clean and digitally enhance the original work, there are occasionally instances where imperfections such as blurred or missing pages, poor pictures or errant marks may have been introduced due to either the quality of the original work or the scanning process itself.

Harry Vardon

Despite these occasional imperfections, we have brought it back into print as part of our ongoing global book preservation commitment, providing customers with access to the best possible historical reprints. We appreciate your understanding of these occasional imperfections, and sincerely hope you enjoy seeing the book in a format as close as possible to that intended by the original publisher.

 Date of birth: May 9, 1870
Place of birth: Grouville, Jersey (Channel Islands)
Date of death: March 20, 1937

Harry Vardon was the first international golf celebrity, and easily one of the game's most influential players.

The grip he popularized is now known as the Vardon Grip (a k a, the overlapping grip); the "Vardon Flyer" golf ball may have represented the first equipment deal for a golfer; his instructional books continue, to this day, to influence golfers; he won majors with both the gutta-percha and Haskell golf balls.

Harvey Penick -Little Red Book

Harvey Penick - Little Red Book was in his 80s when this book came out, and the book itself just entered its second decade of printing. But the words within were compiled over the course of Penick's 60-year teaching career, jotted on scraps of paper that Penick saved and finally collected. It has become the best-selling golf instructional book of all-time.

Get your LITTLE RED BOOK Here

The legendary Harvey Penick, who began his golfing career as a caddie in Austria, Texas, at the age of eight, worked with an amazing array of champions over the course of nearly a century, dispensing invaluable wisdom to golfers of every level. Penick simplifies the technical jargon of other instructional books and communicates the very essence of the game, and his Little Red Book is full of inspiration and homespun wisdom that reflects at once his great love of golf as well as his great talent for teaching

 The lessons Harvey Penick teaches the basics and fundamental of the game of golf that we all should go back to.. The golf swing is basically the same, and Penick could teach it better than anybody. For most of his life, he never intended to publish his Little Red Book, a notebook of golf wisdom and anecdotes that he compiled with the idea that he'd pass it on to his son.

But, for the sake of history, it's a good thing that he changed his mind. Contained in its 175 pages is just about all you need to know about golf from a technical standpoint, along with Penick's priceless memories of working with famous pros, teaching absolute nobodies to get the ball in the air, and finding a horde of bat guano and hauling it across town in a pickup truck to fertilize his golf course

  This book is about life,"Take Dead Aim!" With his teachings and those words as my mantra, I have not only improved the quality of my golf game but I have improved the quality of my life. This book is a testament to the fact that not all things in life can be had by making more money than the other guy, but rather by finding what you like to do (play golf), work at being the best you can be (practice), and then treating others as you would be treated were you in their shoes. A must have for not only any golfer interested in improving their game, but for anyone. 

 Harvey Penick's Little Red Book: Lessons and Teachings From a Lifetime in Golf started out as a notebook of things that he learned about golf over the years.  He opens with, "An old pro told me that originality does not consist of saying what has not been said before; it consists of saying what you have to say that you know to be the truth".

Swing the Clubhead - Ernest Jones

Ernest Jones was one of golf's first "superstar" instructors. He taught decades ago, but what he taught - summed up in the title of this classic book - is still influencing golfers and teachers of the game. Jones realized you couldn't have a swing unless you have the motion of a swing in the clubhead.  Furthermore you couldn't dissect motion into parts and still have motion: therefore it is impossible to take a swing apart and still have a swing.

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There is a frustratingly easy drill in this book that I want to share here. Jones uses the example of a pocketknife tied to the end of a handkerchief to illustrate a pendulum motion. The knife builds speed as it travels along the swing arc.

 The teachings of Ernest Jones are of a distant generation, yet no one with the possible exception of Percy Boomer, has such an influence on modern day golf instruction. Jones is quoted in countless magazine articles, and golf instruction books by well known players and teachers, including Jack Nicklaus, and Gary McCord. McCord, most well known for his humor in golf broadcasts, is a very intelligent and serious student of the golf swing. In his book Golf for Dummies, McCord lists Swing the Clubhead as one of his Top Ten Golf Books.



This book is easy to understand and really exploits the current-day theories and how they target people like you and me. They have a great revenue model: Adults, particularly men, thrive on details and information.

They keep throwing us more "swing secrets" and gadgets and we keep asking for more - when does it end? Swings come in all shapes and sizes - stop chasing that "perfect swing" and go back to the true roots of the golf swing...swing that clubhead!


By producing a swinging motion with the clubhead you will have:

• Rhythm and timing
• Maximum acceleration at the bottom of the arc
• A repeating arc = Accuracy
• Centrifugal force = distance
• Balance