Golf Books #254 (The Gate to Golf)

The single greatest golf lesson of all time! J. Douglas Edgar prescribes a common sense set of instructions to focus your mind on one thing, and one thing only that will change your golf game forever. “Great golfers have individual peculiarities of style and method, but they have one attribute in common, and that attribute is the essential of good golf.

Some people call it “The Pearl of Great Price,” others “The Golden Key to Golf,” or” The Master’s Secret.” I call it “The Movement.” “Looking back over a period of some years I feel I must have been like a man lost in a thick fog, walking round and round in a circle; or like a man looking for a secret door into an enchanted garden, many times getting near it, but never quite succeeding in finding it. In fact at one time I got so depressed and disgusted with my game that I very nearly abandoned it for farming.

That I stuck to it was chiefly due to a sort of inward feeling that there must be in this game some secret or key which, once found, would put me on the right road for the desired destination. I was never lucky enough to be shown it, and it was only after continuous search that I eventually chanced upon it.” About the author: J. Douglas Edgar was a British professional most noted for winning the Candian Open in 1919, (beating Bobby Jones, among others) by an incredible lead of 16 strokes, which remained for years the lowest aggregate score ever returned in a national competition in any country. 

Edgar’s finishing round of 66 stood up for eleven years until 1930. O. B. Keeler, Bobby Jones’ official biographer, described the author as follows: “Edgar was the most temperamental of golfers. When in the mood – when he felt “right,” he could play incredibly beautiful golf, a remarkable exhibition of perfect control and fancy golf, which rarely was played straight – often he was bending the shots this way and that, fading the ball, drawing the ball, and obviously amusing himself as a great musician exploits his fancies on violin or piano in lighter moments of practice…….and when Douglas Edgar was “right,” I have yet to see the man who could step with him.” Note: “The Gate” was a contrivance constructed by the author as a practice tool.

This device was sold along with the original book. Though, not available today, the many pictures provided show it to be easily replicated, whether constructed from the same materials, or merely by employing a similar makeshift set of swing guides.

Publication date: May 11, 2017 (source)