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WAGGLE WORK
"Much dripping wears away a stone, and continual fussing and fretting . . . wears away the golfer." --BERNARD DARWIN
The waggle is an excellent way to begin the golf swing. This preliminary brandishing of the club at address breaks tension in the arms and wrists and promotes a smooth takeaway. As the old Scots used to say, "As ye waggle, so shall ye swing."
The waggle is not only important in diagnosing an opponent's nervousness, it can also be an offensive weapon. Once, after watching Hubert Green waggle seventy-five times in a sand trap, J. C. Snead said: "I promised myself that if he got to a hundred, I'd kill him." One is also reminded of Ed Norton's (Art Carney's) Honeymooners golf lesson in which his interminable waggling provokes Ralph Kramden's (Jackie Gleason's) mounting exasperation, which erupts when Norton finally demonstrates how to address the ball: "Hello, ball!"
Waggle work is indeed a great way to madden an opponent, but it involves a high risk of self-contamination, so don't try it unless you're sure you can handle it (as it were). On the other hand, if you're a fidgety person, you're a natural for waggle work and its allied gambits: repeated glances at the hole before stroking a putt, endless foot-shuffling at address (sometimes called "happy feet"), repetitive shirt-tugging, obsessive-compulsive ball-washing, etc. So, if you're the nervous type, give your jitters free reign. Let them express the real you, and unnerve your opponent.
Do you have a favorite golf ploy you don't see here? Submit it to our contest and it may appear in the next edition of How to Win at Golf!
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