The O'Flaherty house lives, talks, dreams, eats and sleeps golf. Kevin's son, Sean, shares the passion and he is a winner of the Kilkenny Scratch Cup and played a big part in Hermitage's sucsess in the Senior Cup this year.

So, what is the secret to playing good golf and making aces? Connection! And replacing "deceptive feel" with the "identifiable essential movements present in all great ball strikers". Simple as that. . .

O'Flaherty senior is on the crest of a wave at the moment thanks to a video given to him by Tour star Stephen Browne early this year. In this way he has become a disciple of the old Florida golf guru and swingmaster Jimmy Ballard whose successes include a Teacher's Grand Slam as he guided Curtis Strange to two US Opens, Sandy Lyle to a Masters, Hal Sutton to a PGA and Seve Ballesteros to a British Open.

Connection is the name of the game. It has been used by Arthur Ashe in tennis, by Joe Di Maggio in baseball and by Ben Hogan in golf.

It's all down to centrifugal force and goodbye to the straight left arm, the pokerstiff version, which has paralysed many promising careers.

Ballard learned the secret from Sam Byrd who was the first and only professional baseball player to have won a PGA tournament. He always maintained that the baseball swing and the golf swing were identical except for the plane one swings in.

Byrd roomed with the one and only Babe Ruth for years with the New York Yankees and it was Babe who taught him how to achieve perfect mechanics by swinging with a handkerchief held in the arm pit of the leading arm (that is the left arm for righthanded players).

If you hold the handkerchief in place it ties the arm and socket to your left shoulder. This makes your left arm very soft and allows you to release the bat or club square.

If the handkerchief is dropped this triggers a corrective glancing blow across the ball.

Babe was trying to explain to Sam that you can't hit with the little muscles and how important it is to keep your lead arm connected to your body, learning how to use your shoulder. The little muscles choke but the big muscles will react.

When Sam turned to golf he put a towel under his left arm, changing his plane from flat to tilted, and connection was born. The baseball man swung like hitting a low pitch releasing the entire right side to the target and unwinding the body to a straight and balanced finish.

So there it is, from Florida in the 1950s to the 14th tee at Naas last week, and now to you the secret. If you want to know more, call Ballard exponent Simon Byrne who preaches the method at Hermitage.