If we sum up the advice of Vardon and Taylor, and of Braid as shown in his latest work _Advanced Golf_, we see clearly that although they subscribe to the idea of the predominance of the power of the left hand and arm, they do not themselves carry it out in practice. Taylor says that his grip with both hands is very firm, yet he should hesitate before recommending other people to follow his methods. I think we may take it for granted that a method which has resulted in four open championships may be considered good enough to follow.
Vardon, as we have seen, only subscribes to this notion inferentially, and nobody could be more emphatic than he is with regard to the distribution of force in the grip. His words "Ask any really first-class player with what comparative tightness he holds the club in his right and left hands, and I am confident that in nearly every case he will declare that he holds it, nearly, if not quite, as tightly with the right hand as with the left," present the case exactly. Any man who plays golf properly will find it impossible to tell you how he distributes the force of his grip on his club, and what proportion of power the grip of the left bears to the right. As a matter of fact, the man who plays golf properly has no time to think of such nonsense as this. This is a matter which is regulated for him by common sense and nature.
The trouble steps in when he is advised to interfere with the ordinary course of Nature, and to put the left hand in a position of authority which it has no right whatever to try to exercise. I say advisedly "try" to exercise, because it never can exercise the power which it is supposed to have. It stands to reason, therefore, that any attempt whatever to make it exercise a power superior to the more powerful arm must result in interfering with the proper functions of the hand and arm which should be naturally in command of the stroke.
We have seen that James Braid in _Advanced Golf_ has quite altered the opinions which he expresses in _How to Play Golf_, and he also agrees that at the top of the swing, and until the stroke is played, it is right to grip the club as hard as one can with both hands--in fact, he says as plainly as it is possible for anyone to say anything, that during the whole of the downward swing the muscles are in a state of supreme tension, and fortunately he does not repeat the common error, the error which he himself makes in _How to Play Golf_, of advising the player to encumber his mind with any idea of regulating the increase of speed of the club head.