PresentDay Golf Author:George Duncan General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1921 Original Publisher: George H. Doran Subjects: Golf Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.c... more »om where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: Chapter 111. The Grip of the Club Ï Attach the utmost importance to the manner in which way the club is gripped, and being a convert to the overlapping grip I am a great believer in that method. For many years I used the ordinary half- finger, half-palm grip, the same grip as Abe Mitchell adopts to-day. Vardon started the boom in overlapping. I believe J. H. Taylor has never gripped in any other way; Mr. Laidlay did it long before any of them, but it was left to Vardon to make it fashionable. Amongst other converts were Braid and Ben Sayers, who told me it took him six months to hit the ball straight in the new way. He, like most other players who let the left thumb lie down the shaft for the first time, had a tendency to slice. But perseverance prevailed, and all Sayers wishes now is to be forty years younger. Mr. John Ball and Sandy Hrrd are notable players who could not be convened to the new method, though I believe the latter had a go at it, but he missed the feel of the club in his palm. Mr. Hilton got as far as allowing the little finger to overlap, but never got the left thumb down the shaft. All other things being equal, there is a sacrifice of power in adopting a finger grip, as one has much more power with a palm grip, but I thought the finding of the fairway more often was worth the sacrifice. Another important point in favour of the ringer gripis that one has greater freedom of wrist, and this makes shots possible that are not "on" with a palm grip. Now there are all sorts of overlapping grips, and quite a lot of golfers get overlapping a...« less