Never, as leaders at any game, were there three men so closely matched with methods so widely different. You may put that down in large measure, if you please, to the physical, anatomical differences of the three: there was Taylor, square, short, compact, stubby; there was Braid, long, loose-jointed; and there was Vardon, a happy medium between the two, and really a very finely-shaped specimen of a powerful human being. It is hardly to be questioned which of the three had the most perfect and beautiful style. Vardon hits up his body a little, away from the ball, as he raises the club—that is a movement which we should tell a learner was apt to unsettle the aim a little. It did not upset Vardon's aim; but then Vardon was rather past the learner stage. For the rest his style was the perfection of power and ease. Taylor, with the ball opposite the right toe and every stroke played rather on the model generally approved for the half iron shot, had a style as peculiar as his "cobby" build, and specially adapted for it. Braid swung in a loose-jointed way at the ball that did not suggest the mastery and the accuracy which he achieved. I have spoken of a kind of "divine fury" with which he launched himself at the ball. Those were long before the days of his studies in "Advanced Golf" and so on. I doubt whether he played according to any very conscious method. But the results well justified the method, or the method-lessness. For a while there was little to choose between these three great ones.
James Braid.
Horace Hutchinson and Leslie Balfour Melville at the starting box at St. Andrews.
But by degrees it became evident that there was a choice: that one really was distinctly better than the other two. Certainly there was a while, just before he had to go to a health resort, with a threatening of tuberculosis, when Harry Vardon was in a class by himself. For a while he was, I think, two strokes in the round better than either Taylor or Braid, and, I believe, better than any other man that we have seen. He was the first professional I ever saw play in knickerbockers, and with the flower at his button-hole he set a mode of gaiety and smartness to the rest which younger men were not slow to follow. There was a gay insouciance about his whole manner of addressing himself to the game which was very attractive. It was as different, as their styles were different, from the imperturbability of Braid or again from the tense and highly strung temperament of Taylor. The three great men provided a striking contrast in every particular. But they had this in common, that they all took the game earnestly and kept themselves very fit and well, in order to do their best in it; therein marking a new point of departure from the usual mode of the Scottish professional of old days, who was a happy-go-lucky fellow, not taking all the care of himself that he should if he was to excel in such a strenuous game as golf. And the example of these men was infectious, so that we have now arrived at the date of the coming of the great army of English professionals.