Though he may not have invented the grip which carries his name, Harry Vardon is widely acknowledged as the first great golfing technician. In fact he often claimed to enjoy teaching the game more than playing it which, given that he had a record six British Open titles to his credit, must have been enjoyment of a high order.

Anyway, Vardon was of the view that the road to successful golf involved two absolute basics: keep the head still and maintain a uniform grip of the club from the start to the end of the swing.

Prior to his arrival on the scene there were two main methods. The first was the so-called St Andrews swing which entailed a two-handed - what is now known as a baseball grip - and an open stance.

With this set-up, the club was overswung way beyond John Daly at his best, with the left knee buckling in to the right and the left arm bent. In this manner the club almost fell out of the fingers at the top of the backswing and there was a pronounced body sway.

Modern students find it difficult to fathom how the clubhead was delivered back to the ball with a reestablished grip. In the event, the ball was smashed away with a sway and a lurch with the bodyweight ending back on the right foot.

According to Peter Alliss and Bob Ferrier in The Best of Golf, the other extreme was what might be described as the Taylor swing, after the great J H Taylor. This involved a flat-footed stance, short, compact backswing and an enthusiastic smash at the ball.

Then came Vardon, who developed a classic, rhythmic swing which was splendidly effective. In his early days he lifted the club quite noticeably on the backswing, with the right elbow floating rather freely, causing Taylor to remark on how upright it was.

By the time he played with Gene Sarazen in the North of England Championship at Lytham in 1922, however, the right elbow was under control, tucked in, while retaining the suggestion of the hands starting back slightly before the clubhead moved.

We can only marvel now at the reported fluency of his action, given that he invariably played in a shallow, starched or celluloid collar, tie, jacket and often with a pipe in his mouth.

When George Bush was president of the US, he had a brief, technical chat with Nick Faldo during a social gathering, where he complained to the Englishman that he couldn't keep his left arm straight on the backswing. Faldo's reply was that at least the president had one thing right, albeit inadvertent: the left arm shouldn't be straight. Which is what Vardon always maintained.

"A straight left arm at the top of the backswing is impossible in anything approaching a correct movement," claimed Vardon. "This fact must be apparent to anyone who gives it a moment's thought."

And what of the famous Vardon grip whereby the small finger of the right hand rides over the index finger of the left hand, so facilitating the operation of both hands as a single unit. In truth, it had been used by the Scot, Johnny Laidlay as British Amateur champion in 1889 and 1891 and was soon taken up by the leading professionals of the time.

In his book How to Play Golf, published in 1912, Vardon observed that it took him "a year of constant experimentation to satisfy himself as to the superiority of the grip over all others . . . it did not come naturally to me . . . it seems to create just the right fushion between the hands . . ."

Against that background, it is richly ironic that Jack Nicklaus, the most successful competitor in the history of the game, used the interlocking grip, mainly because his hands were very much smaller than Vardon's. And it is even more ironic that the interlocking grip should also be the preference of Tiger Woods, who won the 1997 US Masters by 12 strokes and the recent US Open by an all-time record of 15 strokes, with hands that are proportionate to his tall, athletic build.

Though Vardon clearly modernised the swing, it is obvious some of the key fundamentals of ball striking had evolved some time prior to his arrival on the scene, even though they may have been somewhat crude. For instance, Sir W G Simpson made some very interesting points on technique in his book The Art of Golf, published in 1892.

On the matter of curing faults, Simpson wrote: "A makes himself knock-kneed when he addressed the ball. Once, long ago, when he drove a beauty, there was a feeling of gripping the ground with the balls of his big toes. If you question him warily, he will tell you the year in which, and the hole at which, the sweet shot was made that he has grown knock-kneed in endeavouring to repeat."

He went on: "B, sits down, because once, when he had a habit of falling forward (very likely he now falls back) it restored his game. C turns his toes because it cured him of swaying his body. Of course, it was stopping swaying, not standing like a crab, which restored his driving, but he did not know at the time what he was doing wrong, so he has made a fetish of his toe, which he thinks is the god of driving."

Simpson concluded: "I know a golfer who does all these things, and a good deal more. In his case, they have long ceased to have any meaning or effect upon his play. They are left like labels adhering to our travelling bags - records of former trips."

In a way, little has changed about the golfer's psyche since Simpson's day. Nor since the early years of the celebrated golf writer Bernard Darwin, who asked: "Is there any other game in which the player is so constantly wondering what is the matter with him and so regularly finding a cure which he believes will heal him forever, only to suffer a dreadful relapse next day?

"I hardly think there is, since so few other games give the same opportunity for solitary practice, and it is the solitude above everything else that promotes this pleasant form of self-deception."

Some of us would dispute that there is anything particularly pleasant about the pursuit of perfection in golf. Yet, almost despite ourselves, we are swept along by Darwin's infectious fascination with this, the most technical of all sports.

Especially when he adds: "It may seem absurd that a man should all his life go searching for this will-o'the-wisp and never lose faith in his discoveries, but that he can do so is perhaps the great charm, as it is the great mystery of golf.

"With every new book on the game that he buys, he finds yet another of these eternal secrets."