Ball grew up playing golf as a youth on the Royal Liverpool course, which was established in his early boyhood.

Bobby Jones, who won the Grand Slam in 1930, is the only other golfer in history to win those two tournaments in the same year.

Although he gripped the club tightly in the palms of both hands, Ball's swing was the most graceful and stylish of his era.

Bernard Darwin wrote, "I have derived greater aesthetic and emotional pleasure from watching John Ball than from any other spectacle in the game."

He scorned the use of that club, describing it as "another bloody spade," and admonished the Rules of Golf Committee of the Royal and Ancient for permitting such horrid-looking contraptions to be allowed in competition.

Darwin once noted that Ball had "a strong vein of hostility and if he wanted a particular player's blood, he would fight his way through a tournament with the sole object of getting at him."

In his book, Sixty Years of Golf, Robert Harris wrote that "John's soft, whispering voice, his stoicism, his pawky jibs at easy rules and innovations, his relentless criticism of moderns with their fuss, and his total outlook on the game, were the very essence of golf.