It is not negative ground. It is positive ground.
I think that is what he's done. However, the signal from the coil/distributor has the wrong polarity, which was the biggest problem I've faced. Maybe the tach he has doesn't care about the polarity of the signal, but all of them I've dealt with do.If I am following you correctly, tach red to (+) battery post and tach black to the (-) battery post is normal 12v wiring hook up. Not sure where this would be considered pos grounding. Connecting the pos battery post to ground doesn't do much of anything as far as I can see. Maybe I'm missing something, but looks like you just have the tach connected a seperate 12v source.