JAMES BRAID: DIVINE FURY
by BERNARD DARWIN
from Playing the Like, 1934
IT HAS BEEN SAID OF SOME CELEBRATED PERSON-PERHAPS OF SEVERAL OF THEM-THAT nobody could be so wise as so-and-so looks. As regards golfers, I feel inclined to transpose the aphorism and say that nobody could look so wise as James Braid is. "There is nobody whose every word and action is so redolent of sagacity. He has a great twinkle of humour, too, humour such as the Scots call "pawky," and many other admirable qualities, but one thinks of him first and foremost as a man of extraordinarily cool, wise judgment.
Certainly no man ever played golf with a cooler head, though I have heard him say that he liked to feel just a wee bit nervous before starting. Oddly enough, he combined with this quality a power of hitting at the ball with an almost reckless abandon as if he meant to kill it. He would march along the course with a long, slow, almost sleepy stride, and then, when he came to the ball, he would lash at it with what Mr. Horace Hutchinson well called a "divine fury"; and indeed, though one must write of his triumphs in the past tense, he can still do so. He was a superb iron player, famous especially with the now departed cleek, a master of every kind of running shot, and though not naturally a good putter, he made himself for one period of his career almost a great one. A better player out of difficulties I am sure was never seen, for not only- could he by pure strength remove tons of sand and acres of heather, but he was as skilful and resourceful as he was strong. In fact at his best, he was almost impregnably armed at all points, but it was his driving that delighted people when he first appeared, and it is still his driving, more especially against the wind, that they remember best. It was at once so appalling in its ferocity, so rhythmical in its majesty.
Braid may almost be said to have inherited long driving, since he ryas a cousin of Douglas Rolland who came, like him, from Elie in Fife, and was the legendary long driver of the eighties and early nineties. He himself has given to the world the mysterious piece of natural history that he went to bed one night a short driver and woke up next morning a long one. We must take his word her it, but I never heard of anyone who remembered him as a short driver, and he assuredly was a long one, when, with something of the suddenness of a meteor, he flashed upon the golfing world about 1895.
Everybody thinks of him now one of the famous three Braid, Vardon and Taylor, who were known as the "triumvirate" and for years almost monopolized the Open Championship. But we are apt to forget that in point of fame though not of age (he was born in 1870), he began a little later than they did. He started life as a joiner, first at Elie, then at St. Andrews and at Edinburgh, and was working at his trade while Vardon and Taylor were already budding professionals. Braid's own desire was always for golf, but his family thought nothing of it as a career and so he worked away as a joiner and played his golf when he had time as an amateur, and a very good amateur, too, at St. Andrews or on the Braid Hills course, near Edinburgh.
It was almost at the end of 1893, the year before Taylor won his first championship, that Braid crossed the Rubicon and became a club maker. The manner of his doing so was rather odd. A friend of his, C. R. Smith, was a club maker at the Army and Navy Stores in London. He wanted help and offered Braid the job, and Braid accepted it, though he had never in all his life made a club. His trade had taught him, however, all about the use of tools, and he had golf in his blood, so all was well. Even so, he had very little time for playing, and I well remember, when I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, hearing rumours that there was a wonderful golfer (name to me unknown) at the Stores, who would do terrific things if he could only get the chance.
The chance was bound to come and it actually came in 1895, in the form of an exhibition match which somebody - got up between Braid and Tav1or, then reigning champion, on a suburban course. After a great struggle the match was halved, the newcomer's fame was established straight away and he became not only a regular professional, but one of those at the top of the tree.
Braid was second in the championship of 1897, beaten by Mr. Hilton by a single stroke, but he did not win till 190y(at Muirfield), the last year before the coming of the rubber-cored ball. It always seemed strange that of his five championships, Braid won only one with the guttv ball, for there was surely no one better calculated to flog that comparatively unresponsive and stony-hearted ball. I remember that a good many years after the coming of the Haskell there was staged an exhibition between Vardon, Taylor, Braid and Duncan in which one side played with the gutty and one with the rubber core. Braid's play with the gutty that day was something to remember, and one had the impression that if that ball could be restored, there would never be any other champion but he. How, then, was it that he did not really come into his kingdom till the rubber Core was established? I think the answer can he given in a single word - putting. Braid's putting was for several years almost the despair of his supporters. I recollect that the first time I ever saw him was in the late nineties, when I went down with a friend to Romford to match our best ball against his. Up to the green he was overpowering, but I am almost sure we won one round because of those putts, and Braid remarked, more in sorrow than in anger, that he had putted "like an auld sweetie wife." In those days he putted with a cleek and had a great deal of that "knuckling" movement of the knees, as it was called, which then marked the caddie-bred putter. It tended to a movement of the body and a pushing out of the ball and had nothing whatever to recommend it. Braid toiled away at his putting with but varying success, and I think it was when he got to Waltom Heath and played with that fine putter, Mr. Herbert Fow1er, that he really improved. He took to an aluminum Club, he curbed that "knuckling" and developed a smooth movement with a noticeably slow take-back of the club.
Putting never looked as if it came quite naturally and easily to him, but - artificial or no - he undoubtedly became a highly effective putter and, if he remained just a little vulnerable over the short ones, he holed the most inordinate number of middle length and downright long ones. The putts won championships for him, and once he started he did win them with a vengeance.
I said he won in 1901. In 1904, for the third time in his career, he had a putt to tie and did not hole it. When at St. Andrews in 1905 he won for the second time, despite some desperate adventures at both the fifteenth and sixteenth holes, where he put his ball on the railway line (not then out of bounds) and had to batter it back to the course from amongst metals and sleepers. Now that he was fairly started he won again in 1906, 1908 and 1911. At the same time he made a not infrequent practice of winning the News of the World, the unofficial match-play championship, and it may be said that from 1905 to 1910 he ruled the roost. Of all his wins that in 1908 at Prestwick was the most impressive. Not only did he hole the four rounds in 291 magnificent scoring - and win by eight clear strokes, but in the third round he took eight to the third hole, the dreaded Cardinal.
Never shall I forget the ghastly silence that reigned as he tried to get out of the bunker with his mashie and twice in Succession the ball glanced off the boarded face and went out of bounds into the burn. Neither shall I forget, when at last he got clear, the utter impassivity alike of countenance and of gait with which he advanced towards the green. Those that awaited him there had not a guess that any thing untoward had happened. It was much argued at the time whether first of all Braid ought to have played short of the big bunker, and second whether he ought to have been content to get out and no more with his niblick. Perhaps he ought, but despite all his coolness and dourness Braid was always a bold player and went out unhesitatingly for the big shot. Sometimes he got into trouble, for he had not quite the machine-like accuracy of Vardon and Taylor and could at rare intervals hit a devastating hook. In a sense one of the greatest compliments I ever heard paid him was by an illustrious contemporary, who said that he ought to have won more than he did and that the hook was responsible.
Well, he won a very great deal and, moreover, there never was such a recoverer. A friend of mine once took a charming lady to Walton Heath to play a foursome with Braid as her partner. At hole after hole she toppled the ball off the tee into heather and Braid with terrific blows of the niblick put her ball far down the course. At last came a lie too much even for him. He removed the greater part of a young tree, but the ball moved only a few yards - nobody else could have moved it at all. Then said the lad, with a sweet smile, "Oh, Mr. Braid, I am glad to see that even you can make a mistake sometimes!"
After 1910 Braid won no more championships, partly, I think, because his eyesight troubled him, but he remained a great player not only up to the war but after it. He reached the final of the News of the World Tournament when well on in his fifties, and even to-day, when he accepts the inevitable gliding of the years with entire placidity, he is perfectly capable of a sixty-nine or so in a friendly round at Walton Heath. At that noble course he has now been the professional for some thirty years, and reigns there an undisturbed monarch.
If all monarchs had been as sage and suave, as imperturbable and as far-seeing as he is, what a lot of crowned heads there would be in the world to-day! He has done much work as a golfing architect, and, though the kindliest of men, is rather ruthless in the matter of bunkers. His old friend, J.H. Tavlor, once got into one of Braid's creations at Prestwick and remarked that the man who made that bunker ought to be buried in it with a niblick through his heart.
Alone of our great professionals, Braid has never visited the United States, having, I believe, a well-grounded apprehension ocean voyages. l am afraid he never will now, and if it is his loss it is also America's. Every American goIfer who comes here should make a pilgrimage to Walton Heath to see this monument of a man.
Posted 2007-03-18