The following is from CHAPTER XIX of Advanced Golf published by Methuen and Company 1908
SOME PERSONAL MATTERS by James Braid
IT was not my intention originally to press any account of my own golfing career upon the readers of these pages; but while the book was in course of preparation it was represented to me very strongly by many amateur friends, and particularly some of those in Scotland, that there would be something wanting in the volume if I did not offer one; and that a fuller narrative than I have hitherto made of the outstanding recollections that I have of the early and the recent events of my experience, as well as of my own personal impressions of the championship meetings in which I have taken part, would be much appreciated by those kind and indulgent people, to hundreds of whom I owe gratitude for the favour they have shown me in one way and another.
Well, then, beginning in the proper place, I was born at Earlsferry in Fifeshire, on 6th February 1870, and it was probably not at all an unlucky day to be born on, since it happened to be a Sunday. As everybody knows, there is, as one might say, very little but golf anywhere on the coast in these parts, and Earlsferry and Elie make a great centre of the game, where it was - and is - practised with great enthusiasm by the local people of all ages and of all classes. Only a few miles north of Elie - the distance being very much shorter across country than along the coast-is the great Mecca of the game, St. Andrews, which was looked upon by the youth of our little place - and not merely the youth only, but a large proportion of the old people as well-as being the centre of all things. A shorter distance along the coast,in a westerly direction, are the famous links of Leven. At the time that I was there at Earlsferry - and I have no doubt it is much the same to this day - unless a man played golf, or there was no very plain reason why he did not, he was generally taken to be something of a crank. It has often been said, and with a great deal of truth, that the Earlsferry children show an interest in the game, and it is certain that as soon as they can walk their first efforts in the way of doing anything with their limbs are directed towards hitting a ball with a stick, which is golf in its simplest form, the ball being hit from where it may lie in the street.
They say that I was just like the average Earlsferry boy, but that I was a little more precocious than some of the others in golfing matters. My first dim recollections of anything at all in this world were of some vague happenings about the time when I was five or six years of age, and they are of my always being about with a miniature golf club in my hand, and running about outside my parents' house knocking a ball with it at every chance that presented itself. The tendency towards golf, therefore, seemed strong, and the natural result of it, seeing what were my parents' circumstances in life, was that I should be a caddie-during school holidays only. I went to school in the usual way, and filled up my spare time in carrying clubs for the visitors; but when there were no visitors I spent the odd hours in practising all manner of shots; and thus when I was a very small boy I had already begun to take the game seriously and was starting on the right lines, since I was watching a good deal and then practising with just an odd club-which very likely was all that I possessed at the time, so there was not much self-sacrifice really in this kind of practice. My driver generally consisted of an old wooden head that I had picked up somewhere after it had been discarded as worthless, and to this was attached a shaft that had been found somewhere else in the same way. People nowadays talk about the modern system of socketing the shafts of wooden clubs on to the heads, as if it were a recent invention, whereas the caddies of my generation certainly socketed the shafts of the clubs that they made for themselves in this way, the method being the simplest possible, namely, boring a hole through the head and fastening the shaft in it as tightly as possible. As for iron clubs, we had never more than one, and that one was usually a cleek with a long and well-lofted head. We had no such things as putters and niblicks in those days. The cleek had to do all the work, and, with the practice we had with it, we made it do it very well. Reflecting on the practice got in this way by boys who have no money to spend on clubs, one cannot but think, however hard their lot may have appeared to them at the time, that it was exceedingly valuable, very likely more so than it would have been if a set of clubs had been available.
I never had any lessons; I simply watched and copied. The Earlsferry course was not quite the same then as it is now. At that time it was made up of nine good holes, and besides these there were three others in Melon Park, which were taken in whenever it was thought desirable to do so. By the time I was seven or eight years of age I began to show pretty good form for a boy such as I was, and I was apparently a little better than the other youngsters of my age. The visitors to the place gave prizes every year for a competition among the caddies, and some of the boys who took part in these contests achieved considerable distinction afterwards. Among them were the Simpsons, who were, of course, much older than I was. I was only eight years old when I first entered in one of these competitions, and they put me to play in the junior section that time, and the test was score play over nine holes, these nine being the three in Melon Park played over three times. I won with twenty strokes -to spare, and thus came out a winner in the first competition that I ever played in, which was encouraging. My score on that occasion was 54, which, all things considered, was not at all bad. I found in those early days that I could reach the green in three shots at the long holes, and nobody could get there in less than two. I n the next competition that I took part in, Archie Simpson, who was four years older than I was, had to give me eight strokes start, and he beat me by two for first place; but in the two following competitions, in which I had to play from scratch, I won the first prize each time, so that I won three times out of four, and I should add that in the last three competitions I played with the senior caddies over the full nine-holes course. This brought me to about the end of my schooldays, and the beginning of another important period in my life.
I was naturally very keen on golf at this time, and was full of dreams and ambitions as to what I might do in the future. Jamie Anderson, the famous champion of a generation that has passed, had some thing to do with the stimulation of this ambition, and I shall never forget the encouragement that he gave to me on one occasion when I was only a little boy of about nine years of age. What he said was in its way rather remarkable-to my mind, at least-in view of the things that have happened since then. He was taking part in a match between amateurs and professionals at Earlsferry, and, being Open Champion at the time, his play naturally attracted a great deal of attention. As for us boys, we were, of course, inclined to look upon him as not much less than an idol, and he fascinated me in particular to such an extent that I followed him round the links in a very doglike way, thought it a great thing to touch his clubs, and listened intently to the most trivial remarks that he made, so that I could repeat them to the other boys. Then I hit a shot or two myself to show him what I could do, and he took particular notice of the way that I played them, and asked me to do one or two over again, so that he might make another examination of my style, if such it was to be called. He seemed really to mean what he said, when at last he patted me on the shoulder and told me to go in for as much golf as I could, and practise as thoroughly as possible, and that if I did that I should be Open Champion myself one day. Another incident of these caddie days that I remember very well, was a challenge that was sent by the caddies at Earlsferry to play the caddies at Leven. There was great rivalry between the boys of the two places as to which could put the strongest team on the links, and one day a couple came along from Leven in a boastful manner and declared that if we played them we should not see the way they went. We felt offended, and after consultation among ourselves we sent a formal challenge to the Leven caddies, which, alas ! they did not see their way to accept.
Having left school at the age of thirteen, the usual question arose as to what was to be made of me. For my own part I was, as might be imagined, very anxious to keep to the links in some capacity or other; but my parents had a very strong prejudice against the game. No doubt they were right in their reasons, for golf then in many respects was not what it is now, but their attitude upset me very much. However, they would not hear of my having any more to do with the game except as a recreation in my spare time, and to settle the matter finally I was apprenticed to a joiner in a little village three miles from Earlsferry. Having to walk forwards and backwards between my home and the village every morning and night, and, having a long working day in the joiner's shop, I had very little time left for play, except in the summer time, when I usually managed to get in an evening round, and on Saturday afternoons. I joined the local Thistle Golf Club when I was fifteen years of age and won several prizes in its competitions, and generally did fairly well when representing it in the team matches that were played against the St. Andrews Club. By the time I was sixteen I was playing a very useful game, for I was not only down to scratch, but I won a scratch medal and broke the record of the course, which now consisted of eleven holes. This record stood to my credit for two or three years. I might mention that at this time I was playing with heavy clubs, which were also rather longer in the shaft than usual longer, in fact, than those with which I play now. My style, I suppose, was pretty well what it is now, except that my swing was certainly much shorter, in fact it was a very short swing, and this was a matter that worried me rather, because I felt that I should never do much good in the long game until I let the swing out more. I tried to lengthen it gradually, and, while it was at its shortest when I was about fourteen, I managed to improve it considerably during the next two years. However, it made no material difference to the length of my drive, and it was an unpleasant fact for me at the time that though strong physically, and tall, I was an unusually short driver. I could get no length at all, and almost everybody who could golf respectably could get a longer ball than I could. I tried every known alternative to my system, but to no purpose, and I felt I must resign myself to being a short driver. My driving had, however, the merit of being both steady and straight, and this helped me a good deal. Besides this, my game suffered seriously in another respect, for, as is generally known, I was quite a bad putter until recent years, and during all the years when I was coming on at the game my putting was at its very worst. For my short driving I could make up a great deal in the rest of the play through the green, for I was good with my irons; but I could not save my matches when I was putting in the shocking fashion that I so generally did, and whenever I lost it was nearly all due to this weakness-with the short putts. I was always fairly good at the long ones. It was not until many years afterwards that I overcame this weakness, and did so as the result of hours and days and years of hard practice.
How I came to be cured of my weakness in driving I really do not know, but the cure in this department came long before the other, in fact I was still in my teens when I got to driving a long ball nearly every time. I am not conscious that I made any difference whatever in my style or methods. I was simply going on in the same old way when suddenly I found myself driving farther and farther, and the complete conversion from short to long was effected within a week. As I have often said, it was just the same as if I went to bed a short driver one night and got up a long driver in the morning. It was then, and is still, the greatest golfing mystery that I have ever come across; but the happy result of it was that, while at one time certain rivals were getting twenty yards past me almost every time, at the end of that week I was getting that much past them, and, except for brief lapses, I have never been a very short driver since those days, the long balls not going away again in the same mysterious manner that they came, as so often happens in this tantalising game.
When I was nineteen I left home for the first time and went to work as a joiner at St. Andrews, and as by that time I was playing a very good game, it naturally happened that I got many good matches with the best players there, which served to pull me out and to improve my own game considerably. Thus I had many fine games with Andrew Kirkaldy, and also with his brother Hugh, now dead. I found that I could hold my own in these matches in almost every department of the game except on the putting greens. Even now, when time was getting on, I had no idea of ever adopting golf as a career, and very soon after my arrival at St. Andrews there came an interruption in my game, for my employers sent me to work in different parts of the country, and during that time I had very little play, and did not get the opportunity to keep myself in any sort of form. This lasted for two or three years; but in 1891 I left St. Andrews and went to Edinburgh, and there, with the fine course on the Braid Hills available for everybody, I soon got very keen again, and joined the Edinburgh Thistle Club without delay. My best form came back to me immediately, and I won the scratch medal of the club for two years in succession, besides which I gained a few prizes in the club tournaments. Of course, all this time I was an amateur. I had a handicap of plus 2 or 3, and was generally chosen to represent the Thistle Club in the competition for the Dispatch and Glasgow Evening Times trophies. As most people who are acquainted with general golfing matters know, these are important competitions in Scotland, and arouse great interest in the Edinburgh and Glasgow districts. Both are by foursome, two pairs representing each club in the one case and one in the other. The first year that I played for the Thistle we were knocked out in the final for the Dispatch trophy, while we were beaten in the semi-final for the other by the club that eventually secured the trophy. The most important success that I achieved so far came my way in 1892, when I won the Braid Hills Tournament, open to members of the Edinburgh and Leith clubs. The competition was very keen, for there were a hundred and forty players entered. One round, by strokes, had to be played, and I started from scratch, broke the record of the course, and won the first prize. This was my top achievement as an amateur. I look back on a very pleasant time spent in Edinburgh.
Soon afterwards the great change in my place and status as a player were brought about. I had remained a joiner all this time, but now an old friend of mine, Charles Smith, who was employed at the Army and Navy Stores in London as foreman clubmaker, wrote to me to ask if I would like a job as a clubmaker there, as there happened to be a vacancy at the time, and he thought I could get it if I desired to put in for it. It needed very little thought to bring me to a firm and welcome decision when temptation was put before me in this way. A few years earlier the prejudices and objections of my parents would have carried weight; but I was completely detached from home now, and, besides, there were already indications that golf was making great strides, and that it was going to be held in much higher appreciation by the public generally. I had a fairly good job as a joiner, and had a comfortable living assured to me; but my heart was in the game of golf after all, and now I felt doubtful as to whether I should ever be satisfied if I did not have a lot more to do with it than I was having. So I wrote back to Smith to say that I would accept. From one point of view this was a rather bold thing to do, because I was going to the Stores as clubmaker, and up to then I had never made a club in my life ! However, my experience as a player had taught me what a good club ought to be, and then it was rather lucky that I was a joiner, and was quite at home when working with wood and tools. The result was that the first club I went to work on was quite a success, and I was never in any difficulty. It was late in 1893 when I took up this post in London, and I remained at the same work until 1896.
Because of my being a clubmaker, I was now, of course, a professional, and apart from the fact that there were no public courses in London, I was too busy to get much golf. I practised chiefly on Saturday afternoons at Chiswick on the old twelveholes course that has now been done away with, and I also got some golf at Sudbrook Park and on the course of the Mid-Surrey Club at Richmond. I played in public for, the first time as a professional on the occasion of a competition that was held at Stanmore. A special prize was offered for the best single round, and five men tied for it, four being Hugh Kirkaldy, Alexander Herd, J. H. Taylor, and J. Cuthbert, and the fifth was myself. The chief prize was for two rounds of medal play, and in this competition I managed to get into fourth place, which was not by any means a bad beginning, considering the class of players who had entered.
I had made up my mind now to go in for the life of the professional golfer very thoroughly, and entered for the Open Championship in the same year, 1894, when it was played for at Sandwich. As, however, I devote the next and last chapter in this book to a few recollections of the championship meetings in which I took part, I will say nothing more about them here. The first time I played in a public match as a professional was at West Drayton, towards the end of 1895. My opponent on this occasion was J. H. Taylor, and the play was over thirty-six holes. The match was halved, and this was an achievement of which I had considerable reason to be proud at the time, for Taylor was then the Open Champion, and had been for two years in succession. He did two rounds of 73 each, while I did a 73 and a 71. Taylor was dormy two, but at neither of the last two holes did he get up to the hole with his tee shotboth holes being on the short side-whereas I did, and managed to win both, so that it required a big effort to save the match. I remember the play during that day as vividly as I remember anything in the whole of my golfing life. I was driving an exceedingly long ball, and was getting my long putts very dead, while on some occasions I had the good fortune to hole my short run-up approaches from short of the green, just off the edge of it. On the other hand, Taylor was not doing so well with his long putts, but his holing out was quite wonderful. He was missing nothing at two yards or thereabouts. My holing out was weak, and so on the whole things balanced pretty well, and a halved match was a fair result. There is nothing that happened in those early days of my professional career that I remember so well as an incident that occurred when I was making my last putt in that match, a putt on which everything depended, and which was in its way the most important putt that I had ever had to make in my life so far. I addressed myself to the ball twice, and each time was just on the point of making the stroke when I was disturbed by a spectator immediately behind me striking a match. However, after two attempts he either got his pipe alight or decided to wait until the game was over, and at my third attempt to putt I got the ball away without interruption. One is not generally blessed with any luck after waits like this, and I was more than usually pleased to find that the ball went in.