As one of the great triumphal James Braid is one of the very best professional golfers to ever come from the British Isles, won the Open Championships five times but also designing hundreds and hundreds of courses during a very, very, very successful and fruitful career. Now James Braid was at his prime the late 1800’s or so the actual amount of video footage available isn’t that great but with the still photography available one thing is very, very common with all the pictures taken.

And that is at impact and post impact his knees are very close together and they are also in line, every time that the actual finish position is held and actual every time that he pauses at the top of his swing. Now what that shows is impact and coming through impact the knees goes closer together as the waist starts to drive forwards and then the hips turned until the point where the knees, the hips, the chest and the eyes were all facing down towards the target. In other words through impact James Braid had a fantastic body motion which got the weight moving forwards, got the weight clearing and hips clearing and got the ball down there a lot more distance than he would have had otherwise.

And it’s a great little checkpoint to actually use after you strike the shot to get the body turning and get the knees close together, and then matching up through the actual point of impact nicely in line, left leg straight, right knee bent, all pointing down towards your target. And if you can do this you can get a better turn hopefully hit some more successful shots. So one the greater the game and hopefully you’ll be to learn from him even to this modern day.