James Braid

James Braid was a professional golfer and a golf course architect, born on February 6, 1870 at Earlsferry in Fife, Scotland. He worked as a joiner at St Andrews, then became a clubmaker at the Army and Navy Stores in London, and turned professional in 1896. He won The Open Championship five times, in 1901, 1905, 1906, 1908 and 1910. He also took the News of the World Match Play four times, in 1903, 1905, 1907 and 1911, and won the French Open in 1910. With Harry Vardon and J. H. Taylor, his contemporaries, he was known as the Great Triumvirate.

In 1904 he became professional at Walton Heath Golf Club, which had opened that year, and he held the post for 46 years, until his death in 1950. From about 1912 he played less and less in competition, and while serving as a club professional he gave his energy to designing and remodelling courses. He is said to have had a hand in more than 200 courses, new work and remodelling together, almost all of them in the British Isles.

Among his best-known work is the King’s Course at Gleneagles, which opened in 1919; Gleneagles presents it on its website as a Braid course. In 1926 he reworked the course at Carnoustie, which went on to stage the Open Championship for the first time in 1931. At Boat of Garten Golf Club in the north of Scotland he designed an eighteen-hole course in 1930, in play from 1932.

He died in London on November 27, 1950, at the age of 80, and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1976. GoGolf does not at present list any course designed by James Braid.

See the other golf course architects here.