Julius Boros Swing Analysis: Fluidity Personified

According to Wikipedia, “Born in Fairfield, Connecticut, Julius Boros was of Hungarian descent. He played varsity baseball in college.[3] He worked as an accountant, played high-standard amateur golf, and did not turn professional until 1949, when he was already 29 years old.[1][2] Boros won 18 PGA Tour events, including three major championships: the 1952 and 1963 U.S. Opens and the 1968 PGA Championship. He won his first by four strokes in the heat at the Northwood Club in Dallas, also his first PGA Tour victory, which interrupted the U.S. Open streak of 36-hole leader Ben Hogan for a year. In the windy 1963 U.S. Open near Boston, Boros defeated Arnold Palmer and Jacky Cupit in a playoff, after all had finished the 72 holes at a post-war record nine over par. Boros remains the oldest player ever to win a modern major in 1968, taking the PGA Championship in San Antonio by a stroke at the age of 48. One of the runners-up was Palmer, who never won the PGA Championship to complete his career grand slam. The previous oldest winner of a major was Jerry Barber, age 45 in the 1961 PGA Championship. Boros’ best results among the majors were at the U.S. Open, with nine top-five finishes; he contended in that championship as late as 1973, at age 53.[1][2] Boros was a member of the Ryder Cup team in 1959, 1963, 1965 and 1967. He was PGA Player of the Year in 1952 and 1963, and his total career PGA Tour earnings were $1,004,861. Boros was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1982.

While you may have heard of Boros, I bet you have never seen his swing, which, as you will see in this video, was gorgeous. It had a lot of Hoganesque attributes, and while it wasn’t quite as technically excellent it certainly had the wonderful flow and sequencing that Hogan exhibited. Boros was built more thickly than Hogan, and when he pulled his hands and arms more inward after a pronounced handle drag in the takeaway his right arm got higher and deeper at left arm parallel, which meant that when he moved his hands outward in transition his right arm approached impact more bent and his hands further away from his body. He created a ton of space for his arms with his setup being quite tilted at the waist and by moving his right hip deeper in the backswing, but to accommodate the bent right arm he has a bit of a head back-up and a slight under move with the right leg in the forward swing. He still manages to exit the club nicely to the left, and his abilities as a ball striker are proven by his 9 top 5 finishes in the U.S. Open.