Remembering Jones stirs the golfing soul

One of the most joyful pastimes during Masters’ week is remembering Bobby Jones.

It simply stirs the golfing soul.

Of course, most avid golfers know that Jones co-founded the Augusta National Golf Club, had an active hand in designing his dream course and started the Masters Tournament, the central focus of attention every golf year.

But there’s much more to the man than simply Augusta National and the Masters - so very much more.

Born Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. in 1902, young Bobby was a sickly lad. His father, in an effort to improve his son’s health, moved the family for the summer to a boarding house in what was then the country outside of Atlanta near the East Lake Golf Club. A neighbor gave the frail 5-year old a golf club, similar to a one-iron - a cleek, it was called. The next year the family moved full time into what had once been the mule house on the East Lake property.

Young Bob learned the game by imitation. He would walk across the street to East Lake and follow the Scottish pro, Stewart Maiden, from a respectful distance whenever he was playing 18 holes with the members and study his swing. Then he’d rush home to the little two-hole course he crafted to mimic what he saw Maiden do.

In his first competitive tournament at East Lake against two boys and Alexa Stirling (later the winner of three U.S. Woman’s Amateurs), the 6-year old won the six-hole tournament.

Jones would later say he was prouder of that diminutive silver trophy than any other.

Just as Bobby’s game was in its formative stages, so too was the game itself. While golf was reportedly first played in South Carolina in the 1880s, the United States Golf Association was founded in 1895 as an association of five golf clubs in an effort to make the rules of the game and conduct the nascent national championships. The first big national tournament, the U.S. Amateur, was played at Newport Country Club that same year, with the U.S. Open played, almost as an afterthought, at the conclusion of the Amateur.

1913 proved to be a pivotal year for golf as a 20-year-old amateur and former caddie, Francis Ouimet, defeated the two best golfers in the world, Brits Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, in an 18-hole playoff for the U.S. Open at The Country Club just outside of Boston. The win was electrifying as it ignited the first big growth spurt in the game as golf became a sport for “everyman,” and not just the elites.

Bobby was just 11 at the time and he was simply consumed by the game. He and Ouimet would later become close friends and team-up on several Walker Cup teams, as well as go head-to-head in several U.S. Amateurs.

Bobby’s game improved rapidly – he won the Atlanta Country Club junior title at 9 against a 16-year-old opponent; at 13 he won an invitational in Birmingham, AL; at 14, he won the East Lake Invitational and the Georgia Amateur, and later that year, played in the U.S. Amateur at Merion - wearing his first pair of long pants. He shocked the 1906 Amateur champ in the first round and the reigning Pennsylvania Amateur champion in the second, before losing to Robert Gardner, the defending champion.

He would win the Southern Amateur in 1916 and again in 1917. His fame was so great that he was asked to play in the Red Cross Exhibition Matches for War Relief during World War I. By now he had grown into a healthy, strapping young man.

As an 18-year old he was paired with the great lion of British golf and oldest player in the field, 50-year-old Harry Vardon - the winner of six Open Championships and a U.S. Open among his 62 total victories – in the qualifier at the 1920 U.S. Open at Inverness outside of Toledo, Ohio. No doubt nervous playing with the finest player the game had seen to date, young Bob - the youngest player in the field - had not uttered a word to Vardon until the seventh hole as Jones made bogey after skulling a shot over the green. Walking to the next tee, Jones finally spoke to Vardon, “Have you ever seen a worse shot?”

The taciturn Vardon tersely replied, “No.”

Jones finished tied for 8th, four shots behind the ultimate winner, Ted Ray, with Vardon in second.

No wonder the child prodigy was hailed wide and far as “the Boy Wonder of Dixie.”

Was he perfect? Far from it.

Despite his flashes of golfing brilliance, he had an awful temper and was not afraid to exhibit it on the course.

At the Open Championship at St. Andrews in 1921, after shooting 46 on the outward nine in the third round, he made double bogey on No. 10 and proceeded to take three shots in Hill Bunker on the 11th before picking up his ball and moving to the 12th tee. After hitting his drive, he asked his walking scorer for his score card. Inexplicably, he ripped it up and put it in his pocket. TheR&A was not amused with the precocious youngster and his antics.

Later the USGA had to admonish him for throwing clubs, threatening not to allow him into their events if he didn’t correct his boorish behavior.

In time, the club-throwing youngster matured. But it was a painful metamorphosis as Bob’s competitive fire still burned white-hot, but he learned to direct his attention inwardly and focus on his game. Of course, he was still emotionally consumed with his success on the course – it is said that he would lose as much as 10-15 pounds over the course of a tournament – as he developed what could be called a more “gentlemanly” demeanor on the course.

Try as he might, he just couldn’t win a big one.

But two years later, young Bob, just 21 years old and still win-less in the big tournaments, reached what would turn out to be the inflection point in his golf career. On the 72nd hole of the 1923 U.S. Open at Inwood Country Club on Long Island, with his ball lying just in front of the 18th green in two, he badly misplayed four shots en route to a 76, allowing Bobby Cruickshank to tie and force an 18-hole playoff.

Bob could have let his anger get the best of him as he had in the past, but he persevered. In the playoff the next day, he was faced with another critical shot on the 18th hole, a touchy 200 yard shot over water. A lay-up was one option, but most likely would have forced another 18-hole playoff.

He decided to go for the win. A missed shot in the water would most likely have meant another loss in a big tournament. But his subsequent 2-iron landed 10 feet short of the pin and ended up seven feet behind the hole, sealing his first major victory. It was a turning point for the young Jones, not only in finally winning a big one, but in learning to direct and control his emotions.

What followed was the most sublime seven years in the history of the game.

O.B. Keeler, Jones’ biographer from The Atlanta Journal, referred to them as his “Seven Fat Years”, as compared to the earlier “Seven Lean Years” when he just couldn’t win. Over the span of 1923 to 1930 the handsome young southerner – the Scots later fondly dubbed him “Wee Bobby” - would grow into an American sports hero. And by the end of the decade, his sports persona was larger than even Babe Ruth in baseball, Big Bill Tilden in tennis, Red Grange in football, Johnny Weissmuller in swimming and Gene Tunney in boxing.

Jones would go onto win five U.S. Amateurs, three more U.S. Opens (for a total of four), three British Opens and one British Amateur, culminating in the Grand Slam of the British Amateur, British Open, U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur in 1930.

He amassed 13 major championships before retiring at the ripe old age of 28. His Walker Cup record was almost flawless. He was so good that this lifelong amateur completely dominated the game against all comers, amateur and professional alike. In fact, whenever Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, the two leading professionals of the era, came up against Jones in a regular tournament, neither ever finished better than a tie for 10th place. Whenever Jones played, the nation’s newspapers often referred to him as “Emperor Jones” and would proclaim it was “Jones against the field.”

Jones’ golf game developed to a level that no one had ever seen before as the exploits of “The Boy Wonder from Dixie” fueled an even bigger growth spurt in the game since Ouimet’s victory in the 1913 U.S. Open.

But just as Bobby’s game reached the supernal heights, winning at least one national championship each year from 1923 to 1930, his essential character developed and matured even more so.

His temper abated, as he insisted on high ethical standards on the course. His integrity was of the utmost as he twice called penalties in major championships on himself, likely costing him both tournaments. (When lauded for calling infractions that no one else saw, Bob replied, “You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.”) He learned to curb his temper. He nurtured a sense of fair play and sportsmanship, insisting on following the rules.

It’s no wonder that the USGA’s award for sportsmanship in the game is named after him.

Furthermore, Bob valued education greatly. After graduating from Georgia Tech, he earned a second bachelor’s degree, this one in English, from Harvard. Later he would attend law school at Emory before passing the bar.

Wanting to earn his crimson letter “H” for athletic achievement while at Harvard, he offered to be the manager of the golf team as he was ineligible to play because he had already graduated from undergraduate school. When told the team already had a manager, the modest Jones offered to become the team’s assistant manager.

Although acknowledged as the finest golfer in the country, at Harvard he was just one of the boys. On a team trip to Providence, R.I., assistant team manager Jones and a team member rode in the open rumble seat of a roadster as they were charged with guarding the team’s celebratory corn whiskey. Because of the cool early spring New England weather, the two – chilled to the bone - proceeded to drink every drop. Needless to say, on arrival, both were quite inebriated.

Bob had metamorphosed from a highly talented, but hot-headed youngster, into not only the best player in the world, but a well-rounded complete person with superlative values. He had become what we might call a true Renaissance Man – world class athlete, lawyer, fine writer, opera lover, family man. There was more to him than just his prowess in golf.

And it’s for this that we should celebrate him.

On the desk in his law firm Bob kept a framed saying from Grantland Rice, America’s first truly great sports writer and a founding member of Augusta National, that perhaps captured Jones’ essential essence:

“For when the one great scorer comes

To write against your name

He writes not that you won or lost

But how you played the game.”

So, let’s raise a glass of his favorite corn whiskey to the man who gave us this incredible golf tournament — and so very much more.

Here’s to you, “Wee Bobby.”

Martin Davis is a golf historian who has written, edited or published 39 books on golf, including “The Greatest of Them All: The Legend of Bobby Jones.”