Bobby Jones

Golfer

• Born: March 17, 1902
• Birthplace: Atlanta, Georgia
• Died: December 18, 1971
• Place of death: Atlanta, Georgia

American golfer and businessman

Jones climaxed his career in amateur golf in 1930 by winning in a single year the Grand Slam, the four major American and British open and amateur championships, an achievement still unmatched by the early 2000’s. He went on to found the Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament.

Areas of achievement Sports, business and industry

Early Life

Bobby Jones, who was named for his grandfather, was the son of Robert Purmetus and Clara Thomas Jones. He received his early education at Woodbury School and Tech High School in Atlanta. He later took a degree in mechanical engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1922 and one in English literature at Harvard in 1924. He also attended Emory University Law School between 1926 and 1927 and was admitted to the Georgia bar in 1928.

Jones’s golfing career began at the age of five, when he played with clubs (which had been cut down for his size) over a five-hole “course” that he and a neighbor boy had laid out in his front yard. Jones’s father decided at that time to move from the city to the town of East Lake, where the Jones family lived on the fringes of the East Lake Country Club. Young Jones was not a robust youngster, because of a digestive problem that kept him from eating properly, and it was thought that living in the suburbs would be good for his health.

Jones learned the game by imitating the swing of Stewart Maiden, who came to the job of head professional at East Lake from Carnoustie, Scotland. Jones was six years old at the time. Maiden was never to give Jones a formal lesson, but in the years ahead he would coach him informally; he was the only teacher Jones would ever have.

At the age of seven, Jones was given permission to play at East Lake on any day but Saturday or Sunday. He did so after school in the afternoon, often taking a capful of balls to practice at the thirteenth green, which was located just behind his house. Jones’s first tournament victory came at the age of nine, in 1911, when he won the junior championship cup of the Atlanta Athletic Club. At the age of thirteen, Jones won, among other titles, the club championships of both East Lake and the Druid Hills Country Club.

Life’s Work

In 1916, then the Georgia Amateur tournament champion, Jones played in his first national championship, the United States Amateur, in which he was a quarterfinalist. Thus began a fourteen-year career on a national and international level that was to end in 1930 with the Grand Slam, a sweep of the four major American and British open and amateur championships.

Jones was an amateur golfer who achieved his success mostly during the years when he was a university student. For most of the years in which he played competitively, he was in school. Jones experienced a limited tournament schedule, an average of less than four tournaments per year. The greatest number of tournaments he ever played in a single year was eight, in 1920, when he was eighteen. Later, as a young attorney and father (following his marriage in 1924 to Mary Malone and the subsequent births of their three children), his family and his law practice would take precedence in his mind.

Although Jones came immediately into the public eye as a fourteen-year-old at his first United States Amateur, he was not an immediate winner on the national scene. For seven years, Jones was without a national title, although he won such tournaments as the Southern Amateur and other regional events. During that time, he was the runner-up in the United States Amateur (1919), at the age of seventeen, and semifinalist in that event in both 1920 and 1922. In 1920, Jones had his initial experience in a national open championship when he played in the United States Open; his first British Open followed in 1921. In his first United States Open at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, he tied for eighth place. His first tournaments in England were not happy ones. After being eliminated in the fourth round of the British Amateur at the Royal Liverpool Golf Club at Hoylake, Jones entered the British Open at the Old Course of St. Andrews in Scotland. For years, Jones had had a violent temper that led him to throw clubs following errant shots. In time, he curbed that tendency, but at St. Andrews, he withdrew after the eleventh hole after having played the first nine in forty-six shots, taking a double-bogey six at the tenth and missing his first putt after being in a sand bunker at the eleventh. Jones hated St. Andrews, even though it is conceded to be the founding place of the game, but later came to regard the Old Course as his favorite.

Jones’s period of dominance in the game finally began two years later, in 1923, when he won the United States Open at the age of twenty-one. Jones and Bobby Cruickshank tied over the seventy-two holes of the championship with a score of 296. Jones won the playoff with a score of seventy-six to Cruickshank’s seventy-eight.

Starting in that year, Jones held one or more major titles every year for eight years, for a total of thirteen. His championships included the United States Amateur title in 1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, and 1930; the United States Open title in 1923, 1926, 1929, and 1930; the British Open title in 1926, 1927, and 1930; and the British Amateur title in 1930.

Jones’s dominance from 1923 to 1930 was such that he either won or tied for the lead in six of eight United States Opens, finishing second and eleventh in his other two tries. In the United States Amateur, Jones won five of the seven he entered, losing once in the finals and once in the first round. He won all three British Opens in which he played during those years, having failed to win only in his first one, from which he withdrew. The British Amateur was the most difficult, as he was victorious in only one of three. During those eight years, Jones won seventeen of the twenty-eight tournaments he entered and was second six times. In addition, Jones played in the Walker Cup competition, held between the leading amateurs of the United States and Great Britain, a total of five times. The American side was victorious in each instance, and Jones was a hero.

Jones was not an imposing physical specimen, standing only five feet eight inches tall and weighing about 165 pounds at the time he was accomplishing his greatest golfing feats. His clean-cut, boyish appearance had much to do with his almost unparalleled popularity as a 1920’s sports figure.

In 1930, Jones finished second in his first tournament of the year, the Savannah Open. He won the other six in which he played, the Southeastern Open, the Golf Illustrated Gold Vase, the British Amateur, the British Open, the United States Open, and the United States Amateur. Ironically, he won the British Amateur title on the same St. Andrews course on which he had withdrawn in disgust. (He had also set the British Open record at St. Andrews, where he won that tournament with a seven-under-par 285 in 1927.) Jones’s victim in the final match of the British Amateur in 1930 was Roger Wethered, the 1923 British Amateur champion, who was closed out on the thirtieth hole, seven and six. In the British Open at Hoylake, Jones’s four-round score of 70-72-74-75-291 was two strokes better than that of Leo Diegel and Macdonald Smith, who shared second place. In the United States Open at Interlachen Country Club in Minneapolis, Smith was again second as Jones won with 71-73-68-75-287, one under par. Jones thus became the first man in history to break par in the United States Open. In the United States Amateur at Merion Cricket Club in Philadelphia, Jones never had to play the last four holes in any of his matches, and he defeated Eugene V. Homans, eight and seven, in the championship finale.

It was fitting that Jones should win what was to be his final tournament of serious competition at Merion, the same club where he had begun his national championship career at the age of fourteen. He also won his first United States Amateur title on that course.

On November 18, 1930, Jones announced his retirement from tournament golf with a letter to the United States Golf Association, surrendering at the same time his amateur status so that he could earn money from the fame he had won on the golf course. Not mentioned by Jones in the letter was the fact that tournament golf was taking its toll on him. Although his demeanor before tournament galleries was outwardly calm, inside he was extremely nervous. He would be sick to the point of vomiting on occasion and would lose as much as eighteen pounds during a tournament.

After retirement, Jones made a series of instructional films seen by an estimated twenty-five million people. He designed the first set of iron golf clubs to be numbered and sold as a matched set for A. G. Spalding and Brothers. Jones wrote newspaper and magazine articles and narrated an instructional series for radio. He also worked for his father’s law firm, concentrating on business contracts.

In July, 1931, Jones and Clifford Roberts, a New York City investment broker, announced plans to build the Augusta National Golf Club at Augusta, Georgia. The club opened in the spring of 1933. Building the course was the culmination of Jones’s desire to design a course of his own, which he did, with the help of golf architect Alister Mackenzie.

Also in that spring, it was suggested that the Augusta National be the site of the United States Open. When it was decided not to offer the course for the open, Roberts suggested that the club hold its own invitational tournament. Roberts, from the beginning, thought that the event should be called the Masters Tournament. Jones disagreed, believing such a title presumptuous. Instead, the event was officially called the Augusta National Invitation Tournament. By 1938, even Jones had agreed, long after the press, that the tournament was the Masters.

Jones was prevailed on by Roberts to play in the new Masters Tournament, but Jones was never a threat to win it. His best finish, in fact, was in the inaugural 1934 event, when he played the four rounds in 76-74-72-72-294, good enough to tie for thirteenth place.

From that beginning, the Augusta National Golf Club grew in reputation, while the Masters became one of the four tournaments considered the modern Grand Slam, along with the United States and British opens and the American Professional Golfers Association Championship.

Jones continued to play in the Masters through the 1948 tournament. After a back operation, undertaken that same year to correct an injury thought to have occurred in his youth, Jones announced in advance of the 1949 tournament that he would no longer take part.

For a time, it was rumored that the increasing deterioration of Jones’s health was because either the 1948 operation or another in 1950 was not a complete success. It was not until 1956 that it was discovered that Jones was suffering from an extremely rare disease called syringomyelia, which attacked Jones’s central nervous system and damaged it to such an extent that he could no longer turn the pages of a book. He died of an aneurysm, on December 18, 1971.

Significance

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Jones’s unparalleled success as a golfer was the fact that he accomplished it with apparent ease. Jones spent an average of only three months a year playing golf, for he regarded his family and his legal profession as having greater priority in his life than golf. Yet his technique was exceptional: Jones’s golf swing was smooth and effortless, and he could drive a golf ball farther than the great majority of his opponents; his secret was his superb timing. As a result, he was able to distinguish himself with the record of having won four major tournaments in a single year, in 1930.

Jones may also serve as an inspiration to young golfers for his character. Although he had his struggle with a great temper early in his career, Jones overcame it and never appeared unnerved during a tournament. Jones was consistently considerate of both his opponents and the onlookers. Yet his inward turmoil, perhaps a result of the fierce concentration needed to perform as a golfer, took its toll and was a major contributing factor in his retirement from competition at the age of twenty-eight.

Jones contributed to golf and American sports with works other than his exquisite swing. He wrote four books on golf: Down the Fairway (1927), Golf Is My Game (1960), Bobby Jones on Golf (1966), and Bobby Jones on the Basic Golf Swing (1969). The last two had to be authored by dictation because of his ailment.

Sometime before his death, it was made known to Jones that some individuals were considering the erection of a monument to him on the grounds of the Augusta National Golf Club. Ever modest, he immediately vetoed the idea; he said that the club itself would be monument enough. Indeed, the Augusta National Golf Club has become perhaps the best-known modern course in the world, and its tournament, the Masters, one of the four most important events in the life of professional golfers every year. The Augusta National is truly a fitting and lasting tribute to Jones.

Bibliography

Frost, Mark. The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf. New York: Hyperion, 2005. One of the better books published in honor of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Jones’s Grand Slam victories in 1930. Focuses on the Grand Slam, while providing other details of Jones’s life and career.

Keeler, Oscar Bane. The Bobby Jones Story. Edited by Grantland Rice. Atlanta, Ga.: Tupper and Love, 1953. A complete account of Jones’s golfing career.

Matthew, Sidney L. Bobby: The Life and Times of Bobby Jones. Reprint. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Sports Media, 2005. A biography of Jones, placing him in the context of his times. Author Matthew has written several books on Jones.

Price, Charles. A Golf Story: Bobby Jones, Augusta National, and the Masters Tournament. New York: Atheneum, 1986. The story of Jones’s golfing career and his involvement in the founding of the Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters Tournament.

Rapoport, Ron. The Immortal Bobby: Bobby Jones and the Golden Age of Golf. Hoboken, N.J.: J. Wiley and Sons, 2005. A critically well-received, exhaustively researched, and comprehensive biography written by a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun Times.

Roberts, Clifford. The Story of the Augusta National Golf Club. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1976. A history of the Augusta National Golf Club, Jones’s involvement with the club, the club’s members, and President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s connections with the club.

Taylor, Dawson. The Masters. Cranbury, N.J.: A. S. Barnes, 1973. A concise history of the Masters Tournament and its founding, with a year-to-year listing of the top twenty-four finishers and ties in the event, including a brief account of each tournament.

Wind, Herbert Warren. The Story of American Golf: Its Champions and Its Championships. New York: Farrar, Straus, 1948. A comprehensive history of golf in the United States with chapters devoted to Jones’s career and the atmosphere in which his feats were accomplished.

Related Articles in Great Events from History: The Twentieth Century

1901-1940: September 27, 1930: First Grand Slam of Golf.