He is considered by many as the best golfer of all time, a delicate question due to the great players that have existed in this sport, but he has undoubtedly been the most successful part-time player. The part-time comes because Bobby Jones only played golf at the highest level for three months a year, traveling to major tournaments during the summer. No one would have given a penny for the sporting future of that sickly, emaciated boy born in Atlanta in 1902 who until he was 5 years old was unable to eat solid food. The son of an Atlanta lawyer, Robert Tyre Jones was fortunate that when he was 6 years old his family moved to a house near the East Lake Country Club, where young Bobby began to play sports, especially baseball and golf, and to finally develop physically fit.
Jones’ intrinsic golfing ability was evident from the beginning, as evidenced by the fact that he never took lessons, learning his swing by watching the club pro’s swing. Jones developed a natural, fluid swing that would become his trademark over time.
Encouraged by his parent, Bobby began competing and, at only 6 years old, won his first tournament, against three other children at East Lake. At age 9, he won the junior title at the Atlanta Athletic Club, defeating a 16-year-old opponent. After several more titles, Jones later became, at age 14, the youngest player to qualify for and play in the US Amateur Championship. Although he did not win, he caused a great sensation.
The future looked bright for young Jones, but the winning streak did not continue as expected. The problem was surely his excessive youth, an unformed personality and the tremendous pressure he suffered from the high expectations people had placed on him. Jones was a great perfectionist with his game and the pressure he put himself under was so great that in some tournaments he even lost several kilos of weight due to stress. His bad temper on the course was also another of his qualities and it was not uncommon to see him throwing his clubs furiously during tournaments. This bad temper reached its peak in 1921 during the British Open where, frustrated with his game, he lifted the ball and left the course in the middle of the competition. He was only 19 years old.
Jones lived through two distinct stages in the sporting arena. The first one lasted from the age of 14 to 21, and the second one from 21 to 28. The latter was undoubtedly the time of his great splendor, when his Grand Slam triumphs would come.
In the 1923 U.S. Open, his long-awaited triumph in a major finally arrived, in what would be his tenth participation in a Grand Slam tournament. Bobby went into the final day with a three-stroke lead, but his lead was lost as he finished his round with two bogeys and a double bogey. After walking off the 18th green, he said, “I didn’t finish like a champion, I finished like a yellow dog.” When Bobby Cruickshank birdied the last hole, it was down to an 18-hole play-off the following day. After arriving at the last hole tied, Jones hit a second shot of 180 meters with a 2-iron that left the ball two meters from the flag. This was his first Grand Slam victory.
That was the beginning of his hot streak. From 1923 to 1930, Jones played 21 Grand Slam championships and won no less than 13 of them. His brilliant record culminated in 1930, when he won the entire Grand Slam, which at that time consisted of the US Open, the US Amateur, the British Open and the British Amateur. He won the US Open in 1923, 29 and 30. He won the British Open in 1926, 27 and 30. He won the US Amateur in 1924, 25, 27, 28 and 30, and the British Amateur in 1930.
And that was when, at only 28 years of age, a month after winning the Grand Slam and at the peak of his career, Jones retired from top-level golf and devoted himself to other pursuits, also related to this sport. The truth is that Jones was not a player comparable to any other of his category, since he used to play only about 80 rounds a year, dedicating only about three months to travel and play competitions.
Bobby, having made a formidable contribution to the sport of golf as a player, wanted to demonstrate his genius in other golfing fields, and to that end he became a teacher, writer and course designer. He was the pioneer in filming educational golf films (“How I Play Golf”), in a work commissioned by Warner Brothers.
Jones also advised the Spalding Company on golf club design, since, as a player, he had always worked closely with manufacturers when designing his own clubs. After rejecting more than 200 different clubs, Jones finally gave his approval to a set of clubs that satisfied him. The clubs featured a steel shaft, a design that would quickly replace the wooden clubs Jones used. Each club was named with a number instead of the old Scottish names that had been used until then. That innovation soon became the standard for manufacturers and remains so today.
However, Jones’ best known and recognized legacy is undoubtedly his contribution to the creation of Augusta National, home of the Masters and perhaps the best golf course in the world.
In 1942, at the age of 40, he served as a captain in the U.S. Army in World War II, later participating in the Normandy landings.
In 1948 came the hardest blow for Jones: he was diagnosed with a rare central nervous system disease and could never play golf again. He suffered from severe back and neck pain and medical tests showed that he had bony growths in three cervical vertebrae. Jones was initially forced to walk with the aid of a cane, then used crutches and finally spent the last years of his life in a wheelchair, although he continued to host the Augusta Masters. After 22 years suffering from pain of varying intensity, he died on December 18, 1971 at the age of 69. In 1974 his name was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame.
Jones believed that the secret of golf lay in “turning three strokes into two” and said that top golf is played primarily “on a five-and-a-half-inch course – the space between your ears.”
Leave a Reply