Grand Master

Bobby Jones died more than 30 years ago, but something he left behind still manages to summon vivid memories of golf’s greatest player. The Masters begins Thursday at the course he carved out of an old nursery on hilly, rolling terrain in Augusta, Ga.

It’s still Bobby Jones’ tournament, fully grown into one of golf’s most treasured and revered institutions--much like Jones himself.

Jones attained an unusual status in sport, as an icon, and maintains it more than three decades after his death. Many in the game feel about Jones the same way Arnold Palmer does.

“Bobby Jones was a real gentleman golfer,” Palmer said. “What he accomplished in golf, no one else has and probably never will. He’s also the father of Augusta National and the Masters, and all those factors are significant to his enduring popularity.”

How Jones has endured is a story--his own story, actually--of achieving great fame through heroic achievements, showing the best examples of sportsmanship and humility, getting out of the spotlight early and dying too young.

According to Jones’ historian and biographer, Sidney L. Matthew, Jones knew exactly what he was doing when he stopped playing regularly in 1930 at age 28.

“He had the confidence and grace to leave the stage at the top,” Matthew said. “That’s something very few people can do. And he went on to become a respected ambassador whose opinion was sought because everyone knew it would be reasoned and conservative and completely thought out.”

The Jones legacy is storybook stuff, but also powerful. Hootie Johnson, who follows Jones in the line of chairmen of Augusta National, invokes Jones’ name often. “The spirit of Bob Jones is alive today,” Johnson said. “It is evident here at Augusta National and in the Masters, in his outstanding player record and the decency and honesty he brought to the game of golf.

“He is missed by those that knew him and those who didn’t.”

How Jones has achieved such a following is not simply told, but it’s worth retelling. It is his own story.

A Humble Beginning

Jones was born on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1902, in his parents’ house across the street from Grant Park in Atlanta. It was an old house, and the Joneses shared it with their friends, Mr. and Mrs. Bryan M. Grant.

Robert Tyre Jones Jr., was named after his paternal grandfather, Robert Tyre Jones, who was 6 feet 5 and weighed 235 pounds. But there was nothing in the physical characteristics of young “Rob” to remind relatives of his grandfather. He would grow up to be known as the most famous golfer in history, but as a child, Jones was frail and sickly, the result of a gastrointestinal disorder, the same ailment that killed his younger brother, William, at 3 months. Jones couldn’t eat solid food until he was 5.

But Bobby Jones, whose family was far from impoverished, was able to enjoy some of the privileges of wealth. His grandfather was a successful entrepreneur who established the Jones Mercantile Co. in 1879 and then the Canton Cotton Mill. Bobby Jones’ father, Robert Purmedus Jones, was an attorney and also excelled at athletics, especially baseball.

Bobby Jones’ father was called “the Colonel,” as an affectionate term. But as a young man, the Colonel was treated more like an enlisted man as far as sports went. Robert Tyre Jones never saw his son play baseball at the University of Georgia.

“No son of mine is going to be a baseball player,” the elder Jones is supposed to have said. “You’re going to have a profession.”

So Robert Purmedus Jones went to Mercer Law School and became general counsel to an emerging local company that seemed to have promise, called Coca-Cola.

Young Rob was attracted to golf almost as soon as he could walk, eventually playing at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. .

Fulton Colville, a member at Atlanta Athletic Club who was playing one day at East Lake, gave Jones his first club: a cut-down one-iron, called a “cleek.”

At the time, neither Jones nor his friend, Frank Meador, was old enough to play at the club, so they had to find other places to swing their hickory-shafted clubs. On most days, you could find Bobby and Frank playing in the draining ditch or along the side of the road.

In time, Jones built up his club collection, including a brassie, the equivalent of a two-wood, cut down from a club from his mother, Clara. He followed his parents around the course and hit shots when they said it was all right. Jones started imitating the swing of Stewart Maiden, the pro at East Lake, and showed uncanny ability from the beginning.

It didn’t take long for Jones to prove his skill at golf. He won his first cup in a tournament when he was 6 and kept the trophy polished. He even slept with it.

A Prodigy

At 11, Jones shot an 80 at East Lake. At 13, he shot a 70 and won the club championships not only at East Lake, but at Druid Hills Golf Club as well.

He won the Georgia Amateur and reached the quarterfinals of the U.S. Amateur at Merion Cricket Club in Haverford, Pa., as a 14-year-old. The U.S. Amateur took a two-year break for World War I in 1917-18, but the next time it was held, Jones made it to the final at Oakmont, where he was defeated by S. Davidson Herron.

By now, it was no secret that Jones was something special. At 18 in 1920, Jones won the Southern Amateur in Atlanta, was a semifinalist at the U.S. Amateur and tied for eighth at the U.S. Open.

Jones had graduated from high school at 16 and graduated from Georgia Tech in 1922, earning a degree in mechanical engineering. At Tech, Jones was so devoted to his studies, he earned the nickname “Deac.” Walter Coxe, a college classmate, said of Jones: “Jones was a fine, clean, friendly, healthy, fun-loving, smart, modest and hard-working man.”

It was a description that would serve Jones for years, until his health began to gradually fail.

Jones excelled off the golf course nearly as much as on it. He earned his second degree, in English literature, at Harvard. He would eventually take two semesters of law at Emory University, then passed the bar exam on his first try.

Said Matthew: “Jones could be just as conversant in discussing ‘The Heart of Midlothian’ by Sir Walter Scott as studying a putt on the golf course. He was the most intellectually brilliant player who ever played the game, no question.

“Before Jones, golfers were mostly former caddies and not very well thought of. The players were not educated. Jones changed the perception and set the standard.”

Jones never turned professional and was basically a part-time golfer, a decision that he never regretted and in fact affirmed repeatedly.

On the golf course, Jones was uniformly brilliant. His playing career was like a huge, bright comet that blazed across the sky and captured everyone’s attention and then was gone too soon.

Jones competed in major championships for 13 years, and for nine of those years he was either a high school or college student. He was a part-time player and full-time genius. He played in 52 tournaments during that period, an average of four a year, and won 23.

A Heroic Champion

Jones was 28 when he retired from regular competition on Nov. 17, 1930. He had won 13 of the 21 majors he had played from 1923-1930: five U.S. Amateurs, four U.S. Opens, three British Opens and one British Amateur.

Even when Jones didn’t win, he was close. In 11 of the last 12 U.S. Opens and British Opens he played, he was either first or second.

His greatest achievement in golf took a year. In 1930 Jones won all four of what were at the time considered the biggest tournaments in golf--the U.S. Open at Interlachen, the U.S. Amateur at Merion, the British Amateur at St. Andrews and the British Open at Hoylake.

It was the grand slam. No one had ever done it, and although Tiger Woods’ achievement of holding all four major titles at the same time is stunningly remarkable, Woods has not matched Jones’ record of winning all four of golf’s biggest championships in the same calendar year.

Herbert Warren Wind wrote in 1930, after Jones had won the U.S. Amateur for a fifth time and completed the one-year sweep: “In the clubhouse, after a talk with his father, he began to digest the reality that the Grand Slam was factually behind him and with that, the ever-accumulating strain he had carried for months ... when he appeared for the presentation ceremonies, he looked years longer.”

Even more than 70 years ago, the sporting public was enthralled by dominant athletes. The fact that Jones actually lived up to his image as a sportsman of the highest degree only enhanced his already considerable reputation.

Jones’ wife, Mary, his high school sweetheart, once said that after she kissed Bobby Jones for the first time, she knew she would never kiss another man. Jones felt the same way about her.

“Surely a lot of hotel-room keys were thrown at his feet,” Matthew said. “But he never picked them up.”

Jones’ reputation as a sportsman was cemented on the golf course and it can be illustrated in two examples. Competing in the first round of the 1925 U.S. Open at Worcester Country Club in Worcester, Mass., Jones was addressing a chip shot on the 11th hole and his ball moved. No one saw it but Jones. Later, he was congratulated for calling a requisite one-stroke penalty on himself, but Jones was not impressed with his own action.

Said Jones: “You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.”

Jones wound up losing the Open by one shot to Willie Macfarlane in a 36-hole playoff. Jones was playing the 1926 British Open at Royal Lytham and left the course to eat lunch at a hotel. When he returned, he had forgotten his player’s badge. Instead of talking his way in, Jones stood in line with the fans and paid the two pounds admission fee.

By this time, Jones was on his way toward becoming a national treasure, but nowhere was this greater than in Atlanta. In 1927, a group of appreciative local people presented Jones with a $50,000 gift so he could buy a new house. Jones tearfully accepted the gift, but after considering how it might affect his avowed amateur status, returned the money, thus showing his political awareness of the USGA as well as his own finesse and judgment.

He represented the finest ideals of amateurism. Matthews, the author of “Life & Times of Bobby Jones, Portrait of a Gentleman,” says that none of our modern athletes compares to Jones.

“Not one of our role models has had the full, complete package Jones has,” Matthew said. “Babe Ruth, he had a turbulent childhood, a turbulent marriage. He was a broken man in many phases of his life. I say that Bobby Jones was a hero at 5 o’clock. What you saw on the field of play was exactly what you saw on the train when he was exhausted going home.

“Jones never lived a double standard. He was a genuine hero, 24 hours a day.”

Matthew said Jones bridged significant eras of golf, from Harry Vardon to Jack Nicklaus.

“People like Bobby Jones, they come around only once a century.”

A Noble End

One of Jones’ playing partners was Charlie Yates, 11 years his junior and a member at both East Lake and Atlanta Athletic Club. As a kid, Yates used to sneak under the fence at East Lake to take a peak at the prodigy.

Yates is the only person still living who played in the first Masters, in 1934, a tournament Jones and Augusta National partner Clifford Roberts organized for their golfing friends.

Yates says Jones made the right decision that November day in 1930 when he decided to retire.

“It think what he did was so smart,” Yates said. “Having conquered all worlds, he retired, because he loved to play with his friends.”

Once retired, Jones turned his attention to creating a golf course. He enlisted famed architect Alistair MacKenzie to design a layout that would suit players of all abilities, a risk-reward type of course. And that is just what Augusta National has represented since its formal opening in January 1933.

The first several tournaments were called the Augusta National Invitational, not the Masters, because Jones considered such a name pretentious, but he changed his mind after urgings from Roberts. Jones played in the first 12 Masters, though never finishing higher than 13th, his place in the inaugural event.

Jones also made a celebrated series of golf motion pictures for Warner Bros., became a vice president for A.G. Spalding & Bros., wrote several books, continued his career as a lawyer with Coca-Cola and was a vital business and social leader with Mary in Atlanta.

Jones said he never really missed tournament play.

“Golf is like eating peanuts,” he once said. “You can play too much or too little. I’ve become reconciled to the fact that I’ll never play as well as I used to.”

His last round of golf was Aug. 15, 1948, at East Lake Golf Club. Yates had played with Jones a few weeks earlier.

“I recall quite vividly and sadly how one day in 1948 ... Bob said that he had trouble getting the club down from the top of his swing because of the pain in his back.”

Only 46, Jones was stricken by syringomyelia, a neurological spinal disease. When he was officially diagnosed some eight years later, Jones was told that the disease afflicts about one person in a million each year. Jones did not give in to self-pity. He once said he would not accept “this thing” as he referred to his rare ailment.

“I fight it every day. When it first happened to me, I was pretty bitter, and there were times when I didn’t want to go on living. But I did go on living, so I had to face the problem of how I was to live. I decided that I’d just do the very best I could.”

Jones underwent spinal surgery in 1948 and in 1950. He used a cane, then two canes, then was forced into a wheelchair. His weight dropped to less than 100 pounds and he never saw the Masters after 1967. The feeling in his hands had become so bad that he could sign letters only by holding a pen taped to a tennis ball.

In October 1952 he had a heart attack, but he was well enough three months later to attend a ceremony in his honor at the USGA headquarters in New York.

At the ceremony, a letter from one of Jones’ close friends and Augusta National members was read. It was from President Dwight Eisenhower.

“Those who have been fortunate enough to know him realize that his fame as a golfer is transcended by his inestimable qualities as a human being,” the letter said. “His gift to his friends is the warmth that comes from unselfishness, superb judgment, nobility of character, unwavering loyalty to principle.”

It is said that Jones wept openly.

He died Dec. 18, 1971, in Atlanta. He was buried two days later at Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta. The 66th Masters will be played this week at Augusta National. Jones would have been 100 years old.