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Saturday, October 1, 2005
Looking back at Bobby Jones
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
If all the owners of word processors who have written a book on Bobby Jones this year would honk, the sound would create a resounding din. This is the 75th anniversary of the gentleman sportsman’s Grand Slam of golf, you see, and that coincidence has sent sports historians of many varieties beating a hot path to their machines. Their creations have broken out like a rash, and I don’t know that one surpasses the other, not that it took on the form of an authorial spelling bee.
What has taken place among us this week has been the Atlanta Athletic Club’s project to celebrate the 75th, and it has been done so with a flourish. Nothing spared. Beginning Thursday at 3 p.m. and reaching a crescendo Saturday evening at the club.
Now, we all know that Jones’ memory is associated with East Lake, where he learned the game. It’s a blessing, I’d suppose, that in the battle with the disease that took his life, he was too far removed to have been involved in the rupture of the membership. Hence, the Athletic Club went its own way and took the heritage of Jones with it.
To say that this commemorative event has been carried off splendidly is understatement. What the AAC did was invite delegations from each of the clubs where Jones won the four national championships in 1930, from St. Andrews and Royal Liverpool (commonly known as Hoylake) in England, and Interlachen and Merion in this country. When the curtain was drawn Saturday evening, there couldn’t have been a dry eye in the place.
One of the privileges of my life was being able to know Bob Jones. He gave generously of his time. I never got to see him swing a golf club. By the time I reached town, he was already too crippled to get about without the help of a cane or crutches. I learned a few things hurriedly: Never offer assistance with his cigarette, his Coca-Cola (always at hand), his chair or his train of thought.
The Saturday Evening Post once commissioned me to write a story with him under the byline “By Bobby Jones, as told to Furman Bisher.” I was elated. Gently, he let me down from my euphoria. “If I did that, it would make me sound like some dumbbell who couldn’t make a sentence,” he said.
Once you read his book, “Golf Is My Game,” you understood. As George Plimpton later would say of it, Jones wrote “with a skill comparable to his abilities with a golf stick.”
There was one occasion on which I did see him accept assistance graciously. A Nashville paper put on a huge blowout for its sports editor, celebrating the 25th anniversary of Fred Russell. The publisher, sparing no expense, had invited a cast of great sports figures from around the country. Jones had accepted, though travel was burdensome, and was assigned a seat at the head table. As he approached the steps on his crutches, he paused uncertainly, and as he did, two men stepped to his side and gave him a hoist. They were Jack Dempsey and Red Grange. Two immortals helping another.
After he retired from competition, Jones found it difficult to play without attracting a gallery, even at East Lake. So the project that became Peachtree Golf Club began. Augusta National was available, of course, but 160 miles away, and closed from May to October.
Peachtree was created with the support of about 200 friends, a place where he could go and play in private. The tragedy of it is that he never got to play the full 18 holes. The spinal surgery in Boston intervened and he was never able to swing a club again.
Among the stack of correspondence we had, one letter stands out in its significance. It was during the time when the Masters was under siege to include a black player in its field, qualified or not. The letter was dated Jan. 29, 1969, and read:
“I am grateful to you for sending me the letter from an unknown friend in California, even though it was just another long chapter in the endless feud being waged by Charlie Sifford and his newspaper friends against the Masters Tournament, with no opposition from our side.
“Just between us, I wish to God he would go on and make it so that we could have the matter settled on the basis of performance.” (signed “Bob Jones.”)
Right at this moment I’m suffering most of all for a critical loss of my own. Somehow, some way, my copy of “Golf Is My Game” is missing. That’s my most cherished golf book of all.
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NFL Predictions: Thunder heads knuckle under
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
It was 85 years ago Monday when the American Professional Football Association (APFA), the predecessor to the NFL, played its first full week of games.
Perhaps most noteworthy was the Canton Bulldogs’ 48-0 victory over the Pitcairn Quakers, for it reaffirmed two things: 1. The importance of having a player-coach named Jim Thorpe (Canton). 2. The danger of having a football team named the Quakers (stupid, stupid, stupid).
Minnesota didn’t make the same mistake. It named its football team the Vikings after the tough men of Thor, the Norse god of thunder. Unfortunately, as we know from Scandinavian history, the Norse empire eventually fell apart shortly after Thor was caught with a Whizzinator just following a plundering.
Which brings me to today’s game at the Georgia Dome: The Falcons against the Knuckleheads of Thor. I don’t have the space to run down every goofy thing this franchise has done. So let’s limit this to recent history: Everything stupid associated with Randy Moss, the only occasionally lucid Onterrio Smith packing a Whizzinator in the airport, replacing Moss’ spot on the roster with noted boozer Koren Robinson.
Only this week, two starting offensive linemen, Bryant McKinnie and Marcus Johnson, got into trouble at a gas station (don’t ask). Quoth their teammate and defense attorney Fred Smoot to a Minneapolis paper: “I hate when people try to make football players Superman. … You’re still human. You ain’t got a lot of church rats running around in here.”
Oy.
Norsemen rank 30th against the run. The Falcons are No. 1 on the run.
Cover your eyes, Thor. Falcons cover six.
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Vick still delivering as critics bear down
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
There are few absolutes in the NFL, but here’s one: Jimmy Johnson talks a lot. As a coach, people find that sort of thing entertaining. As a studio commentator, people find that sort of thing either entertaining, blasphemous or somewhere in between.
But one thing Jimmy never says is, “Gee, I really don’t have an opinion on that.”
So it follows that when the subject of Michael Vick came up during a Fox pregame show last season, the former Dallas and Miami coach did what he always does. He shot from the lip.
“He’s not a quarterback,” Johnson said. And he made some crack about how long it will take Vick to absorb the team’s new offense, adding, “The jury still is out on Michael Vick.”
“People were so upset,” Johnson said this week by phone. “A lot of people have taken my comments about Mike as criticism. It’s not like I ever said he was a bad player or something. All I meant was he’s not your traditional quarterback. But people got all bent out shape.”
Now, depending on your perspective, you are either going to view these next comments as entertaining, blasphemous or somewhere in between. Either astute observations or backtracking drivel.
One week after Vick seemed to elevate his quarterbacking to a new level, Johnson was asked to pick one quarterback if he had to start a franchise.
“I’d have to think long and hard about that, but it would either be [Tom] Brady or Vick,” he said by phone. “And there is not another player who would come close to either of those two.”
Why?
“Because they win games,” he said. “Because they win games with their talent. Other quarterbacks win games with the talent of their supporting cast.”
Told that last punch should really go over well with Peyton Manning fans in Indianapolis, Johnson laughed and said, “Yeah, well, I’m kind of used to that by now.”
The Falcons play Minnesota today, which means Vick will be opposed by Daunte Culpepper. Next week they play New England, which means he will be opposed by Brady. By any definition of what a quarterback is, neither is suddenly a mismatch.
One start against the Buffalo Bills — during which Vick read defenses, anticipated blitzes and threw two touchdown passes — hardly means he is free of flaws. He remains a work in progress. But that progress is now clear should mute criticism (real or misinterpreted) for a while.
“He’s the most exciting player there is in the league, and it’s scary to think what he might do when he gets really proficient in the passing game,” said Johnson, who built and coached two Super Bowl teams with the Cowboys.
“Some people are critical of him because they’re accustomed to seeing the drop-back passer. They’re not used to seeing quarterbacks running naked bootlegs all the time. It goes against the grain of what we’ve come to expect from that position. The first thought that comes to mind is, ‘He’ll get hurt.’ But because of his talents, you have to make that part of your system. The fact that I said he’s not a traditional quarterback doesn’t mean I thought he was a bad player.”
Johnson worked with traditional quarterbacks in Dallas (Troy Aikman) and Miami (Dan Marino), and in college, and believes the position should be graded differently than others.
“To me, it’s not so much how many great plays you make, but how few bad plays you make,” he said. “Michael Vick makes a lot of great plays. His improvement has to come in the area of negative plays. Don’t carried away with sacks because with all of the plays he’s going to make with his feet, he’ll get sacked some times. But he needs to keep his interceptions down, which is what he’s doing.”
So maybe this means the jury is in now.
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