AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2005 > October > 01 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USLooking 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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By Don Smith
October 2, 2005 07:06 AM | Link to this
In his TV series on America, Alistar Cooke opened on segment standing on a hole at the Augusta National. He said that only in America (this was 1972) do the fans want their hero to be humble. It is because of one man, Bobby Jones. He then went on the tell the well-known account of Bobby Jones giving himself a penalty stroke, with know witness of his mistake, that ultimately cost him the tournament. When asked why he would do that when no one would have known, he said, I would have known.
He was an exceptional person, a great national hero of legendary proportions, a great Southern gentleman, a Georgia Tech grad, with character that is beyond reproach. He was what of us would like to be, want to be, and strive to be. He is what the definition of hero is. We are fortunate that, as Georgians, his legacy is everywhere. Almost every golf shop at every club in Georgia has a painting or photograph of him on their wall, a man who represents the ideal symbol of what the game of golf should represent.
By Daniel M. Gray
October 15, 2005 01:37 PM | Link to this
I am a 49 year old attorney (Vandy grad) in No. Va. who used to read your TSN column in high school. When I was 30, I moved to Ardmore, PA, and walked the Merion course remembering the Trevino/Nicklaus 1971 playoff. I stumbled upon the plaque to Jones (at the 13th hole, I think), and whenever I gave friends visiting from out of town the tour, I took them to the spot.
Jones’s teenage caddy that day, (Howard something??) whom he remembered 34 years later at Atlantic City during 1964 Dem. convention, became a top amateur golfer, inspired by the great one. If you check the Phila. Inquirer clips for 1988-91, you will find the story about the caddy, and what he remembered about Jones during that U.S. Amateur.