As the name of Robert Tyre Jones Jr. evolves it assumes all manners of identities and associations, not to mention address. In my copy of the book he wrote, “Golf Is My Game,” his signature reads, simply, “Bob Jones” — and indeed it was written by his own hand. (Blushingly, I’ll admit it was preceded by a nice personal message.)
In some of my biographies it is written that “he played golf with Bobby Jones,” which is not true. By the time I first met him in his Atlanta law office, he already was disabled, but gallantly made his way about on crutches, and sometimes canes. He nearly always had a Coca-Cola on his desk, and when he smoked, he used one of those long-stemmed black holders, akin to those of President Roosevelt’s.
When any publication bore his name as its author, you may be assured that he wrote it. I learned the hard way. A magazine for which I used to write commissioned me to do a personal article with him, with the by-line “By Bobby Jones as told to FB.”
Joyfully, I rushed to his office to report our good fortune. Luckily, I had not spent my cache prematurely. “Fuhman [in his native drawl], I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I do my own writing. Nothing bearing my name is published that I don’t write myself,” and so it was.
Often this week of the PGA Championship I have read of Jones and his association with the present-day Atlanta Athletic Club at the new-born dateline of Johns Creek, and of his influence of the arrival of this and previous championships there. The truth is, Bob Jones never saw this Athletic Club golf course. His golf mainly was played at the original East Lake, when it was in its prime. When that membership split, a mixture of hard-boiled old members joined up and assumed ownership, led by Paul Grigsby, Bill Leide and Tommy Barnes — and others whose names may have slipped my memory.
It wasn’t a disassociation made without some anguish, for the loyal old East Lakers drove a hard bargain, I’ve been told. I know this, that for years the “Bobby Jones” double-locker remained in the downstairs members’ locker room. It surely must have been acquired by the Athletic Club by now, but I can’t say.
There are a number of attributions to his game and how it came about. One of his own was of a summer when he played almost weekly with J. Douglas Edgar, then the professional at Druid Hills. Jones spoke of that summer as one of learning, and it is a matter of history that Edgar set the original record for the largest winning margin in PGA Tour history, in the Canadian Open of 1919.
His winning margin was 16 strokes, since tied but still standing.
Who was a runner-up? Bobby Jones, still a teen-ager.
One more sidelight about how and why “Bobby Jones” remains his exclusive name. He and a group of friends were putting Peachtree Golf Club into shape, when he and Robert Trent Jones, then also known as “Bobby,” were conferring on a design contract. It was Robert Trent Jones who is said to have made this proposal:
“Since you are Bobby and I am Bobby,” he said, “from now on you will be Bobby and I will be Trent, and there will be no confusion.” And so it became. And thank you all who may have gained something from this day’s work.
Retired sports columnist Furman Bisher writes occasionally for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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