THE I MMORTAL BOBBY Bobby Jones and the Golden Age of Golf RON RAPOPORT John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ffirs.qxd 1/20/05 11:14 AM Page i ffirs.qxd 1/20/05 11:14 AM Page iv THE I MMORTAL BOBBY Bobby Jones and the Golden Age of Golf RON RAPOPORT John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ffirs.qxd 1/20/05 11:14 AM Page i This book is printed on acid-free paper. Copyright © 2005 by Ron Rapoport. All rights reserved Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada Photo credits: pages 145, 149 bottom, 150 bottom, 151: copyright © U.S. Golf Association; pages 146 top, 147 top: Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center; pages 146 bottom, 147 bottom, 148, 149 top, 152: Special Collections and Archives, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Emory University; page 150 top:AP/Wide World Photos Design and composition by Navta Associates. 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Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. For more information about Wiley products, visit our web site at www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Rapoport, Ron, date. The immortal Bobby : Bobby Jones and the golden age of golf / Ron Rapoport. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-471-47372-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Jones, Bobby, 1902–1971. Golfers—United States—Biography. I. Title. GV964.J6R36 2005 2004021909 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 ffirs.qxd 1/20/05 11:14 AM Page ii For Daniel B. Rapoport, A champion all his life, And Allanna Beth Chung, Now at the first tee ffirs.qxd 1/20/05 11:14 AM Page iii ffirs.qxd 1/20/05 11:14 AM Page iv Introduction 1 PART I Little Bob and Mr. Jones 9 1 East Lake Days 11 2The Jewel of the South 17 3 The Keeper of the Flame 24 4 “Emotions Which Could Not Be Endured” 30 5 “By No Means Fit for the Honourable Company” 44 6 The Long Lane Turns 60 7“ My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen, Are We Downhearted?” 73 8 “It Was Perfect and That Is All There Is to Say about It” 89 9 “Like a Hero Back from the War” 98 10 “He Belongs to Us All” 109 11 “You Can Never Know How I Envied You” 118 12 “Don’t Kill the Star in the Prologue” 133 PART II The Grand Slam 153 13 Impregnable Quadrilaterals, Then and Now 155 14 “Your Boy Is Just Too Good” 158 v Contents ftoc.qxd 1/20/05 11:18 AM Page v 15 The British Amateur: “They Ought to Burn Him at the Stake” 162 16 The British Open: Great Men of Hoylake 192 17 The U.S. Open: “The Lord Must Have Had His Arms Around Me” 211 18 Homecoming 235 19 The U.S. Amateur: “Into the Land of My Dreams” 238 20 Quitting the Memorable Scene 260 PART III The Best That Life Can Offer . . . and the Worst 263 21 Hollywood, Augusta, and Beyond 265 22 “White as the Ku Klux Klan” 277 23 “I’ve Been Having Some Numbness in My Limbs” 297 24 “Will Ye No’ Come Back Again?” 307 Sources and Acknowledgments 323 Bibliography 331 Index 335 Photo gallery: pages 145–152 vi Contents ftoc.qxd 1/20/05 11:18 AM Page vi 1 I f Bobby Jones did not exist, the mythmaking sportswriters of the Golden Age of Sports might have had to invent him. And in a sense, perhaps they did. Just beginning to realize their power to create idols on a scale never before imagined, the writers of the 1920s stood in awe of Jones in a way that left Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey, Bill Tilden, Red Grange, and the other great athletes of the era behind. As talented and popular as these others were, they were in it for the money, while Jones, who played as an amateur and never accepted a winner’s purse, was not. They were susceptible to the temptations that fame brought with it in the new age of celebrity, while Jones, who fled to the serenity of his home in Atlanta when not playing golf, was not. They tended toward showmanship and arrogance, flaunting their talents, taunting and belittling their opponents, while Jones, the embodiment of restraint and southern courtesy, did not. They courted the public spotlight—or were pushed into it by pro- moters eager to capitalize on the riches to be found in its glare— while Jones, relying on O. B. Keeler, a hometown sportswriter whose devotion knew no limits, to burnish his reputation, did not. Occasionally, those who assumed the task of explaining Jones to an increasingly fascinated public would assure their audience that Introduction cintro.qxd 1/20/05 11:20 AM Page 1 2 The Immortal Bobby Jones was not a saint, not perfect. But even the flaws they listed pro- claimed a humanity that only added to his mystique. Jones regularly drank alcoholic beverages, newspaper and maga- zine readers were told, and had a particular affection for home- distilled corn whiskey. He occasionally swore, on the golf course and off, and was known to enjoy bawdy stories. His temper was notorious in his younger days, and it was not until he learned to control it that he became a champion. So Jones was seen as that rare combination of noble patrician and regular guy. He was courtly, well-spoken, wise . . . and humble, approachable, one of the boys. By the time the catalog was complete, it seemed almost beside the point that he was also the greatest golfer the world had ever known. Though Jones was all but an annuity for journalists who were quickly learning that despite its stuffy, country-club origins in Amer- ica, golf could be an exciting game to write about, he was especially fascinating to the most stylish writers who crossed his path. Among them were those for whom sports was a youthful fancy they would one day leave behind, such as Paul Gallico; a change of pace from weightier concerns to be indulged only occasionally, such as Alistair Cooke; or a blank slate on which something approaching literature could be created, such as Bernard Darwin. “In all the years of contact with the famous ones of sport,” said Gallico in Farewell to Sport , the book he wrote before turning to the novels that would secure his reputation and his fortune,“I have found only one that would stand up in every way as a gentleman as well as a celebrity, a fine, decent, human being as well as a newsprint person- age, and who never once, since I have known him, has let me down in my estimate of him.That one is Robert Tyre Jones, Jr., the golf-player from Atlanta, Georgia.” “I have done a little digging among friends and old golfing acquaintances who knew him and among old writers who, in other fields, have a sharp nose for the disreputable,” wrote Cooke, the long- time American correspondent for the BBC and the Guardian who became well known in his adopted land as host of public televi- sion’s Masterpiece Theatre . “But I do believe that a whole team of investigative reporters, working in shifts like coal miners, would find cintro.qxd 1/20/05 11:20 AM Page 2 [...]... “Baseball,” and “Everything Else” fell out of the picture entirely “Gardner Required All He Had to Beat Bob in the Third Round,” was the headline atop Grantland Rice’s account of the match, but the Journal was just getting warmed up At age fourteen, Little Bob was the subject of poetry The War Cry of the Joneses” was the title of the lead item in Morgan Blake’s column In days of old there was a Jones If... from the quarterdeck, “I’ve just begun to fight.” Today the eyes of Southerners Are facing to the North And calling on their champion Little Bob—to sally forth And as the acid test draws near He rises to his might, And these the tones of Bobbie Jones “I’VE JUST BEGUN TO FIGHT.” c02.qxd 1/20/05 11:27 AM Page 23 The Jewel of the South 23 Though the “wonder child” was now the most famous boy in the United... not required and often set his clubs aside to study Jones s parents and grandfather also were saluted in the tribute, as was Stewart Maiden “Little Bob’s father and mother are both fond of golf, ” the article noted,“so that he comes by the game naturally; or, as Mrs Jones states the proposition, they come by the game quite naturally from him.” Jones returned home to Atlanta, where during the next few... a professor of French at Spelman College and the mother of a future mayor, received her library card The Atlanta Constitution noted the occasion by printing her name and address, and that night cars circled the family home, their drivers honking c02.qxd 1/20/05 11:27 AM Page 19 The Jewel of the South 19 horns and shouting epithets “Doncha know niggers can’t read?” one telephone caller informed Professor... AM Page 3 Introduction 3 that in all of Jones s life anyone has been able to observe, he nothing common did or mean.” It was left to Darwin, the grandson of the great naturalist and one of the first journalists to devote himself primarily to writing about golf (a friend once called him the originator of the species”) to define the problem they all faced: “A kind friend at St Andrews said to me the other... “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend,” says a newspaper editor in the John Ford film The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance In the case of Bobby Jones, the legend has the virtue of being the truth He was a great golfer, an icon admired in his own country and revered in Great Britain, a model of rectitude, an amiable companion, a loving husband, a doting father, a loyal friend Can the fact that these... turn -of -the- century bloomers Frank Meador and Little Bob invited two other children spending the summer of 1908 at East Lake, Perry Adair and Alexa Stirling, to 11 c01.qxd 1/20/05 12 11:22 AM Page 12 The Immortal Bobby play with them in the six-hole match Stirling, who was ten and the oldest member of the foursome, won “We couldn’t have a girl beat us,” Meador remembered, so the tiny cup his mother... to hear the great tenor sing only for him “What’s better than now?” Caruso replied and, standing at the bottom of the hotel staircase at four in the morning, he began to sing Doors flew open and the hotel guests, wearing slippers and robes, emerged to line the staircase and listen to the impromptu recital c03.qxd 1/20/05 28 11:29 AM Page 28 The Immortal Bobby When Keeler traveled with Jones to the British... Alexandra and Alexa to Sexie and Sex The message was too risqué for Western Union to deliver, but the members at East Lake made their feelings known when she got home Over the years, there would be many dinners held at the club to celebrate the championships won by its favorite son, and today the ornate lobby in the spacious clubhouse and several other rooms serve as a shrine to Jones s trophies and. .. the Colonel, convinced he was bad luck, stopped going to tournaments with him Keeler, who was twenty years older than Jones, filled the role of traveling companion and surrogate father as much as journalist 24 c03.qxd 1/20/05 11:29 AM Page 25 The Keeper of the Flame 25 The two men would ride the trains together, stay in the same hotel rooms, and take their meals in privacy, away from the club cars and . 11:14 AM Page iv THE I MMORTAL BOBBY Bobby Jones and the Golden Age of Golf RON RAPOPORT John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ffirs.qxd 1/20/05 11:14 AM Page i This. www.wiley.com. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data: Rapoport, Ron, date. The immortal Bobby : Bobby Jones and the golden age of golf / Ron Rapoport. p.