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Wikipedia Summary for Bobby Jones
Robert Tyre Jones Jr. (March 17, 1902 – December 18, 1971) was an American amateur golfer who was one of the most influential figures in the history of the sport; he was also a lawyer by profession. Jones founded and helped design the Augusta National Golf Club, and co-founded the Masters Tournament. The innovations that he introduced at the Masters have been copied by virtually every professional golf tournament in the world.
Jones was the most successful amateur golfer ever to compete at a national and international level. During his peak from 1923 to 1930, he dominated top-level amateur competition, and competed very successfully against the world's best professional golfers. Jones often beat stars such as Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, the era's top pros. Jones earned his living mainly as a lawyer, and competed in golf only as an amateur, primarily on a part-time basis, and chose to retire from competition at age 28, though he earned significant money from golf after that, as an instructor and equipment designer.
Explaining his decision to retire, Jones said, "It [championship golf] is something like a cage. First you are expected to get into it and then you are expected to stay there. But of course, nobody can stay there." Jones is most famous for his unique "Grand Slam," consisting of his victory in all four major golf tournaments of his era (the open and amateur championships in both the U.S. & the U.K.) in a single calendar year (1930). In all Jones played in 31 majors, winning 13 and placing among the top ten finishers 27 times.
After retiring from competitive golf in 1930, Jones founded and helped design the Augusta National Golf Club soon afterwards in 1933. He also co-founded the Masters Tournament, which has been annually staged by the club since 1934 (except for 1943–45, when it was canceled due to World War II). The Masters evolved into one of golf's four major championships. Jones came out of retirement in 1934 to play in the Masters on an exhibition basis through 1948. Jones played his last round of golf at East Lake Golf Club, his home course in Atlanta, on August 18, 1948. A picture commemorating the event now sits in the clubhouse at East Lake. Citing health reasons, he quit golf permanently thereafter.
Bobby Jones was often confused with the prolific golf course designer, Robert Trent Jones, with whom he worked from time to time. "People always used to get them confused, so when they met, they decided each be called something different," Robert Trent Jones Jr. said. To help avoid confusion, the golfer was called "Bobby," and the golf course designer was called "Trent."
One reason golf is such an exasperating game is that a thing we learned is so easily forgotten and we find ourselves struggling year after year with faults we had discovered and corrected time and again.
Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course that's the distance between your ears.
Golf is a game that's played on a five-inch course -- the distance between your ears.
If I had ever been set down in any one place and told I was to play there, and nowhere else, for the rest of my life, I should have chosen the Old Course at St. Andrews.
In golf, the customs and etiquette and decorum are as important as the rules of play.
No putt is too short to be despised.
When I'm a little fatigued, sometimes I baby it. I don't try to do it. I'm not 100 percent. I probably won't be the rest of conference play. I just have to play through it. I've never really been injured before.
The rewards of golf, and of life too I expect, are worth very little if you don't play the game by the etiquette as well as by the rules.
I never learned a thing from a tournament I won.
I always like to see a person stand up to a golf ball as though he were perfectly at home in its presence.
The best exercise for golfers is golfing.
Addressing a golf ball would seem to be a simple matter; that is, to the uninitiated who cannot appreciate that a golf ball can hold more terrors than a spacious auditorium packed with people.
If I needed advice from my caddie, he'd be hitting the shots and I'd be carrying the bag.
Too much ambition is a bad thing to have in a bunker.
The difference between a sand trap and water hazard is the difference between a car crash and an airplane crash. You have a chance of recovering from a car crash.
Some emotions cannot be endured with a golf club in your hands.
Bad putting is due more to the effect the green has upon the player than it has upon the action of the ball.
A leading difficulty with the average player is that he totally misunderstands what is meant by concentration. He may think he is concentrating hard when he is merely worrying.
I never learned anything from a match that I won.
One reason golf is such an exasperating game is that a thing we learned is so easily forgotten, and we find ourselves struggling year after year with faults we had discovered and corrected time and again.
The real way to enjoy playing golf is to take pleasure not in the score, but in the execution of strokes.
No-one will ever have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps this is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you a playing a game. You are playing old man par.
The moment the average golfer attempts to play from long grass or a bunker or from a difficult lie of any kind, he becomes a digger instead of a swinger.
In order to win, you must play your best golf when you need it most, and play your sloppy stuff when you can afford it. I shall not attempt to explain how you achieve this happy timing.
Golf is the only game I know of that actually becomes harder the longer you play it.
I can play the game only one way. I must play every shot for all there is in it. I cannot play safe.
Doesn't it show us all that we are silly little boys or fatuous asses to think that we can play golf without making a lot of bad shots?
I have never felt so lonely as on a golf course in the midst of a championship with thousands of people around, especially when things began to go wrong and the crowds started wandering away.
As I see it, the thing that hurt my putting most when it was bad, was thinking too much about how I was making the stroke and not enough about getting the ball in the hole.
Rhythm and timing are the two things which we all must have, yet no one knows how to teach either.
I had held a notion that I could make a pretty fair appraisal of the worth of an opponent simply by speaking to him on the first tee and taking a good measuring look into his eyes.
The toughest opponent of all is Old Man Par. He's a patient soul who never shoots a birdie and never incurs a bogey. And if you would travel the long road with him, you must be patient, too.
You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank as to praise him for playing by the rules.
On the golf course, a man may be the dogged victim of inexorable fate, be struck down by an appalling stroke of tragedy, become the hero of unbelievable melodrama, or the clown in a side-splitting comedy.
Many shots are spoiled at the last instant by efforts to add a few more yards.
Golf is the closest game to the game we call life. You get bad breaks from good shots; you get good breaks from bad shots -- but you have to play the ball where it lies.
Golf is said to be an humbling game, but it is surprising how many people are either not aware of their weaknesses of else reckless of consequences.
Golf is a game that creates emotions that sometimes cannot be sustained with the club still in one's hand.
You swing your best when you have the fewest things to think about.
I get as much fun as the next man from whaling the ball as hard as I can and catching it squarely on the button. But from sad experience I learned not to try this in a round that meant anything.
The main idea in golf as in life, I suppose is to learn to accept what cannot be altered and to keep on doing one's own reasoned and resolute best whether the prospect be bleak or rosy.
Golf is assuredly a mystifying game. It would seem that if a person has hit a golf ball correctly a thousand times, he should be able to duplicate the performance at will. But such is certainly not the case.
Golf is a game that is played on a five-inch course.
It is nevertheless a game of considerable passion, either of the explosive type, or that which burns inwardly and sears the soul.
You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank.
Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a-half-inch course... the space between your ears.
The secret of golf is to turn three shots into two.
If ever I needed an eight foot putt, and everything I owned depended on it, I would want Arnold Palmer to putt for me.
It is nothing new or original to say that golf is played one stroke at a time. But it took me many years to realize it.
Some people think they are concentrating when they're merely worrying.