The PISCES Golf Legend: Bobby Jones
- Inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974.
- Major Championship Victories: 13
- US. Amateur: 1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, 1930
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- British Amateur: 1930
- U.S. Open: 1923, 1926, 1929, 1930.
- British Open: 1926, 1930
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Robert Tyre Jones Jr. was a man of tremendous intelligence and
profound character, a model of the complete golfer and a true gentleman’s
gentleman. Born on March 19, 1902 in Atlanta, Jones was clearly
a prodigy from the very beginning.
At the 1916, U.S. Amateur Jones advanced to the third round as
a 14-year-old but as talented as he was it still took him seven
years to win his first tournament. He also had to overcome a fiery
temperament that hindered him as a young man and the strain of competition
caused him to lose as much as 18 pounds during a week of competition.
 Jones
won 13 times from 1923 to 1930 and accomplished all this while playing
competitive golf no more than three months in a year. The rest of
his time was devoted to academics, and later, law. He studied mechanical
engineering at Georgia Tech, received a degree in English Literature
from Harvard and attended law school at Emory University.
Jones was considered the finest amateur golfer the game has ever
produced and according to some was the greatest golfer ever, period.
His crowning glory came in 1930 when he became the only golfer in
history to complete the “Grand Slam” of golf by winning
the U.S. Amateur, British Amateur, British Open and U.S. Open in
the same year. At the end of that great season, at the tender age
of 28, he retired from competitive golf. The New York Times noted
the occasion in an editorial that read, “With dignity, he
quit the scene on which he nothing common did, or mean.”
More than any other player in history, Bobby Jones is the model
of the complete golfer. Enormously gifted, Jones became a genuine
hero to fans of golf and the media alike. In the words of Herbert
Warren Wind: “In the opinion of many people, of all the great
athletes, Jones came the closest to being what we call a great man.”
Jones greatest legacy became the Augusta National Golf Club and the
Masters Tournament, which he founded in 1934. He played in the tournament
several times, never finishing better than 13th. In 1948, he developed
syringomyelia, a rare spinal disease, and never played again, eventually
confined to a wheelchair until his death in 1971. Bobby Jones legacy
lives on in the form of the USGA’s Bob Jones Award, which
is awarded each year to an individual that is singled out for distinguished
sportsmanship in golf.
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