Bobby Jones

Jones did not win a national contest until 1923. At age twenty-one, he won the U.S. Open Championship on Long Island, New York, beating both amateurs and professionals. According to Newsweek, he later recalled moving through the congratulatory crowd and thinking, "I've won a championship. At last, I've won one." But this tournament was only the beginning of a successful period when Jones would win a total of thirteen major championships over the next seven years. By 1926 he became the first person to win both the U.S. and British Opens in the same year. On returning home he was treated to a ticker-tape parade down Broadway in New York City, the first of several he would receive. He won the U.S. Amateur in 1924, 1925, 1927, 1928, and 1930. He again won the U.S. Open in 1929 and 1930, disqualifying himself on a one-stroke technicality in 1925, adding to his reputation as a gentleman and sportsman. He also won the British Open in 1926, 1927, and 1930 and the British Amateur in 1930.

Winning all four major championships in 1930 gave him the golfing Grand Slam, an accomplishment that Jones was the first to achieve. Jones also became the first man in history to break par in the U.S. Open, winning with a score of 287, one under par.

Jones and his two major rivals during the 1920s, Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, were known as the Three Musketeers because they took all the major titles in the United States and Great Britain. Jones also led his team to victory five times in the Walker Cup competition, inaugurated in 1921 as a tournament between amateur teams from the United States and Great Britain.

Even though golfing great Jack Nicklaus eventually broke Jones's record of thirteen major championships, no one has accomplished what Jones did within such a short period of time. In 1950 an Associated Press poll found Jones's Grand Slam to be "the Supreme Athletic Achievement of the Century."