Bobby Jones Biography - Child Prodigy, Winning Streak, Personal Style, Contribution To The Game, Augusta National Golf Club And Final Years
british amateur twenty tournament
1902-1971
American golfer
Although he retired from competitive golf in 1930, at age twenty-eight, Bobby Jones is widely regarded as the greatest golfer of all time. While earning three college degrees Jones played golf as an amateur, winning thirteen of the twenty-one national championships he entered in the United States and Great Britain between 1923 and 1930. In 1930 he achieved the golfing "Grand Slam" by winning the U.S. Amateur, U.S. Open, British Amateur, and British Open Championships in the same year. He surprised the world by retiring from competition soon afterward. In retirement he wrote books and articles on golf and made a series of instructional films, while practicing law. In 1931 he helped to design and build the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. The club's tournament soon came to be known as the Masters Tournament. The Masters is one of four tournaments known as the modern Grand Slam, along with the U.S. Open, the British Open, and the American Professional Golfers Association (PGA) Championship. Jones died in 1971 after suffering for twenty-three years with a rare central nervous system disease, syringomyelia. He received numerous awards and honors, including induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 1974.
Additional Topics
Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones, Jr., named for his grandfather, was born March 17, 1902, in the Grant Park neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia. He was the second son of Robert Purmedus Jones, an attorney who had played baseball at the University of Georgia, and Clara Merrick Thomas Jones. At age five, he and a friend laid out a small golf course in the front yard, and Jones played with a set…
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…
Jones was an average-size man, standing 5'8" tall and weighing about 165 pounds at the height of his golfing career. He had a clean-cut, boyish manner that made him the favorite of golfing fans. He did not like to practice golf and played on average about eighty rounds a year. Obviously gifted, Jones had superb timing and a long, powerful stroke. He wasted no time on the golf course …
In 1931 Jones formed a partnership with Wall Street broker Clifford Roberts and announced plans to build the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia. With the help of architect Alister Mackenzie, Jones fulfilled his dream of designing a golf course. It opened in 1933, and Roberts suggested that Augusta host its own major tournament. He wanted to call it the Masters Tournament, but Jones tho…
(With O. B. Keeler) Down the Fairway: The Golf Life and Play of Robert T. Jones, Jr., Minton, Balch & Company, 1927.
(With Harold E. Lowe) Group Instruction in Golf: A Handbook for Schools and Colleges, American Sports Pub. Co., 1939. Golf Is My Game, Doubleday, 1960. Bobby Jones on Golf, Doubleday, 1966. Reprint, Golf Digest/Tennis, Inc., 1986. Rev. ed., edited by Sidney L. Matthew, S…
Jebsen, Harry. "Robert Tyre Jones, Jr." Dictionary of American Biography, Supplement 9: 1971-1975. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994. Rice, Grantland, from the writings of O. B. Keeler. The Bobby Jones Story. Atlanta: Tupper & Love, 1953. St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. "Bobby Jones." five volumes. Detroit: St. James Press, 2000. "G…
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User Comments
about 2 years ago
Hi, I have a collection of old golf clubs and I think I have one of Robert T Jones's last putter (1 of 5). I would like to know who would be interested in this one of a kind putter. Please refer me to a collector or somebody else.
Thank you. I also have a self signed poster that I had laminated of Payne Stewart just before he died.
about 3 years ago
bobby jones is my idol