When the eighteen knights of golf’s eternal roundtable have taken their
chairs on history’s ultimate green, it is inevitable that one of their number
be universally acclaimed as “the Greatest.” He is, of course, the greatest
Hero of Heroes, sometimes called Emperor.
One might ask whether such a resolution is really necessary. After all,
there are eighteen able heroes all seated at the roundtable, which features
no head, no foot, no corners, and no sides. Can’t we just say that every able
man who made it to the table is equally worthy and nobody should be
acknowledged as Emperor? If the history of mankind is any teacher, the
answer is “probably not.”
Hero worship has been studied by deep thinkers and observers of the
human condition for centuries. Plato postulated that the amateur sportsman should be held up before the republic and regarded as the model citizen. In his lectures titled “Hero Worship,” nineteenth-century Scottish
philosopher and historian Thomas Carlyle theorized that “it is the business, well or ill accomplished of all social procedure whatsoever in this
world . . . to raise the able-man to the supreme place and loyally reverence
him” in creating the perfect state or the ideal government. The ablest man,
said Carlyle, is the truest-hearted, most just, noblest man who tells of the
wisest, fittest, and most valiant thing that will always behoove us. The Emperor of Heroes is the summation for us of all these qualities that command our respect and willing subordination.
How then do we identify this ablest of men and heroes? Over the ages,
Carlyle notes, we seem to have settled on particular qualifications and identifying characteristics. The ablest of the great men illuminates all those who
surround him. He emanates a sincerity that genuinely utters forth the
inspired soul of his original genius. Conscious of his faults, the greatest
hero never boasts. His voice ably speaks for all others. There is something
that attracts other great men to be in the Emperor’s presence: the absence
of anything false or selfish. And a perceptible quality of balance about his
life that indicates he is worthy of the appellation. All things considered, the
chorus of heroes’ voices in golfdom does resound the name of Robert Tyre
(Bobby) Jones, Jr., as the Emperor of Golf.
What They Said Back Then
The marshaling of evidence to support the Emperor’s selection is a tap-in.
As the only amateur in the elite eighteen, Jones’s fourteen-year total playing career was perhaps the shortest. The historians who were privileged to
see him play spared little ink praising not only Jones’s technical skills but
also his artistry. Is there a golf writer today who claims to be the equal of
Bernard Darwin? With “faltering pen,” Darwin wrote his tribute to Bob
Jones in 1944 as part of Golf Between Two Wars. Titled appropriately “The
Greatest of Them All,” it spared few accolades addressing why Darwin positioned Jones at the head of the class:
It was in 1921 that we here first met Bobby. . . . His fame had preceded
him. . . . Now he was a battle worn warrior of nineteen with, as all the best
judges united in thinking, the makings of the greatest golfer in the world.
No reasonable expectations were disappointed for the greatness was there
to see for anyone with eyes. I can remember the precise spot at Hoylake
where I first saw the swing soon to be familiar in the imagination of the
whole golfing world; so swift in that it occupied so little time, with no suspicion of waggle, and yet so leisurely in its almost drowsy grace, so lithe
and so smooth.
Darwin’s appraisal was hardly a lone voice in the wilderness. The great
Peter Doberiner pronounced Jones “the finest golfer of all times”:
92 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
To say that Jones was the greatest golfer there ever was, or ever will be, is
to do him an injustice, for his golf was never much more than a diversion.
The London Observer’s Geoffrey Cousins wrote: “Every generation of
golfers has provided its great men and it is often reasonable to hail some
outstanding player as the finest of his time. That distinction, of course,
belonged to Jones, but in his case one could go further and suggest that he
was the greatest golfer the world has ever seen.”
In the London Sunday Times Henry Longhurst wrote about Jones in
equally reverent tones, announcing, “My but yer a wonder, sir.” His obituary tribute to Jones went as far as one needs to support the Emperor’s
coronation as the greatest ever: “Let me close this brief tribute by quoting
a friend of mine who was once partnered with Jones in the Open: ‘If I had
sons,’ he said, ‘I should have sent them out to see him—as much for his
behavior as for his play.’ Jones was probably the greatest and certainly the
best-loved golfer of them all.”
Pat Ward-Thomas of the Manchester Guardian echoed these sentiments:
“Down the years people have wondered whether Jones was the greatest of
all golfers. Comparison is invidious for no man can do more than win and
Jones won more often within a given period than anyone else has ever done.
To the majority of golfers the name of Robert Tyre Jones can only be a legend and a legend unchallenged and undying it will remain for as long as
golf is played. Jones was the champion of champions. No golfer has
achieved or is ever likely to achieve a supremacy over all the players in the
world for as long as he did. No golfer will command more lasting affection
and respect for his qualities as a person.”
American golf writers who knew Jones well and share the literary mantle of respect were no less extravagant in their views that Jones rates the top
shelf. Grantland Rice watched Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, Red Grange,
Knute Rockne and the Four Horsemen, Jack Dempsey, Gene Tunney, and
a host of other spectacular sports superstars. But Rice reserved his top spot
for Jones, stating: “There has been no champion like him that sport has
yet given to the game.”
Charles Price minced few words: “Bob Jones was the greatest championship golfer in the history of the game, amateur or pro, and I mean championship golfer, not a tournament player. This is a statement you could
make unequivocally only if, as I have, you have also been friendly with
almost every golfer of historical consequence in this century, save Harry
Emperor of the Game • Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. 93
Vardon. Bob would be mad at me for making such a statement, but I doubt
any of the others would. He was the most un-falsely modest person I ever
knew.”
One of Price’s contemporaries who shared the breadth of his experience
with the legends of golf is Herbert Warren Wind. In his Story of American
Golf, Wind wrote the following in the chapter titled “The One and Only”:
“Only Harry Vardon, Ben Hogan, and Jack Nicklaus merit comparison
with Jones as major championship golfers.”
Mr. Wind eloquently states the case for each player and can only conclude “they belong in a class by themselves. . . . In some ways each is incomparable. Bobby Jones certainly was.”
Eustace Storey was the 1924 runner-up to Cyril Tolley in the British
Amateur Championship and thrice on the British Walker Cup Team. On
June 25, 1972, Storey wrote the following appraisal in the Sunday
