Some have commented on the “youth” at which players such as Tiger
have won major titles.
Young Tom Morris was the youngest British Open champion (seventeen
years, five months, eight days in 1868). Gene Sarazen was the youngest
PGA champion (twenty years, five months, twenty days in 1932). John
McDermott was the youngest U.S. Open champion (nineteen years, ten
months, fourteen days in 1911). Tiger Woods was the youngest Masters
champion (twenty-one years in 1997). Jones won his first major in 1923
at age twenty-one. (He should have won the 1919 Amateur against Davey
Herron, but that’s another story.) Jones was not the youngest major champion. But he was the youngest U.S. Amateur competitor in 1916, at age
fourteen. And who is remembered as the “Boy Wonder from Dixie”? Of
course, R. T. Jones.
Still another comparison focuses on the pace at which various champions achieved the highest total of majors earned. For example, Bob Jones
achieved his thirteenth major at age twenty-eight. Nicklaus was thirty-two
when he achieved his thirteenth major in 1972. In the 2003 season Tiger
Woods must win two of his next four majors to tie Jones’s record of thirteen majors at age twenty-eight—50 percent! As Tiger has won 33 percent
of the majors he has played thus far, the odds are slightly less than even
money that he may do it, all other things being equal. Again, subject of
course to the 2003 season, Jones matured as major champion the fastest.
The record books aside, what really makes Jones the Emperor over all
others was his gentlemanly demeanor and incredible strength of character.
100 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
Jones played golf for fun and never for money. When it became akin to a
job, he quit, since Bob already had a profession as a lawyer. He had his life’s
priorities right early on: God, family, the law, and last was golf, but never
a life unto itself. Jones had more ambition than to play professional golf—
not because it was a dishonorable pursuit but rather because he had greater
ambition.
Bob’s nongolf pursuits were extraordinary and swallowed up his short
golf career. He invested in an extravagant education with degrees from
Georgia Tech and Harvard. And he short-circuited the need for a law degree
by passing the bar exam halfway through the law curriculum. Some critics
have claimed Jones was not a part-time golfer after all. If not, he surely
squeezed more out of a single day in life than most wring out of a week.
Jones attended school followed by real estate sales for a short stint in
Sarasota and then dived into his law practice. When he retired at age
twenty-eight after achieving the Grand Slam, Jones made the Warner
Brothers movies, designed the Spalding golf clubs that bore his name, wrote
five books, designed and built Augusta National, started the Masters Tournament, and served as a national and international ambassador of golf.
Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player were conferred well-deserved honorary
doctorates by St. Andrews University. Only Jones was bestowed the singular honor of citizenship in the Freedom of the Royal Burgh of St. Andrews.
In receiving this honor, Jones stands alone with Benjamin Franklin, who
was similarly honored in 1759.
Whereas other champions seemed to struggle in reaching the pinnacle
of general public adoration, Jones was almost immediately accepted. Hogan
was the “Wee Ice Mon,” Jack the “Golden Bear,” Palmer “the King,” and
Tiger the “Phenom.” Only Jones was acknowledged as the Emperor of
Golf.
But Jones was not a one-trick pony. Like his golf swing, he was a remarkably balanced person in equal measure of humanity, humor, courtesy, and
consideration to all those about him. As the consummate “southern gentleman” Jones was instantly likable because he was genuinely modest and
self-deprecating. When presented with the enormity of his accomplishments in a written tribute, Jones simply looked down and said, “I only wish
I were that good.”
He was always ready to attribute his success to others about him. He
once said that his biographer, O. B. Keeler, wrote so many good things
Emperor of the Game • Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. 101
about him that he felt obligated to live up to them or else “he might let old
Keeler down.” Jones’s puckish sense of humor was infectious. He once
crumpled up a twenty-dollar bill and asked his caddy to drop it in the
bunker by Walter Hagen’s ball. Hagen reflexively picked up the twenty and
put it in his pocket. He then splashed his ball onto the green.
Jones calmly asked, “What did you get on that hole?”
Hagen answered, “I got a four. I was up and down out of the bunker.”
“No, Walter, you got a five. You removed a loose impediment in the
bunker.”
Who doesn’t know that Jones called not just two but four single-stroke
penalties on himself in competition, saying, “There is only one way to play
this game and that is by the Rules. You might as well praise a man for not
robbing a bank”?
To be sure, other players have done the same thing, but Jones set the
standard. Instead of fiercely competing against his playing partners, Jones
played against “Old Man Par.” For that reason he was, in Gene Sarazen’s
words, “like a friend, when you played with or against him.”
Jones had the respect of his peers and all others not because he was the
best sportsman. Rather, Jones was the most able man anyone has ever seen.
He was the truest-hearted, most just, and noblest of all the golfers who ever
lived. He represents the summation of all the qualities that command our
willing subordination. Which is why Robert Tyre Jones, Jr., is and will forever remain . . . the Emperor.
