Dealing in superlatives is a desperate business for all writers whether they
traffic in golf or tiddledywinks. That is precisely why the string of pearls
set forth above about Emperor Jones must be ultimately substantiated. You
are wondering whether Jones really was that good, whether Nicklaus or
Woods eclipsed Jones, and whether Jones deserves to be Emperor. A close
look at Jones’s record, his life, and the way he lived it justify what these
people have said all along. Jones is truly sui generis.
From his earliest days as a six-year-young lad following Carnoustie native
Stewart Maiden around the links at Atlanta’s East Lake CC, Jones knew
not only how to strike a golf ball but also why a ball could be golfed. Jones
had a genius for the theory of the game.
He had more than a knack for the sport. Young Jones understood the
mechanics intimately. He later translated this knowledge into theorems of
mechanical engineering that he could articulate as a college student at
Georgia Tech, where he received his first degree in 1922. But Jones knew
the physics of golfing the ball long before college. Simply by perfectly imitating Maiden’s technique, Jones shot 80 on East Lake at age eleven. At
twelve little Bob was pounding out two-hundred-yard drives. He won both
the East Lake and the Druid Hills CC men’s club championships at age
thirteen. And he was the “medallist” as the youngest-ever competitor in the
1916 Amateur Championship at Merion CC at age fourteen.
That started a fourteen-year career that ended with the Impregnable
Quadrilateral—the Grand Slam in 1930. Jones then retired from the championship scene at the ripe old age of twenty-eight. Unlike Muhammad Ali
or Babe Ruth or Mike Tyson or Michael Jordan, however, Jones never was
tempted to make a “comeback” from retirement. He never felt that his
record was insecure enough that it needed propping up.
A quick look at the record shows why he was entitled to be confident.
Jones played in fifty-two championships and won twenty-three of them.
He finished first or second in eleven of thirteen U.S. and British Open
Championships in which he played. Bob won “The Double” (U.S. and
British Opens) twice, in 1926 and 1930. He won a total of thirteen major
championships during a thirteen-year span. And, of course, the pièce de
résistance is the capturing of all four recognized major championships in
the Grand Slam of 1930.
Emperor of the Game • Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. 95
The Grand Slam is the longest streak of sustained excellence in virtually
any respected sport, eclipsing Babe Ruth’s sixty home runs (which lasted
thirty-four years after he set it in 1927), Joe Dimaggio’s 1941 hitting streak
of fifty-six games, Wilt Chamberlain’s average 50.4 points per game set in
1961–62, and Byron Nelson’s PGA Tour streak of eleven straight victories
set in 1945.
It is little wonder that in 1997 the World Golf Hall of Fame international voting body elected the Grand Slam “The Greatest Moment in Golf
History”—also selected by the Associated Press as the “Supreme Athletic
Achievement of this Century” in 1944. Jones himself was voted the Greatest Golfer of the Century by all sportscasters and sportswriters in 1950.
They knew what they were talking about.
It is not intellectually honest to explain away Jones’s record by claiming
that he played with hickory shafts on hardpan unwatered fairways against
weak fields. And that today’s professionals would destroy Jones with their
newfangled technology and buffed-up physiques.
Today’s professionals and amateurs alike are perhaps better trained than
most in Jones’s era. But Jones was no wimp. He could tear a pack of playing cards in half with his powerful grip. Seldom did he use his strength to
full advantage. Instead Jones had a “fifth gear.” Half a dozen years after
retirement Jones showed this to Sam Snead, who was renowned as a long
hitter. “Bob just cruised his drives short of mine until we reached the parfives. Then he somehow crushed them twenty and thirty yards past mine.
Nobody had ever told me he was that long. I was flabbergasted.”
When Jones first played the Olympic Club in San Francisco, he was the
first man to hit the par-five 604-yard sixteenth hole in two strokes. Sportswriter O. B. Keeler witnessed Jones’s drive over the green into a greenside
bunker on Merion’s 350-yard eighth hole in 1916 when Jones was fourteen years old. Ten years later, in 1926, at Scioto, Keeler saw Jones drive
his ball 310 yards from the seventy-second tee. These were not Titleist Pro
V-1 golf balls. You don’t even want to know their compression!
But Jones could post some incredible scores with these mush balls and
without the sand wedge (invented by Sarazen in 1931) that carries with it
a two-stroke-per-round advantage over the old niblick. Jones was frequently
returning scores in the 60s long before others caught up with him. He was
the first player to return a score in the 60s in the British Open, in 1927 (a
“most obscene” 68). Bob set the East Lake CC course record in 1922, post96 Golf’s Greatest Eighteen
ing a 62. He set the record low score of 67 in the 1927 Amateur. Jones shot
the “perfect round” of 66 at Sunningdale in 1926, coupled with a 68 to
win the club’s Gold Vase. He also shot 66 in winning the 1927 Southern
Open at East Lake CC.
How would Jones compare with today’s Robin Hood–type ball and
trampoline-faced metal woods? We got a good glimpse of the answer when
Jones designed clubs for Spalding as a director, beginning in 1932 with his
registered matched sets featuring the sweet spot in the center of gravity
throughout the set. Jones returned scores in the 65, 66, 67 range with regularity. He was not dubbed the “Mechanical Man of Golf” for nothing.
Jones thought Nicklaus played a game with which he was not familiar,
but Jones would have handled Jack and Tiger the same way he handled
Cyril Tolley in the 1926 Walker Cup matches at St. Andrews. Jess Sweetser
asked Bob on the evening before their storied match, “Bob, how are you
going to handle Tolley? He is the longest hitter in Great Britain.” Bob softly
replied, “Jess, don’t worry about Tolley.” The next day Tolley drove from
the first tee about 240 yards, which was good in those days. Jones powered
past him 20 yards. On the second tee Tolley stretched out to about 250
yards on his drive. Jones passed him again by 20 yards—yes, 270 with that
old mush ball. After that Jones didn’t have to worry anymore about Tolley
because Cyril was pressing his luck trying to outdrive Jones. Bob won by
the lopsided score of 12 and 11.
Ben Hogan recognized that the true secret of Jones’s success was not his
considerable physical skills but rather the strength of his mind. In this
dimension Jones knew no peers, and it is why Jones should be acknowledged as Emperor.
