The hallmark of Bob Jones’s accomplishments on the golf course will always
be that he played as a gentleman. The Grand Slam came second. It is “that
granite fortress that Jones alone could scale by escalade but others may
attack in vain forever.” A forgotten aspect of the Grand Slam is that Jones
actually conceived of the notion in 1926, fully four years before he went
out and realized his dream. Bob Jones thought that whoever won the Open
Championship on both sides of the Atlantic in the same year had achieved
Emperor of the Game • Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. 97
the right to be recognized as the champion golfer of the world. When Jones
did just that in 1926, it was hailed as “The Double Open.” It ain’t that easy
to do. In fact, other than Jones, the Double Open has been achieved only
by Gene Sarazen (1932), Ben Hogan (1953) and Lee Trevino (1971). But
Jones did it not once but twice (1926 and 1930), just for punctuation that
the initial occasion was not a fluke.
Yet another feat of perhaps comparable wonder is the “Double Amateur,” comprising the American and British Amateur Championships won
in the same year. Again an accomplishment by an elite few. Chick Evans
started that parade in 1916 when he showed that both Amateur titles could
be annexed in the same year. Jones did it in 1930. And Lawson Little won
both titles in 1934 and 1935. Still another incredible “Double” is the couplet comprising the British Open and the British Amateur Championships.
John Ball captured both in 1890 followed by you-know-who-Jones in
1930. You will remember that quite a number of other champions have
won a combination of the major titles in their careers, but only Jones has
won the Double Open, the Double Amateur, the Double British, and the
Double American in the same years.
All this points up the chief difficulty of the Grand Slam won by Jones.
Not only did he buck up against “Old Man Par,” his adversaries and the
golf courses, but also Jones won against a more auspicious adversary—himself. The self is certainly a worthy opponent, especially in a cerebral contest like golf. There are more hobgoblins and demons in the six-inch course
between the ears than ever were confronted on the links. Make no mistake,
Jones wrestled each one before the last trophy was presented.
Thirty years after the original Grand Slam, the media struggled to fill
the void left by Jones’s absence coupled with the stark realization that the
Grand Slam was indeed out of reach. Sportswriter Bob Drum and Arnold
Palmer then stirred the imagination of the Fourth Estate by concocting the
modern Grand Slam. Palmer wondered what were the chances of a player
like himself winning all the professional major championships on both sides
of the Atlantic. “Can’t be done,” said Drum. And the race was on.
Palmer came close in 1960. He won the Masters and U.S. Open and
could have won the British Open except for the St. Andrews Road Hole.
There’s always something getting in the way. Hogan strung together three
pearls in 1953—the Masters, U.S. Open, and British Open. But neither
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his legs nor his schedule could sustain him for the fourth title, the weeklong match-play PGA.
Until Eldrich Woods came along, everyone began to settle for a cheap
imitation of the modern Grand Slam known as the “career” Grand Slam.
That list is growing, but to date there are no names at all listed in the “modern professional Calendar Year Grand Slam” category. So far, not even the
best professionals can put the puzzle together, which again goes to show
you that the “genuine Grand Slam” is a unique element of Jones’s genius
and the prime reason why he truly is the Emperor.
Since Woods’s emergence on the golfing scene in 1996, considerable
attention has been paid to his purported full-scale assault on Jack Nicklaus’s assembly of twenty major titles in a single career. The sportsman’s
hobby of winning lots of major titles and stacking them up in a mathematical race to the highest total is as old as Young Tom Morris’s four consecutive British Open titles and Harry Vardon’s six Open titles.
Watson won a remarkable five championships and showed everyone just
how redoubtable Vardon’s record really was. This major business was certainly not lost on Jones, who collected thirteen major titles in the space of
seven years. Walter Hagen won eleven. Tiger has so far won eleven. Hogan
and Player each have nine, Palmer eight. Vardon, Sarazen, Snead, and Watson each won seven total majors. By the time Jack Nicklaus was twentyeight years old, he had won nine majors, whereas at the same age Jones had
won thirteen. Jack clearly has the upper hand in total majors, twenty in
twenty-five years. But Charles Price extrapolated that “Jones would have
been working on his forty-sixth national title at the age Jack Nicklaus won
his twentieth.” But total majors does not an Emperor make. There must
be more facets to the diamond than that.
