From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 08/21/2001
Q&A: Jones’ gems of golfing wisdom
Bobby Jones agreed to two rare interviews on July 15, 1963, and March 17, 1965, with the late Ed Thilenius, the longtime WAGA-TV sportscaster. Jones, who wore braces on his arms and legs during the interviews, died six years, nine months after the second one at age 69, from the effects of the spinal disease syringomyelia. Thilenius referred to Jones as “Mister Bob.” Occasionally, there’s the sound of Thilenius’ Zippo lighter opening and closing to light a cigarette, Edward R. Murrow style. Here are some excerpts from the fascinating sessions, which were produced by Edwin Jay.
Thilenius: Mister Bob, you retired from active competition in 1930, actually at the peak of your career. Have you ever regretted that move?
Jones: [I played in my first U.S. Amateur] when I was 14, in 1916. And by 1930, I had 14 years of it, and it always took a lot out of me. Then, I just had other interests. I never wanted to make golf a life work. I wanted to keep it as something to enjoy.
Thilenius: You had no desire to be professional, did you?
Jones: Never.
Thilenius: In your playing days, Mister Bob, you placed a lot of emphasis on mental conditioning, probably more than the technical aspects. Why was that?
Jones: I think that’s the kind of game golf is. An Open championship, for example, or a tournament like the Masters, requires four days in which you spend about four hours a day in very intense concentration. You don’t need to be in too good of physical condition, [but] you certainly can’t learn to play the game that week if you hadn’t already learned it. So, you need to have all of your nervous resources available in order to maintain your concentration. The most difficult thing is to resist the temptation to play a careless shot. After you’ve been out there under that pressure for a couple of hours, you just feel like you’d give anything in the world to get up and just hit a ball without worrying about what happened to it. And once you do that, you’re a dead duck.
Thilenius: Mister Bob, what was the toughest shot for you to master in golf?
Jones: Well, then again, Ed, I don’t think I ever mastered any of them, and I don’t believe anybody else ever did, The truest thing that was ever said about golf was that golf is a study of a lifetime of which you may exhaust yourself, but never your subject. The shot that I had the most difficulty with were the short pitches, what we called the mashie niblick in my day. The call them 9-irons and 8-irons today.
Thilenius: Of course, you were a long-ball hitter. You didn’t have any distance trouble. I believe probably you had more trouble with par-3 holes that with the long par-4s or par-5s.
Jones: That was the strange thing. I could play a shot from the fairway of the same length to the green a lot better than I could from the tee. I don’t know why.
Thilenius: Of the thousands of great shots you hit in your career, does any one shot stick out in your memory?
Jones: No, I don’t believe so. In tournament golf, the shot that you’re playing at the moment is the most important one. Of course, when you’re playing in a tournament, your concentration is so complete and your interest is so great, I’ve hardly forgotten any shots that I ever played in a tournament. I could almost repeat every round right now, just where I went each place, with each shot. I remember a great many, but I don’t know that any one was more important than the other, except sometimes the last putt.
Thilenius: Mister Bob, who would you say was your toughest opponent?
Jones: Well, I guess you’d always have to say the fellow that beat you worst. I guess I’d have to divide that between Jess Sweetser at Brookline [who won 8 and 7 in the 1922 U.S. Amateur] or Walter Hagen in our special match in Florida [losing 12 and 11 in a 72-hole exhibition in 1926]. They both gave me very decisive drubbings.
Thilenius: Your good friend, O.B. Keeler, once said that golf is a game played on a fairway six inches wide, between the ears.
Jones: Well, you mustn’t think that O.B. meant by that that golf is an intellectual game, because it certainly is not. As a matter of fact, I think the possession of an active mind and a vivid imagination is more of a handicap than it is an asset. What he meant by that is, you need to be able to control your nerves and maintain your concentration. I think for the average player, the best thing he can do for his golf, is to learn his own limitations, as well as his capabilities, and to try to maneuver around the golf course with respect to his own ability and not try to play like somebody else.
Thilenius: Do you think golf has reached the stage now where we’ve outgrown the era of one-man domination?
Jones: Well, that all depends on what you mean by one-man domination. If by that you mean there will come along a superman who can’t be beaten, then I would say that would never happen, because golf just isn’t that type of game.
Thilenius: Mister Bob, if you had one single piece of advice to give an amateur golfer on how to improve his game, what would that be?
Jones: Well, I think I’d tell him to play a lot, and when he was playing, just to play, try to get the ball in the hole. And if he wanted to take a lesson or practice, go on the practice tee and do it; and not try to practice on the golf course. When you play, get the ball in the hole.