Club TImes: March/April 2023

By the summer of 1923, Bobby Jones’ life was progressing in many ways. He had graduated from Georgia Tech in 1922 and had begun his studies at Harvard that fall. Having studied mechanical engineering at Tech, he turned his attention to English Literature and classics, subjects that appealed to his artistic side. He embraced student days in Cambridge, enjoying life at one of America’s premier universities. Because of the New England winter, golf was out of the question. If golf was out of the question, it was not out of his mind. Bub (our family nickname for our grandfather) had turned twenty-one in March of 1923 and he was profoundly disillusioned by his golfing performance to date. In addition to his embarrassing withdrawal from the British Open in 1921, he had suffered painful defeats in the U.S. Open from Gene Sarazen in 1922 and, later in that year, Jess Sweetser soundly defeated him in the semifinal of the U.S. Amateur. He had won many regional titles to date, but he had yet to breakthrough on the national stage. By today’s standards, he would have easily been categorized as “The Best Player Without a Major.” It was not a designation that he would have appreciated. He was discouraged by his performances and had come to the conclusion that he would give the whole business up if he wasn’t able to win a national title. “Championship— championship,” he would write, “Seventy-two holes of medal play in the national open, or beating five men in succession, in the national amateur. So that’s it. No matter how prettily you play your shots. No matter how well you swing or how sweetly the ball behaves—after all, it’s only championship that counts, the way most of us have come to look at it…The road to championship was a hard one, for me, and it took seven years in the climbing. And when I got there, at Inwood, my first feeling was that nothing mattered—I had broken through.” Throughout the spring and early summer of that year, Bub’s game was flat. As the national title came more sharply into focus, Bub struggled to find his rhythm and touch. As the time came to board the train for New York, he lacked so much confidence in his game that Stewart Maiden had agreed to accompany him to the tournament. The national open that year was played at Inwood Country Club in Long Island. By the standards of the day, Inwood was a tough, narrow, course that demanded tremendous precision. Bub’s practice round performances did nothing to inspire his confidence. After several depressing practice rounds in which he struggled to break eighty, Bub opened up with a one-under par 71, one shot behind Jock Hutchinson. After a second-round 73, Bub remained two-shots behind Hutchinson and one shot ahead of Bobby Cruickshank. Bub always considered the third round of a championship to be a great one for shooting a high score and, in shooting a 76 in that round, he lived up to that expectation. He was startled to learn that he was not the only one to have trouble in that round, as Cruickshank shot 78 and Hutchinson blew up to an 82. After fifty-four holes, Bub was in the lead by three shots. 1923 | Breakthrough!

Written by Robert T. Jones IV

In those days, the third and fourth rounds were played on the same day. After a brief lunch break, the final round resumed. Over lunch, Bub thought that any score under 75 should win the title and it wasn’t until the round was underway that he realized that, “I had made the fatal mistake of playing for a certain figure that was not Old Man Par.” Bub started out with a lackluster 39 on the front nine. However, after a birdie on the tenth, pars on the next three holes, and a birdie on fourteen, Bub relaxed and became convinced that the championship was his. He made a shaky par at fifteen and then played the last three holes four-over- par, with a double-bogey at the seventy-second hole. As he came off the green, sports writer O.B. Keeler came up to him to congratulate him. Bub shook it off, saying, “I finished like a yellow dog.” Only one person on the course could catch him, Bobby Cruickshank. After some struggles of his own, Cruickshank came to the seventy-second hole needing a birdie to tie and force the playoff. He made the birdie in what Bub called, “One of the greatest holes ever played in golf.”

The playoff the next day was a raucous affair, with the lead swinging back and forth all day. Finally, coming to the eighteenth, Cruickshank drove into trouble and was forced to lay up short of the green. Bub had pushed his drive to the right rough and found a devilish patch of hard pan where his ball had come to rest, 200 yards from the hole. Knowing that Cruickshank was short of the green in two, Bub reached for his two iron and decisively struck the shot onto the

Bobby Cruickshank

green. Two putts later and Bub had defeated Cruickshank for his first United States Open Championship. He would win three more throughout the remainder of his career, but there was none sweeter than this first victory at Inwood. He had played national championship golf for seven “Lean Years,” as O.B. Keeler would call them. The lean years were over. The fat years were just beginning.

Photo: Inwood Country Club