Club Times 2021 November/December

The 1925 U.S. Amateur Championship at Oakmont Country Club

hole, known as the Ghost Hole, as the turning point. Six years earlier, Jones had lost the hole in a match with Davy Herron when the blast of a megaphone interrupted his play. Going into the hole, Gunn played what Jones later called “the hottest inspirational golf I ever faced.” Gunn was on the green in three, but Jones’s third shot landed in the bunker, and he seemed destined to lose the hole. Jones blasted out of the bunker, put his ball ten feet from the cup, and sank his putt to halve the hole. In the last six holes, Jones was two under par and four holes up on Gunn. Gunn remembered with awe, “From there in I shot the best golf I knew how to shoot, but you know what I faced? He showed me 3-3-4-3-3-4, and at the end of the first eighteen holes I was four down. When he started the afternoon round at 4-3, it cooked my goose. I never caught up.”

The AAC received top billing at the 1925 U.S. Amateur Championship at Oakmont Country Club because Bobby Jones and Watts Gunn met in the finals. Gunn joined the AAC while at Georgia Tech. He was born in Macon in 1905 and enjoyed a distinguished amateur career, winning the 1928 Southern Amateur and Open titles. He was a member of the U.S. Walker Cup teams in 1926 and 1928. But 1925 may have been his most memorable year. Never before or since had the finalists been members of the same club. In his first match, Gunn won fifteen straight holes, which became a world record at the time. On the evening before the final round, though, Gunn tried to sneak out of the clubhouse to see a young woman by slipping down the back stairs. Bob caught him and said, “Oh, no you don’t. You’re going to march right back up to that room. You’ll need all the sleep you can get for tomorrow.” The next day, Jones and Gunn faced a difficult match, but Jones remembered the 600-yard 12th Club.” The purpose of the series is so that members may become familiar with the history and heritage of the great club to which they belong. In 2023, Atlanta Athletic Club will celebrate its 125th anniversary. The club was founded in 1898 by a group of 65 Atlanta businessmen who enjoyed playing sports and camaraderie. This article is the seventh in a series entitled “125 Years: The Legacy of Atlanta Athletic

Watts Gunn and Bobby Jones