WHEN BOBBY JONES CAME TO HOYLAKE,
a.k.a. the Royal Liverpool GC, for what
would be the second leg of his 1930
Grand Slam – consisting of the Amateur
Championship, Open Championship, U.S.
Open and U.S. Amateur – he was not in
the mood. Not remotely. Competing took
it out of him and the Amateur at St. Andrews, which had finished shortly before,
was a case in point.
Though, from the start of his week on
the Old Course, he had been fuelled by a
premonition that he was going to win, he
had his quota of anxious moments, most
notably, in his fourth-round game with
Cyril Tolley and his semifinal with America’s George Voigt.
Against Tolley, he only won at the
19th, while, when it came to Voigt, he was
2-down to the American after 13 holes.
To quote Bernard Darwin, the legend-
ary correspondent of The Times, “Voigt
should have beaten him.”
That clichéd old saying, “2-up with five
to play never wins,” is far from foolproof
but it worked for Jones no less than it
has worked for many another. Voigt’s ball
sailed over the out-of-bounds wall at the
14th, with the other half of the player’s
lead disappearing in sand at the 16th.
To his credit, Voigt hit back, catching
the penultimate green in two and all but
holing his approach putt to leave Jones
with an 18-footer if he were not to fall behind again. Thanks not least to his refusal
to entertain the idea that he might be
beaten, the great champion duly rolled the
putt home before a shaken Voigt missed
from six feet at the last.
When Jones defeated Roger Wethered
by 7 and 6 in the final, there was nothing
in the way of tension until the match was
done. Then, to borrow from the accounts
of the day, “Fifteen-thousand mad Scots
converged on their idol.” One fan was
knocked into a bunker, while members of
the crowd attacked the policeman, who
was doing his best to keep Jones clear of
the melee. As for the band, which was to
have played at the prize-giving, the musi-
cians disappeared like so many lost balls
and the ceremony, such as it was, had to
go ahead without them.
1930 OPEN CHAMPIONSHIP
TOP 5 SCORES
PLAYER, COUNTRY SCORES
1. BOBBY JONES, USA 70-72-74-75
T2. MACDONALD SMITH, USA 70-77-75-71
LEO DIEGEL, USA 74-73-71-75
T4. HORTON SMITH, USA 72-73-78-73
FRED ROBSON, GBR 71-72-78-75
Results: Opengolf.com
’ 30
BY LEWINE MAIR
#4
KEEPING
UP WITH
JONES
All of which does a lot to explain why
he was not, as they say, “in the right
place” when he turned up at Hoylake for
what was his first visit since 1921. (That
was the year when he played in an unofficial Walker Cup over the links prior to
losing to A.H. Graham, a club member, in
the Amateur.)
As Keeler saw it, Jones was every bit
as flat before the 1930 Open as he had
been when he was preparing for the 1927
U.S. Open at Oakmont, an occasion when
he suffered his worst ever finish in a major. The English critics had no Oakmont as
a touchstone but they, no less than Keeler,
noticed the lack of life in Jones’ attitude
and his game. He looked stale.
His spirits may have lifted when the
gun went off but the same did not apply to
his golf.
“I simply don’t know where the darn
thing is going when I hit it,” he told Keeler,
following opening scores of 70 and 72,
which left him one shot ahead of Fred
Robson. “I guess I’m trying to steer it,
which is just about the worst thing in the
world. But what can I do? This is a tight
course, one where you simply have to
exercise some control.”
After a hard graft of a third-round
74, Jones found himself trailing Archie
Compston by one. Compston did Jones’
cause no harm when he lost his advantage
as early as the first hole in his last round.
As he bent down to recover his ball in
virtually the same movement as he had
tapped it in, so he realised that the mis-
sile had never actually dropped. He was
appropriately penalised and, to no one’s
great surprise, he went to pieces.
