"BOBBY” JONES ON GOLF

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 87, 11 January 1928, Page 11

"BOBBY” JONES ON GOLF

BIG SHOTS AND PUTTING MARVELS TALKS TO PLAYERS IN AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY Mr. “Bobby” Jones is one of the greatest golfers of the day, and his geniality and modesty have made him also, on both sides of the Atlantic, one of the most popular. At twenty-five he has won the United States open twice and the British open, and for five years he never finished lower than second in the United States open. Now at that age he has written his autobiography, “Down the Fairway. ’ “Now and then, when I’m playing behind some slow match,” he writes, “and watching the members lining up a three-footer from btolr ends, and picking up gravel along the supposed path of the putt, I think of George Duncan’s suggestion as to putting: “ ‘The best system,’ says George, 'is to go up to the ball and knock it into the hole!’ “And Alex Smith,? who was always a good putter, never fooled around over a putt. “ ‘Miss ’em quick!’ was Alexf’s motto. And he didn’t miss so many, at that. Also he never bothered about picking up little impediments along the path of the putt “ ‘Won’t those things throw the ball off the line?’ he was asked. “ ‘Just as likely to throw it on the line!’ answered Alex. “I never have believed in hanging over a shot, and until the last two years I was as prompt on the putting green as with any other shot. They say now that I am studying my putts more carefully. That is not all of the truth. I do. study them a bit more; until I can see the ‘line’ I won’t putt now. In the old days I didn’t like the idea of slowing up the round, and if I couldn’t see the line I’d putt anyway. . . . Seeing the line is a curious thing, and I am free to confess I do not well understand it. I suppose it is one of the psychological phases of golf. In some rounds, when I am scoring well, the line of every putt is as plain to me as if someone had drawn it in whitewash, and I can see just how much to 'borrow’ from a slope, and exactly where the door of the cup is. Other day's the line is dim and I have to look for it carefully. “But most of the time I take on the green to-day is not looking for the line or cleaning off the path of the putt. At Merion, in 1924, when I first won the United States amateur championship ... I resolved never to make a putt in an important round while rry breathing was hurried. So I’d look over the line of the putt, and maybe even sit down to consider it, apparently. But -my object was to get my breathing and” heart tranquilised. It’s a small thing. But championship golf .is perhaps the closest business in the world, and it’s the small things, down to the single blade of grass, which turns your ball off from the cup, that makes up the margin between firstclass players.” Later Mr. “Bobby” Jones describes a wonderful golf shot—an. incident during Vardon and Ray’s visit to America in 1913. “On the twelfth hole of the afternoon round at East Lake, Ted Ray made a shot which stands oijit in my mind to-day as the greatest I have seen. “Our boys had finished the morning round 2 down, but had started brilliantly after luncheon, especially Stewart, and had got in the lead. Then, beginning with the twelfth hole, the visitors executed four birdies in succession and went back in front. Vardon got the birdie at No. 12, but. Ray, in getting his par 4, produced this astonishing shot. His drive was the long- ’ est of the four, as usual, but right behind a tree. The tree was about forty feet in height, with thick foliage, and the ball was no more than the tree’s altitude back of it, the tree exactly in line with the green. As Ray walked up to his ball, the more sophisticated members of the gallery were speculating as to whether he would essay to slice his shot around the obstacle to the green, 170 yards away, or ‘pull’ around in on the other side. As' for me, I didn’t see anything he could do, possibly, but accept the penalty of a stroke into the fairway. He was out of luck, I was surd. “Big Ted took one look at the ball and another at the green, a fair ironshot away, with, the tree between. Then without hesitation he drew a mashieniblick, and he hit that ball harder, I believe, than I have ever seen a ball hit since, knocking it down as if he would drive .it through to China. Up flew a divot the size of Ted’s ample foot. Up also came the ball, buzzing like a partridge from the prodigious spin imparted by that tremendous wallop—almost straight up it got, cleared that tree bv several yards, and sailed on at the height of an office building, to drop on the green hot far from the hole. . . . The gallery was in paroxysms. I remember how men pounded each other on the back, and crqwed and cackled and shouted and clapped their hands As for me, I didn’t really believe it. A sort of wonder persists in my memory to this day. It was the greatest shot I ever saw.”