Jones, Robert "Bobby" Tyre, Jr. 1902-1971

CELEBRATED AMATEUR GOLFER

Amateurism.

In a decade when athletes were frequently lured away from amateur athletics by the small fortunes promised by professional sports, Bobby Jones spent his entire golfing career as an amateur. He felt that his potentially violent temper, fueled by his desire for the perfect shot and directed toward himself, worked against his succeeding as a professional. Consequently, although he was a consummate golfing artist and acclaimed worldwide, he did not earn money from his sport until after he retired from competition at age twenty-eight.

Accomplishments.

In his entire fourteen-year career, Jones played in only fifty-two tournaments, twenty-three of which he won. He hated to practice and sometimes went as long as three months without playing golf at all. He averaged no more than eighty rounds a year, and when he did play it was most often with his father or friends, as if he...

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