Speaker 1: These two episodes combined into one is the full unedited
hour long interview with James R. Hansen on his biography
called A Difficult par Robert Trent Jones, Senior and the
Making of Modern Golf. It was originally published as Golf
Smarter episode's number four hundred thirty six and four hundred
thirty seven from May thirteenth and twentieth, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
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like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.
Speaker 3: Maybe the most interesting crediting issue that comes up relates
to Augusta National. In the late forties, Bobby Jones brought
Trend in to do some significant.
Speaker 4: Remodeling of some of the holes at Augusta Number sixteen.
Speaker 3: As we know it, one of the great par threes
in the world, was a very different hole before Trent
Jones came in and redid it. The tea was right
behind the fifteenth green. It was a little creek. It
wasn't a lake, and the green was on the left
of where it is now over that creek.
Speaker 4: It was a bad hole.
Speaker 3: Trent and the membership and the people who had been
playing the Masters thought that sixteen was a week sister.
And Jones comes in in redesigns that hole completely. I
mean it's his hole. He redesigns the eighteenth green and
the mounding around it. He redesigns the thirteenth green. He's
the one that creates the tea on eleven from a
dog lake right three hundred and fifty yard hole with
a green where that lake isn't there, turns it into
a longer four hundred Part four. It really kind of
turns to the left and the green gets extended around
this lake. And what's interesting about this is Augusta National
never has credited Trent Jones for the work because they
don't want to take any attention away from McKenzie or
Bobby Jones.
Speaker 5: A difficult part our biography of Robert Trent Jones, Senior
and the making of modern golf.
Speaker 4: This is Golf Smarter.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast.
Speaker 4: Jim, Thank you very much. Fredd. It's a pleasure to
be with you on this podcast.
Speaker 5: Thank you. I got a book in the mail from
your publisher with your name on it, and I love
the title of it, especially when I was reading what
it meant. So why don't we just start with that.
The book is called A Difficult par Where did that
come from?
Speaker 4: Well, literally, it comes from the basic principle that Robert.
Speaker 3: Trent Jones Senior followed in the design of his golf
courses really from the very start of his career to
the end.
Speaker 4: And that was the idea that every good hole should
be a.
Speaker 3: Difficult par but an easy bogey. So that was kind
of the ruling architectural principle for him, and I thought
not only not only was it a mainstay of his
architectural strategy, but I thought the title also, in a
more metaphorical way, conveyed some other aspects of his career,
because he had lots of ups and downs, and it
was an immigrant boy, you know, that had big ambitions,
and so it's really a uniquely American dream kind of story.
And so the difficult part conveys, I hope, more than
just the architectural principle.
Speaker 5: And why did you pick? I mean, I looked at
the other titles that you've written, and I was kind
of baffled. Tell us about the other books that you've done.
Let you do the talking on that one.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Well, my career. You know, I'm an academic historian.
Speaker 3: I think history at Auburn University here in Alabama, and
I specialize really in the history of science and technology,
and I've written most of my books on the history
of aeronautics or the history of the space program. My
one previous biography was Biography of Neil Armstrong, which I
guess is book I'm best known for.
Speaker 4: But I always wanted to do something.
Speaker 3: I wanted to do at least one book on golf
because I grew up playing golf from the time I
was nine or ten. I worked at a golf course
from that same age. All the way through college, I
played college golf. You know, I've always loved the game,
and I wasn't good enough.
Speaker 4: To you know, to really play in any kind.
Speaker 3: Of significant way. But I wanted to do something, you know,
for a sport that I loved so much. And I
got this idea to do a Jones book, probably in
part because I lived in Alabama and in the early
nineteen nineties, the Robert Trent Jones Trail was being built
all over the state, and that, I think kind of
that converged with just my overall interest in the game
of golf and my interest in doing a biography. And
I actually contacted mister Jones when he was still living
down in South Florida.
Speaker 4: I wrote a letter to him, and I got a.
Speaker 3: Letter back from his lawyer saying mister Jones wanted to
do his own biography.
Speaker 4: That never worked.
Speaker 3: Out, and then he died in the year two thousand
and By that point in time, I was on to
the Neil Armstrong biography, But as soon as that was
published in.
Speaker 4: Two thousand and five, I got serious again.
Speaker 3: And I had to overcome a number of challenges related
to the records of mister Jones and to the two
sons of mister Jones, both of whom are prominent golf
course architects. But yeah, it's strange that I would go
to this topic. But if you know my own biographical
story and the loves of my life, which one of
which is golf, you know it's something I've really wanted
to do for a long time.
Speaker 5: Are you going to do biographies on your wife and children.
You can talk about doing stories on the love of
your life to that.
Speaker 3: And in fact, I hope no one ever does a
biography of me, and not that they would, but you know,
one of the amazing things about this particular biography is
that I had access.
Speaker 4: To, really carblanche, all of.
Speaker 3: Jones's papers, personal and business, even his love letters to
his wife to be that he wrote in the early
nineteen thirties in the midst of the depression, when he
was trying to get his career started and you know,
wasn't getting jobs or wasn't getting paid for the jobs
that he did do. And so I had amazing access
to all of his records. And you know, you don't
usually when you get into somebody's archives.
Speaker 4: Usually you know they've pulled out a bunch of stuff
that they don't want you to see.
Speaker 3: In this case, there was the sons of mister Jones
just let all that material go to Cornell University without
any kind of without any you know, censorship or restrictions.
And so when I got into that archive, which was
by special permission of Rob Trin Jones Junior, initially, I
mean it was really verb you know, sort of.
Speaker 4: An impact file all.
Speaker 3: I mean, the boxes were basically the filing cabinet drawords
that had been mister Jones's records for seventy years.
Speaker 5: Of all the characters that have come across and walked
across a green, why Robert Trent Jones. Yeah, well, there's
so many great characters, yea, And I mean I understand
everything was uphill battle for him, including that love affair
before he got married that was a strong uphill battle,
and even becoming a golf course architect. From the way
you describe it, everything was an uphill battle for him.
But was he that compelling of a human being?
Speaker 3: Well, it got easier for him because by the nineteen fifties,
when he was becoming known as the Open Doctor.
Speaker 6: For his renovation of championship courses, mostly from the US Opened,
but then for some of the other majors known notably
the PGA, it got easier for him, and he got
so successful and so prolific that it became kind of
challenge just to keep up with all of his projects,
because he was really considered to be the world's foremost
golf architect at that point.
Speaker 4: My choice of Jones was really based.
Speaker 3: On partly instinct and partly I was pretty sure I
had the information about this correct. I just didn't think
there was anybody in American golf, and that includes all
the professionals.
Speaker 4: I didn't think there was anyone where you could tell
more about.
Speaker 3: The history of the American golf course and about American
golf generally. And I find a matter of worldwide golf
than Jones, because you know, here's someone that worked that
worked as an architect from nineteen thirty, from the Calvin
Coolidge to two thousand, you know, to George Bush. So
I mean, he had this very very long career and
he designed golf courses in forty three different states of
the United States and Puerto Rico on five different continents.
He was certainly recognized. I mean, he really made golf
architecture as a profession what it was, because I mean
not that there weren't very talented maybe even you can
certainly argue that there were even better architects and McKenzie
or Donald Ross or someone, but they weren't really household names.
The name of the architect was not really well we
think of today. We always know we're playing a gross
course or a Pete Die course or whatever. But golfers
didn't think that way. Prior to Robert Tren Jones. He
was the first brand name in golf, and he was
part K. T. Barnum and part Alfred Hitchcock. I mean
was he was this really ambitious character. He was a
great He was a great pitch man. He wasn't really
a great businessman.
Speaker 4: As the book points.
Speaker 3: Out, his wife, i Owne, who he married in nineteen
thirty four. She was a five paid, five bitakap, a
graduate of Wells College, and she was smarter than Hack
and she really kind of ran the.
Speaker 4: Business operation for Jones for most of his life.
Speaker 3: And without her, you know, he probably would have failed.
But he was just very, very good at convincing people
that they should build golf courses, and he got to know.
By telling his story, you're telling the story of most
of the well to do gentlemen of.
Speaker 4: American society who got involved.
Speaker 3: In golf course development, everyone from the Laurence Rockefeller, who
was building golf courses at some of his major resorts
around the world, including Mona Kea in Hawaii, which became
one of jones Is more prominent golf courses. Jones had
correspondence with Bobby Jones and a close friendship with Gene Sarason.
He corresponded regularly with Francis who met of course, you know,
his courses, to his courses in the fifties and sixties
and seventies.
Speaker 4: You know, he's having interactions with you know, with Ben
Hogan and Palmer and Nicholas.
Speaker 3: So I really went into it thinking that there was
by telling Jones's story and using that as the skeleton
of the narrative that you could really tell so many
different story is about the development of American golf, and
I think that, in fact, you know, proved to be
the case.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm gonna I don't think you definitely know when
you're on a golf course who it was. I mean, sure,
there's a couple of names, but you know, like when
you talk about baseball or basketball, there's a couple of names,
you know, but then there's everybody else, right, you know,
you don't know when you're on a Robin Nelson course
or a Brad Brewer course, and why would you Right,
it's never the first, But when they're famous courses in
resorts you're going to, it's like they market that absolutely.
Speaker 4: And that started with Robert Trent Jones. You don't the
brand name of.
Speaker 3: The architect nearly meant virtually nothing in the marketing of
the golf course, the promotion of the golf course to
the public until Jones, until Jones after World War Two,
and then it becomes you know, he sort of sets
the standard that made it possible.
Speaker 4: I mean, now, when we think about.
Speaker 3: The great designers who were really really popular, I mean
you're thinking about Nicholas and Bozzio and Tom Doak and
cor and Crenshaw and gil Hans. None of those guys
honestly could have had the careers they've had if not
for Robert.
Speaker 4: Try Jones, because he created the.
Speaker 3: Profession and the model by which they would be successful,
certainly financially, because he started to get major fees, you know,
up to up you know, he was the first to
get a million dollar fee for a golf course design.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And before then, I mean, even though Ross and McKenzie
were much in demand, you know, they didn't get paid
anything like Jones would get because Jones created that profession.
Speaker 5: It was fascinating to me, h and answer me if
I'm right in assuming this, But it seemed like the
depression helped get him going.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, the New Deal that Franklin Roosevelt started, you know,
besides supporting through the public money and public relief work,
I mean, people that were unemployed were put to work
building roads and go the WPA right of THEPA Works
Progress Administration.
Speaker 4: The first money that Jones really started.
Speaker 3: To make as a golf course designer was in the
state of New York, involved with WPA programs. There were
a number of WPA courses that were built around the country.
I mean Jones did a couple in New York, he
did one in Florida, he did one in Illinois.
Speaker 4: And those jobs paid. I mean, the government was behind them.
Speaker 3: Whereas the jobs, the few jobs that he had gotten
between say nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty five, you know,
they were private jobs.
Speaker 4: And you know, he was getting stiffed on most of
the most of his bills. I mean he was. If
you at the book, will show and based.
Speaker 3: On the correspondence of his business records, I mean, this
guy's living He's living almost the life of a pauper.
He's going into a coffee shop and ordering, you know,
the cheapest bowl of soup and the glass of water.
I mean, he's not making any money whatsoever. And the
wife to be I owned, Tef Davis, who was this
de wutant from New York City. You know, completely different
social classes.
Speaker 4: That Jones grew up. He was an immigrant family.
Speaker 7: He didn't even have a high school degree. The I
own's father, who was an executive at Bell Telephone in
New York City, wouldn't let his precious little princess marry this,
you know, Robert Jones until.
Speaker 3: Immigrant, Yeah, this immigrant, until he could prove he could
make some money. So the WPA really is what lifts
him into So it's a government, its state supported money
that gets him going. And then the great irony of
it is is the end of his career, after a
number of very significant bad investments, which really bankrupted Jones
in the late eighties in the early nineteen nineties, what
comes along for him and saves his ba the Robert
Trent Jones Trail, which is financed by state by a
state retirement system. So on the front end of his
career at state money and on the back end of his.
Speaker 4: Career at state money.
Speaker 3: But in between, you know, he had a roller coaster
ride through all kinds of different projects, public and private.
Speaker 5: I have a dream to go do the Robert Trent
Jones Trail. It's hard for me to convince any of
my friends to go with me coming from the West coast.
Have you played those courses? Have you played the trail?
Speaker 4: There's a few of them that I've not been on,
but we had.
Speaker 3: There's a Robert Trent Jones Society, a group of clubs
that Jones designs that have come together in the past
five or six years for the annual.
Speaker 4: Meeting and they go to different Jones courses and they
played for a few days and last week or last year,
I'm so I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: And last year the society decided to come to Alabama,
and many.
Speaker 4: Of these members of the Robert MS.
Speaker 3: Jones Society never even been in Alabama before, I don't think,
came and they played a couple of different of the
couple different facilities here in the state, and the reaction
was was really I mean, they couldn't believe what they
were seeing.
Speaker 4: Prices and everything the state of Alabama. You know, there's
a lot some of the stereotype is correct. I've lived
in the state and now for twenty six years.
Speaker 3: I grew up in Indiana, so some of the stereotypes
are correct, but many of them are not.
Speaker 4: And as you know, in terms of the natural.
Speaker 3: Beauty and the environment itself, to go from the Appalachians in.
Speaker 4: Northeast Alabama all the way down.
Speaker 3: To the Gulf Coast in the mobile area, I mean,
and in between, there's big rivers, lakes, rolling terrain, And
that's what makes the trail so interesting.
Speaker 4: It's the designs are very common. I mean, they're all
Jones style designs. But the terrain and topography.
Speaker 3: You know that because these facilities go from top to
bottom in the state. You know, the gland itself dictates
a lot about golf courses. I'm everywhere, and it certainly
does in the trail. So yeah, you need to convince
your your friends to come down here.
Speaker 5: And so if I get if I get a long
weekend and we get a chance to play three or
four of the courses there, which ones would you recommend?
Because I'm taking.
Speaker 4: Notes, Well I'm biased. You know.
Speaker 3: I live in Auburn and nearby our sister city is
Opalaika and the Grand National Facility.
Speaker 4: Almost all of the facilities are fifty four holes. There's
to eighteen hole courses and then a short course and
the short courses are.
Speaker 3: I mean a short course at Grand National is the
hardest park of the course you'll ever want to play. Really, Oh,
I mean the holes are you know, everything from you know,
from one fifty to two fifty in distance and.
Speaker 4: It's all around this lake and the carries and bunk.
I mean, it's it's a really really difficult short course.
But I would start, I would come to Auburn. I
mean it's we're only an hour and fifteen minutes from.
Speaker 8: Atlanta, so you can Atlanta Airport so you can find Atlanta,
get over here to Auburn real easily, and then grafts
drive over a fifty minute drive from Auburn over to Montgomery.
Speaker 4: Just north of Montgomery is a little.
Speaker 3: Town called Prattville, And Prattville has a fifty four whole
facility that's.
Speaker 4: Called and it's.
Speaker 3: Called the Capital, and it's kind of the home base
of the trail since the retirement systems of Alabama, and
is located in Montgomery. So I would do that if
you only had two or three days. But if you
were talking to people from Montgomery, they would say for
you to come to Montgomery because there's two trail facilities
right there. There's ross Bridge that has hosted a Senior Open,
a senior event for many years, and then there's Oxmore
Valley as well, and then Birmingham itself has Birmingham had
some has some great golf. Birmingham country Club is Donald
Ross Courses. Of course, there's the Nicholas Course that as
hosted a PGA.
Speaker 4: So Alabama's got a lot of great golf.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, we get to play pretty much year round, except
for you, except for maybe a few weeks in the
middle middle of winter when it gets a little too
cold or we get a dusting of snow.
Speaker 5: But what about spring, summer, fall, which would be the
best time to come fall?
Speaker 3: I have question fall, and then you can also benefit
from SEC football.
Speaker 4: You can. We'll get you to a.
Speaker 3: You know, an Auburn football game or an Alabama game,
and you'll see what SEC.
Speaker 4: Football is all about.
Speaker 3: I went to Wio Date for graduate school, so I know,
you know, I know what Big ten football is, and
I know it's it's very popular, and you know it's
got a lot of fanatics. But SEC football is such pageantry.
I don't think there's anything compared to it. So if
you came down in the fall, sometime in October and
we could get you at a night game, say LSU
at Auburn. You'd have a And we did that when
the Roberts and Jones society people came, and I can
tell you, to a man, these gentlemen or I mean,
they talked as much about going to that football game
as they did playing the golf courses.
Speaker 5: Awesome. I'm gonna I'm gonna get in touch with you
before we come down and you're coming with us.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, you know that would be great.
Speaker 5: That would be so much fun. So I'm I'm curious,
did you in writing this book and choosing him, did
you like him more before you started writing the book
or after you started writing the book.
Speaker 3: That's a really good and tough question for me to answer,
because I think anyone who reads it will know that
I've given a kind of a warts and all profile
of mister Jones.
Speaker 5: Huh.
Speaker 4: He's not a perfect person. Who is? But he is?
Speaker 5: But he would tell you he is.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I got the sense his ego is enormous.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, And I've.
Speaker 5: Met I met Junior, and his ego has filled the room. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, I think maybe even more so than the data
in that case, But no, I honestly like I like
Jones a lot. I mean, when you you know, I
lived the life of Jones. When I write the book,
you know, that's just kind of what the biographer has
to do. You lived the life of the person. And
there are times when you regret decisions.
Speaker 4: That he made or did not make.
Speaker 3: And I could go through you know, some of them
are mistakes that he made in terms of business investments,
you know, some were mistakes, and the ones that bothered
me the most were things that had to do with
you know, with personal issues. I mean early on, for example,
his career got started because he became an associate of
a Canadian architect by the name of Stanley Thompson, very prominent,
probably the most prominent Canadian architect and one of the
great architects really ever in the world. And Jones as
a young man, because he didn't have any credentials, the
clubs that were interested and maybe using Jones wanted to
have Someboddy with experience looking over Jones's shoulder at least,
and so Jones went into a partnership with Stanley Thompson,
you know, as.
Speaker 4: Soon as he went into business in nineteen.
Speaker 3: Thirty and Thompson really treated it with treated him like
a son and treated and gave him a lot of business.
And then there came a time after Jones, you know,
was getting these jobs through the New Deal money and
all of that, when Thompson wanted Jones's help, wanted him
to come down to South America to help him do
some work down there. And it seems like Jones kind
of committed to doing that, and then he didn't do it,
and he kind of, you know, when he needed Thompson,
he used him, and then when he didn't need him,
he kind.
Speaker 4: Of ignored him, you know.
Speaker 3: And so there were certain things that happened, you know,
in that way as a biographer, you know, living the
life of the person that you're studying, where you say,
why are you doing that? You know, I didn't go
ahead and do that. You had promised Stanley you were
going to Brazil and now your opping out on it.
You know, So you do do things like that. But
in the end, I mean, I certainly admire what he did,
and I you know, have greater appreciations or what it
takes to design and build golf courses. I learned a
lot about the processes of that and do I like
him anymore or less. I think I probably have to
say I value him more because I have a greater
deeper understanding of the man and and what motivated him.
Speaker 4: And you know, I certainly.
Speaker 3: I can tell you one thing may seem a little
a little strange, But I played the Cornell course that
he designed, if I played by myself one evening when I.
Speaker 4: Was doing archival research, and I sneaked out.
Speaker 3: And I think I was the only one in the
course that was kind of raining, and I kind of
pretended I was playing the.
Speaker 4: Golf with with Robert Trent Jones.
Speaker 3: It was his golf course, and you know, I was
kind of just in my mind imagining what kind of
conversation I would have, what he would tell me about
this hole or that bunker.
Speaker 4: And so you do sort of develop kind of this.
Speaker 3: Personal relationship with the person you're studying, because you just know,
you know, there's not much about them that you don't know.
And through my oral interviews, I you know, had long
interviews with both of his sons and with other people
that worked for him, and with had all those love letters,
and I had on along interviews with the man who
was his personal physician for many years, so you just
really get.
Speaker 4: To know the person.
Speaker 3: And I'd have a hard time in writing a biography
of somebody that I just detested. I mean, like, I
couldn't imagine imagine writing Adolf Hitler's biography. There have been
a bunch of them, so they don't we don't need
one of those. But I don't think I could write
one of someone that I just I just had totally
you know, despise. And that's certainly not the case with
mister Jones. I find him, you know, very endearing. I
just I regret some of the foibles in his personality
and some of the choices that he made. But if
someone did my biography, they they find even more to
complain about.
Speaker 5: The prolific and very successful biographer, Doris Kruns Goodwin is
said that she feels like she has to go to
bed and wake up with this person. You you like,
you said, you just live your life with this Harrison.
And so there are presidents you know that we're herd topic.
There are presidents that she just doesn't want to go
near because she just doesn't think she could go to
bed with them every night.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you do, and they keep you up you know,
they keep you from going to bed too.
Speaker 4: I mean, my my the working habits.
Speaker 3: You know, I've become very obsessive in when I'm writing
a book and my family. I mean, I'm I can't
my family just so, I'm almost impossible because everything I'm
talking about, I'm just constantly thinking about the character that
I'm writing about, and I want to share and you know,
what I'm learning, and and they, you know, and unfortunately
a family's been very supportive, but you know, at times.
Speaker 4: I'm sure they just get Dad.
Speaker 3: You've got to you know, You're you're going on too long.
Let's move on to another topic.
Speaker 4: Leads.
Speaker 5: Enough about him, what about me? No, he you mentioned
he didn't have credentials before he started working with Stanley Thompson.
I mean, he really wasn't very well educated, if at all.
He didn't go to college. He didn't have it. He
was able to convince Cornell to yeah, to start a
program to teach him how to do this. I mean,
he really was focused on wanting to be a golf course.
Speaker 3: Architect, absolutely, And it wasn't that they convinced him to
start a program. It was basically that just they would
give him special admission status to take just those courses
that he thought he might need, you know, some agronomy,
some landscape architecture, some business courses, some public speaking was
a course he thought he needed to take.
Speaker 4: So he took two years of courses.
Speaker 3: And the way that it worked out, because remember, here's
a guy that doesn't have a high school degree. How
does he get into an ivy league school like Cornell?
Speaker 4: And the way it happened, and this is what golf
can do for people.
Speaker 3: Jones had as a young man in his early twenties,
got a position up at Soda Spay on Lake, Ontario,
a little golf course there. And one of the members
at so To Spey was a man named James Bashford
who was the owner of a vinegar factory, and he
was kind of a wealthy man, and he had been
a Cornell graduate. Well, it just so happens that, you know, Jones,
as the club pro and manager of this course at
Soda Spay gets he befriends mister Bashford, tells mister Bashford
about his interests, and mister Bashford, you know, being a
wealthy and influential person and a Cornell grad, said well,
let's see what I can do for you. So he
takes Jones down to Ithaca in his limsine and has
an appointment made with the Dean of Agriculture. And it's
really through Bashford's intercession that Jones is permitted to do this.
Jones learns from that, I mean, maybe he knew it
even before, but throughout his air Jones cultivates friendships with
powerful people, I mean the state in the state of
New York. When he's working on these w these PWWPA projects.
Speaker 4: He needs to have James Evans, and he needs to have.
Speaker 3: Robert Moses, the central figures in the New York State
Park System. He needs to have them on his side
to give him these jobs. So he very consciously goes
about cultivating friendships with powerful people. It's going to be
I mean, all through his career. You can just make
a long, long list of the important people that Jones
cultivates friendships with, because it all started with James Bashford
taking this young guy down to Cornell and getting him
into some courses that he would never have gotten in
on his own.
Speaker 5: Clearly, the man was opportunistic, and we've already covered the
egotistic part. What kind of family man was he what
was his family life like.
Speaker 3: It was kind of an absentee landlord. He was gone,
I mean by that. The boys were born in nineteen
thirty nine, Robert and Jones Junior in thirty nine, and
Rhys Jones in forty one, and Jones's career really picks up,
you know, in the post World War Two period, and
by the early fifties when the boys are just turning
into their.
Speaker 4: Teens, he's he's everywhere.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's designing twenty different courses a year in
different parts of the country, and then you know, before
long he's off into the Caribbean and then points beyond.
So he's not home very much, honestly, and the task
of raising the boys really fell to his wife.
Speaker 4: I own and Jones. When he was home, you know, he.
Speaker 3: Would be Golf was always kind of part of it.
You know, he would take the boys to the driving
range in the evening where if they were having a
family vacation, it would really be down to a work side.
Speaker 4: If he was working on a course at Myrtle.
Speaker 3: Beach or you know, down in Florida, the family would
jump in the car with him, but he would still
be basically working. So you know, and not a father
that was you know, really hands on very much with
his boys, and the whole issue of the few that
develops between the two sons, and it gets very very
and it still is. It's something that will never get resolved,
and the book sort of goes into the some of
the issues of how this family sort of becomes dysfunctional.
Jones not being there, not being hands on, I think
is part of is part of the explanation for that.
I don't I don't think he was a bad father.
I think he was just like a lot of fathers
maybe of that generation in particular.
Speaker 4: Who who you know, where a career.
Speaker 3: Was put first and his love of golf was put first,
and his ambitions which required all kinds of travel. The
boys just you know, they they just sort of grew up,
you know, on their own with their other but then
they went to work for their dad.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like, how did it get to the point
where they're both going, that's what I want to do dad,
you know. Yeah, that's amazing to me that if they
don't have a close relationship and he's an absentee guy,
that they still see this as glamorous enough to I
want to go do that too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is.
Speaker 3: That is a very interesting issue. I think for the
oldest son it's maybe a little bit easier to understand.
Speaker 4: He is the namesake. He's Robert tren Jones junior.
Speaker 3: He's quite a good golfer as a young as a boy,
he plays in a lot of tournament events, and plays
high school golf on a championship team, and goes to
Yale and plays on the Yale team.
Speaker 4: So he's and the two boys. In fifty four.
Speaker 3: When the openers played at Baltus Royal, Jones took the
two boys as teenagers. And one thing that Jones did,
which was unprecedented for the USGA at the time, was
he was keeping track of driving distances for the pros.
Very systematic measurements and record kept of how far the
pros were driving the ball, because Jones wanted to know
when he was remodeling a course or designing a new one,
where those fairway bunkers.
Speaker 4: Needed to be.
Speaker 3: You know, if they some of the in the old
classic courses of ross, for example, or chillinghasts, the bunkers
might have been out between two hundred and two twenty. Well,
you know, all the pros are driving over that and
so when Jones came in to redo the courses, he
had to have measurements. Well, he would take the boys
along and they would sort of chase the balls down
for him, you know, they would help he was. They
were allowed inside the ropes when ropes were first used,
I think, which was at Valdskaul, and so the boys,
you know, they got to see they were taken to
the Masters a couple of times, so they got to experience.
Speaker 4: Golf at a very high level.
Speaker 3: But Bobby wasn't, you know, oldest wasn't planning to be
a golf architect. He went to law school at Stanford,
and you know his version is that he you know,
he kind of lost lost interest in and another version
might be that he funked out. But he decided at
that point that he was going to you know, that
he was going to go to work for his dad,
but not on the East coast where the Jones operation
was based, which was in Montclair, New Jersey. But he
was going to stay out in California and create a
West coast office in Palo Alto, which is what he did.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: And it didn't take long for Jones Junior to sort
of go his own way. You know, he learned it,
learned it from his dad, but he, you know, he
wanted to be out on his own. And the book
goes into some detail about the process by which Bobby,
you know, uses this West Coast office which was ostensibly
to be you know, an expansion of Robert turn Jones, Inc.
Speaker 4: The parent company, while Bob.
Speaker 3: Goes on to use that base to create his own,
you know, his own company. Reese is the more interesting question,
you know, the younger brother. Why would the younger brother,
who's having issues with the older brother, why would he
try to become a golf architect too.
Speaker 4: I mean, I have an older.
Speaker 3: Brother and the last thing I tried to do when
I grew up is, you know, I needed to do
something very different from him.
Speaker 4: And yeah, but Reese wasn't like that.
Speaker 3: In fact, Reese, honestly he he had the idea of
being a golf course architect, probably before Bobby did, and
because when he went after he graduated from Yale, he
decided to go into a landscape architecture.
Speaker 4: Program at Harvard, which which he did, and.
Speaker 3: So he was intending even I saw his letter when
he was applying for college, and he was talking to
golf course architect and following his father's footsteps even then.
So Reese kind of just has decided to do this
even before Bob. But Bob, you know, because things didn't
work out with the law, Bob decides, well, and he's
got the name after all, I mean, he's got he's
right there with Robert Trent Jones, so he decides that
that's the best career for him as well.
Speaker 5: Are there three distinct different styles between the Joneses on
their on their design work.
Speaker 4: Well, that's really a great question. I think that you know,
I've played all a.
Speaker 3: Number of all three, and there's certainly some things in
common between the father and the two sons, but there
are also some clear distinctions, and there's some clear distinctions
between Reese.
Speaker 4: And and and Bobby.
Speaker 3: I think Bobby, you know, is is you know, probably
he's he's less into doing the championship courses, although he
did in Chambers Bay, out.
Speaker 4: In Jugit Sound, Washington.
Speaker 3: You know, it's going to host the Open in a
couple of years, and so it's not that he's uninterested
in championship designs. But Reese, you know, kind of took
on the mantle of his father of the Open Doctor
and has been used by the u U, s g
A and the p g A, you know a number
of times to to redo championship courses. One thing that's
really interesting about Reese's courses, the redesigns that he does
of his dad's, is that, uh, he changes his dad's
courses in some pretty significant ways.
Speaker 4: And when the father was still living.
Speaker 3: There's some correspondence, for example, about Congressional that that mister
Jones had redesigned back in the sixties, and then Reese
comes in and does a couple you know, major remodelings
at Congressional in the eighties and nineties that when mister
Jones is still living, he's writing letters to to Reee
kind of complaining about what Reese is doing to his courses.
And so there is you know, Bobby suspects, I don't
really take it quite this far, but you know, Bobby
suspects that Reese was sort of consciously or unconsciously undoing
some of his dad's designs.
Speaker 4: You know that he was.
Speaker 3: He was he wanted them different, he wanted them to change,
he wanted them to be distinctive of his own style.
And and I think there is there is some truth
truth to that. So yeah, you can tell the differences
between between the three, but there are also some some
similarities as well, because they all kind of learned.
Speaker 4: I mean, the boy learned a.
Speaker 3: Lot about courses are not just from their dad, but
from the super from the men who were in charge
of building Jones's golf courses, a man by Bill by
the name of John Schmeiser and Bill Baldwin. And since
the boys didn't want to listen to the dad that much,
that wasn't especially true. In the case of Reese, the
father put his construction form in charge of basically showing
recent body how how you build golf courses, and so
they learn, you know, the logistics and the nuts and
bolts of golf course construction really from the same same people,
and that that meant a lot of carryover.
Speaker 5: So then what happened between the two brothers.
Speaker 4: Well, it goes it goes back to their boyhood. I
I you know, I don't.
Speaker 3: I would have to be a professional psychologist really to
explain what it is. I think Bobby as a young
as a boy and going into his teenage years, I
think Bobby just became Bobby, and you know, Bobby had,
has a strong ego, has strong ambitions of his own,
and he's not the kind of you know, he would
be a hard you know, he would be a hard
older brother to have. And I think it was hard
for Reese from the beginning because Bobby wasn't a protecting,
you know, supportive, you know, he was just a difficult
older brother to have in a lot of ways. And
it just got worse and worse once they started, you know,
once they were in business with their dad, the differences
they had, the differences of opinion that they had over
how the parent companies.
Speaker 4: Should be should be handled, and then when they both.
Speaker 3: Separated, they there were really hard feelings about how those
separations took place. I mean, Reese was very upset with
the way Bobby. He feels Bobby had taken advantage of
his dad when he went out on his own.
Speaker 4: And then it just continues.
Speaker 3: I mean that they've suit each other a number of times,
and they don't really have anything to do with one
another at all. And that made my book very challenging,
you know, because here I am in the middle of
the two of them trying to write an objective, you know,
third party account of their father's life, and I can't
really tell that story without telling the story of the
whole family.
Speaker 4: And somehow I've got.
Speaker 3: To walk the tightrope between you know, two very talented
and experienced men in their field. But somehow I have
to be able to work with both of them and
get them to both help me understand what their father's
life was about.
Speaker 4: And understand what's going on in the family. So it was.
Speaker 3: It was by far the most difficult book, you know,
I've ever I've ever written. And there are people that
know a bit about the Jones stories, either because they're
golf writers or a fellow golf architects, who have sort
of said to me in private, they just never thought a.
Speaker 4: Book like this could ever get done.
Speaker 3: That you know, there had been earlier attempts and the
problems dealing with Bobby and Reese on a project like this,
or you know, some people felt were just insurmountable, and somehow,
some way I was able to do it. I you know,
I have to. I could write a book about writing
the book.
Speaker 4: Honestly, Wow, the stories that.
Speaker 3: I could tell, maybe someday I'll I'll.
Speaker 5: That's why you're here, my friend. I want the stories.
Speaker 4: Well, there are some real, real stories.
Speaker 5: And do you write as you're doing your research, or
do you combine, do all your due diligence and gather
all the information, throw it down and start writing at
that point.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's kind of a combination of the two.
Speaker 3: Certainly, when you're writing, you know, it's the fighting process
shows you where you have gaps in the story that
you need to fill in, So you know, I often
have to pause, you know, and reconsider and go back
and find more documents, or call you know, somebody up
that's call one of the brothers up, or call you.
Speaker 4: A key figure that I.
Speaker 3: That was important to the book is a man named
Roger Rulwich, who was who worked for mister Jones from
nineteen sixty one into the mid nineties when he was
let go, and so he worked as Jones's chief junior
designer for thirty years, and of course worked with the
brothers closely for a long time and is a friend
of Reese's, not so much a friend of Bobby's. So
there would be times when you know, a question about
a golf course came up, and I would get on
the phone and call Roger up in Massachusetts and ask
him if he could answer this or that. So it's
kind of an ongoing thing. You start with a base
of research, and you know, I spent three summers in
Cornell going through what really as a massive collection. I mean,
it's equivalent to like if you had three hundred file
cabinet drawers stuffed full of stuff.
Speaker 4: That's it's essentially what I had to look.
Speaker 3: Through and not and beyond that, you know, since it's
we're talking about an architect you know, they have these
cardboard tubes.
Speaker 4: You know, that are six feet long that are that
are full of drawings, you know, rolled up.
Speaker 3: Sketches and blueprints and so forth, of all the different courses.
Speaker 4: Now I didn't use that kind of I didn't use those.
Speaker 3: Architectural drawings nearly as much as I use the regular documents.
But from time to time I would have a question
about a course design and how it might have changed,
and I would have to, you know, go back into
the architectural drawings as well.
Speaker 4: So it's just a you know, it took.
Speaker 3: It took those three summers, and even then, you know,
I can't say that I looked at everything. You sort
of have to sample, you know, the files, and sometimes
you see a file, and it's and its title is
something you don't think is really going to help you much, and.
Speaker 4: So you might skip that one.
Speaker 3: But you know, I suppose out if you say, here's
one hundred percent of the Jones material, I suppose I
looked at eighty percent of it, you know, and hopefully
the twenty percent that.
Speaker 4: I didn't look at, you know, either.
Speaker 3: Somebody else can make use of it someday or it
really wasn't you know that bible to me telling the story.
It's a five hundred page book anyway, so you know,
more research would have just resulted in more pages.
Speaker 5: So from the time you decided to write the book
until you handed the final draft of the publisher, how
long a period was that, I.
Speaker 4: Would say just less than two years, and.
Speaker 5: Your full time job in the interim.
Speaker 3: Well, fortunately I had just come out of a six
year term as the director of the Honors College at Auburn,
and thanks to that administrative service, I had earned a
year of paid leave. Wow, and so the university haging
and so I made Without that, I couldn't the book
wouldn't have been done yet. So I had a year
and and you know, and I work. When I start
to write, you know, it's it can be. You know,
I don't necessarily get up too early, but I had
lots of nights that were till three and four in
the morning. And as Doris Currins Goodwin said, you you know,
you go to bed and sometimes even dream. You know,
there are things in your dreams that are related to
what you're doing. Your mind is just so full of
the facts and questions. You know that you're just constantly
it's constantly agitating.
Speaker 4: In your mind one way or the other.
Speaker 3: And it's an interesting it's a very interesting process to
go through.
Speaker 4: But it's also it's somewhat tortuous, you know, it really is.
Speaker 3: You know, it's a difficult I give I gave up
golf through most of that.
Speaker 4: I didn't know.
Speaker 5: That's you know, I was thinking, I'm listening do you
explain this and saying you had a year off? How
diligent were you? How many days you just want to
go I'm just going to forget it. I'm just going
to go play golf today.
Speaker 4: There weren't many days like that. Oh my god, you're
the well.
Speaker 3: No, I think manic maybe either, you know, I kept
looking down the road. I kept saying when this book's done,
I should be have I should be having a lot
of opportunities, you know, hopefully getting invitations to go play
some of these golf courses that I'm writing about. And
and so I'm hoping, and I think it's it's starting
to happen. I'm already getting some invitations from some of
the Jones clubs to.
Speaker 4: Come and talk about the book.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and I'm more than willing to come. So
if you haven't contacted me yet, please do so, because
I'd love to. I haven't played Hazel Team, I haven't
played Bell Reeve. You know, There's just so many Jones
courses that I haven't played. And and I you know,
so I'm going to try to make up for some
of those golf rounds I didn't get to play.
Speaker 5: As prolific as he was. And as we established how
full of himself he may have been, are there courses
that he takes credit for that he shouldn't.
Speaker 3: Well, his sons would say courses that they designed rather
than him.
Speaker 5: Is it the other way around? It's like the sounds
these are ours?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, there's there's there's a little bit of both.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was very at the end of the book,
there's an appendix where I list all the golf courses
that Joan Design designed or remodeled, and the trying to
define which ones to use is really is really challenging.
And what I ended up using as a criterion for
that appendix was, was the course done under contract to
Robert Trent Jones Inc. You know, that's the main company,
that's the New Jersey based company. And if it was
done by Robert Trent Jones, Inc. You know, then I
think it deserves to be on the list. And Roger rule,
which you agreed with me, that that was the only
sensible way to do it. Of course, doing it that
way it means that a course, say like Eugene Country
Club or the renovation was done there, or a number of.
Speaker 4: Courses that Bobby was involved with.
Speaker 3: You know, Bobby would have done most of most of
the work, but it was done under contractor Robert Trent Jones, Inc.
So my position is, well, they both can.
Speaker 4: Count them, you know if they want.
Speaker 3: If you're counting courses, you know, if you want to
do something like that, then if it's under contract to
the main company, you know, in most of those cases, Jones,
mister Jones would have done something. I mean, he would
have visited the property, produced them sketches that he would
have given the Bobby. If we're talking about, you know,
the West Coast courses or courses in Japan that they
did together, he would have had some input, but he
wouldn't have He might have only visited the property once
or twice, and Bobby might have been there thirty times.
And so there are a number of courses that are
credited to mister Jones that really are done by either
his one of his two sons, or by Roger Rulitz,
or by Cavil Robinson, who headed up Jones's European operation.
But I don't really I mean, I don't begrudge him
those really at all. And I think maybe the most
interesting crediting issue that comes up is relates to Augusta
National Agusta. In the late forties, Bobby Jones brought Trent
in to do some significant remodeling of some of the
holes at Augusta Number sixteen, as.
Speaker 4: We know it, one of the great par threas in
the world, was a very.
Speaker 3: Different hole before Trent Jones came in and redid it.
It was just a little The tea was right behind
the fifteenth green. There was a little creek. It wasn't
a lake. There was just a little creek, and the
green was on the would have been left of wards.
It is now over that creek. It was a bad hole.
Trent and the membership and the people who had been
playing the masters thought that sixteen was a week sister.
And Jones comes in and redesigns that hole completely.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's his hole.
Speaker 3: He redesigns the eighteenth green in the mounding around it,
he redesigns the thirteenth green. He's the one that creates
the tee on eleven. He changes eleven from a really
a dog leg right three hundred and fifty yard hole
with a green where that lake that you know.
Speaker 4: Isn't isn't there to know.
Speaker 3: He finds a tee area back to the left, turns
it into a longer four hundred yard part four that
really kind of turns to the left and has that
and the green gets extended around this lake. And what's
interesting about this is Augusta National doesn't want to it
never has credited Trenton Jones for the work because they
don't want to take any attention away from McKenzie or
Bobby Jones, Clifford Roberts, longtime director of the of the Club,
President of the Club and director of the Masters Tournament,
you know, never wanted to give Trent that credit. But
you know, I've got documents that are letters. I mean,
I have letters from Bobby Jones to Trent Jones, which
is all about this remodeling work that Trent was involved
with in the late forties early fifties. So to me,
that was more interesting than maybe courses that he shouldn't
get the credit for. Here's maybe the most famous course
in the world except for the old course at Saint Andrews,
and he deserves some credit that Augusta.
Speaker 4: Never gives him.
Speaker 3: And so I mean, I'll be kind of interested to
see what the reaction is from Augusta, uh to what
I write about this in the book. But it's I
have undeniable documentation from in the hand of Bobby Jones himself.
Speaker 5: Wow, did he have a course that was his show piece?
They're his favorite that he would like to you know
that he would say to people, this is mine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he had an answer to that every time they
asked him, and the answer was the next one is
gonna be the next one.
Speaker 5: Well, yeah, it's like when someone's to me, it's like,
what is the hardest shot in golf? The next one, the.
Speaker 4: Next, the next one. Oh.
Speaker 3: He definitely had some favorites, but he you know, he
always had that one line or you know, when to
come back when anybody really asked him. But I think
Spyglass with a course that he was very very proud
of out on the Monterey Peninsula. I think he was
very proud of the Dunes Club down of Myrtle Beach.
I mean Myrtle Beach wasn't Myrtle Beach until I mean
there was I think there was one course at Myrtle
Beach when Jones designed the Dunes Club in the in
the late forties. And how many courses are there Myrtle
Beach now, I mean over well over one hundred, I think,
so Jones is and so that's one of these designs
that is well, very well known. I think he's proud
of hazel Teine, even though it had a lot of
controversy when seventy Open was played there and Dave Hill
you know, said call it a Kyle pastor and said
he would drive around into you know, drive a tractor
under the course if he if he won the tournament
and and so. But I think Jones had they made
some changes, and he had strong feelings about Hazelteen, Bell
Reeve and Saint Louis. I think he was proud of
that one courses. I think of all of courses, maybe
the course that's rated highest.
Speaker 4: If there was a recent.
Speaker 3: Poll that the golf architects were raiding golf courses around
the world, and I took a real close look at that,
and the very top rated golf course by Jones.
Speaker 4: Was Valderama in Spain.
Speaker 3: Jones that was where the Ryder Cup was played in
ninety seven. And before he did Valderama, in the same property,
he did a course called Soda Grande and it was
the first course where American turf grass was introduced into
Southern Europe.
Speaker 4: And so it's a very significant course historically.
Speaker 3: And so Soda Gronde Valdorama, or certainly two of his
better known It's Mona Kea in Hawaii. I think that's
another one early on in the Hawaii the popularity of
Hawaii as a tourist destination. That was part of a
Lawrence Rockefeller resort development. I think those are all really
in the you know, in the ballpark of his of
his favorites.
Speaker 5: Excellent. Wow, what an amazing story.
Speaker 3: Yeah it is, and uh it's you know, it's going
to be challenging for me as I go around the
country giving talks and try and keep it to twenty
minutes if I can, Uh, you know, well, how to
focus it because it is really an epic It's an
epic American story, you know.
Speaker 4: That's why I hope.
Speaker 3: People will give it, will read it that are not
maybe not even huge fans of golf or golf architecture,
because it's a it's an incredible story of an immigrant
coming to America with big dreams, big ideas, and and
and doing different things and finding ways to achieve his goals,
but at a price, always at a price.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and big is an understatement.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah it is.
Speaker 5: Well the name again, the name of the book is
a difficult part. Robert Trent Jones, Sr. And the Making
of Modern Golf by James R. Hands, also the author
of First Man, The Life of Neil Armstrong. What boy,
what a dichotomy of going you have to write on
that one. That's amazing. Jim, thank you so much for
your time, and for the explanation and for your work here.
This is spectacular. And I hope that I get together
with you in Alabama and play some golf.
Speaker 4: You call me anytime.
Speaker 5: Fred Well, thank you so much. Jim, thanks a lot,
you
Speaker 4: Bet, thank you very much,