Bobby Jones vs. Old Man Par
Bobby Jones, circa 1917.
Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. (Bobby Jones) met with disappointment early in his golf career. As a youngster and his early adulthood great golf accomplishments were expected of Bobby Jones. However, it took him seven years before he won a major championship. Jones was frustrated.
Bobby’s success in major tournaments started when he developed a philosophy for how to play golf. He learned to play against the golf course, to make it his main competition and not the other golfers he was competing against. Bobby Jones knew that his greatest competitor was Old Man Par.
Success followed with his new attitude of competing against Old Man Par. Overall he won thirteen major championships and he won all four of the major championships of golf in 1930. His 1930 major championship wins included the United States Open, The Open Championship (British Open), The United States Amateur, and the British Amateur. This achievement is called the Grand Slam of Golf.
After his Grand Slam year of 1930 Bobby Jones retired from competitive golf when he was only twenty-eight-years-old. Jones then helped to design and found the Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia and he co-founded of the Masters Tournament.
The following Old Man Par quotes were collected from the book, Down The Fairway by Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. by my late father, Richard F. Allen. This website is named OldManParGolf.com because it is a good way to play the game of golf, compete against Old Man Par. It’s how my dad played golf and it’s how I play too. Read what Bobby Jones says about Old Man Par and see if his idea of how to play golf won’t help you.
“No man will ever have golf under his thumb. No round will ever be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps that is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you are playing a game. You are playing Old Man Par.
“Old Man Par, the imperturbable economist! Make a friend and constant foe of him, and the other boys won’t be so rough on you.
“Old Man Par is a patient soul, who never shoots a birdie and never incurs a buzzard. And if you would travel the long route with him, you must be patient too.”
– Robert Tyre Jones, Jr.
Note: A “buzzard” is an old term for what we now call a double bogey.
Note: The modern day Grand Slam of Golf would be winning all four of the major tournaments (the Masters, the United States Open, the Open Championship (British Open), and the Professional Golfer’s Championship.) in the same year.