Bobby Jones in the Southern Quote

This famous southerner was born in 1902 in Atlanta, Georgia. He was a sickly child. It was five anxious years before he could eat solid food. His parents must have been surprised to see their slow-starter develop quickly into a sports prodigy! By the age of six, he was holding a sawed off one iron, mimicking the pro at the local country club, and showing traces of the sweet swing that would make him a legend.

Two years after winning his first club championship, fourteen year old Robert Tyre Jones, Jr. — A.K.A Bobby Jones— was playing in his first national championship. Six winless years later, the golf world was writing him off as a failure. They couldn’t know Bobby was about to master his stiffest competition. Once he conquered his temper and learned to play the man in his head, Bobby Jones dominated everyone else, winning thirteen majors in eight years. And he did it playing golf only three months a year; the other nine were devoted to acquiring law degrees from Georgia Tech and Harvard.

Two months after winning the Grand Slam, at the ripe old age of twenty-eight, “The Boy from Dixie” shocked ‘em again. Satisfied that he had nothing left to prove, he retired to work in his dad’s law firm.

Bobby Jones was diagnosed with a rare disease of the central nervous system at the age of forty-six. After destroying his health and confining him to a wheelchair, it took his life at sixty-nine. In today’s southern quote we hear the strength of the great golfer who was widely considered to be a great man as well. When asked about the pain and unfairness of his disease, the late Bobby Jones once said,

“Everyone has to the play the ball where it lies.” — Bobby Jones