Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius: Some Reflections on This TV Docudrama

BOBBY JONES

I’ve never really been ‘into’ the game of golf, although I played it off and on for 40 years---from the late 1950s to the late 1990s.  I played it mostly in our garden on a little home-made course. Occasionally I watched it on TV for a few minutes, perhaps 2 or 3 holes at the most since TV first came into my home in 1951. ¹ Last night, after a busy day helping my wife take care of George, our one year old grandchild, I watched Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius. ² My wife had gone to bed early and I watched the whole movie, something I rarely do after midnight when TV has the function of inducing low alpha waves in my brain after a busy day in largely intellectual pursuits. These waves are commonly associated with relaxed meditative states and they help me go to sleep.-Ron Price with thanks to ¹ About.Golf.com In 1953 the first nationally televised golf tournament took place just outside Chicago. It was televised by ABC. But get this - the owner of the club paid ABC to televise the tournament; and ² ONE TV, 12:05-2:30 a.m., 11 July 2011.

I knew nothing of Bobby Jones

until last night. Intense passion,

perfectionist tendencies and his

fierce temper got me hooked on

the narrative with its ethical----

force-majeure . ¹ He was a name,

a big golf-name back in the ‘20s,

the jazz-age before my folks met

& when the community I’ve been

associated with for some 60 years

was becoming a national entity….. ²

Why, Bobby, you played in my home

town of Hamilton in 1919 when my

Mother was only 15!  I wonder if she

ever heard of you back then—one of

the five giants of the 1920s American sports

scene, along with baseball's Babe Ruth , and

boxing 's Jack Dempsey , football 's Red Grange ,

and tennis player Bill Tilden .You died the year

I moved to Australia ³ & I never even heard of

you until last night.  I wish you well, Bobby, in

that place, that undiscovered country as the Bard,

Shakespeare, calls the afterlife—if it indeed exists.

¹ Force majeure is French for "superior force"

² Loni Bramson-Lerche, “Some Aspects of the Development of the Baha’i Administrative Order in America: 1922-1936,” Studies in Babi & Baha’i History, Vol. 1 , Editor, Moojan Momen, Kalimat Press, Los Angeles, 1982, p.255

³ 1971

Ron Price

11 July 2011

Best golfer ever and my favorite.  Any man that can say to hi wife, how about if I go win all 4 majors this year and then I can retire to our life.  And then DOES IT, is the best in my book.  And they by no means were cake walk wins.

as a side note I play the Bobby Jones hybrids 21* and 19*  anybody else?  great hybrids in my opinion. very iron like ball flight.

I could watch that movie at least once a year for the rest of my life. I had always appreciated Jones, but that movie gave a lot more insight. I also enjoy watching the occasional clip that Bobby Jones made after he retired from competitive golf, often with poplular film stars of the day. He also has some of the best dry wit quotes about golf and life in general. Being from the south, I also enjoy his drawl which is often imitated but never reproduced. I have lived in the south all my life and I can't even do it.