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 1About.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 2ONE 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 Australia3 & 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.
1Force majeure is French for "superior force"
2Loni 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
31971
Ron Price
11 July 2011
