The Grand Slam: Two Fondly Remember Seeing Jones Play


September 27, 2005

Editor's note: More than 75 years ago Bob Jones "stormed the impregnable quadrilateral of golf," as the New York Sun's George Trevor put it. In other words, he won golf's Grand Slam, the term attributed to the Atlanta Journal's O.B. Keeler. The USGA recognizes the monumental feat by reprinting a story that ran Aug. 21 prior to the U.S. Amateur at Merion Golf Club.

By Ken Klavon , USGA

Ardmore , Pa. - With all due apologies, Walter Barrows and Skee Riegel are about as rare as a two-dollar bill.

That's not an attempt to sound trite or impolite toward two old-timers of golf. But these days it's not often that someone can state he saw or even played with Bob Jones . Barrows, 86, can confidently say he saw him play. The 90-year-old Riegel, who won the 1947 U.S. Amateur, sort of saw him compete and guesses he's one of the last two people to play a full round with the legend.

On Sept. 27, 1930, Bob Jones completed the Grand Slam at the Merion Cricket Club, which is now Merion Golf Club. (USGA Photo Archives)

Let's begin with Barrows, a Merion Golf Club member since 1946. With an infectious smile and limber gait, he defies his age. At first glance there's no way anyone would believe that he, as an 11-year-old adolescent, could possibly be on the same Merion Cricket Club East Course 75 years ago when Jones astonished the sports world by winning what sportswriter O.B. Keeler coined the "Grand Slam." Jones won the U.S. and British Opens, and U.S. and British Amateurs to complete the feat, something no golfer has accomplished.

However, listening to Barrows, his words paint a vivid picture that placed him among the throngs of people watching Jones dust Eugene Homans , 8 and 7, in the 36-hole U.S. Amateur final. But before we indulge Barrows' story, the scene must be established.

Entering the final match, the feeling among the majority was that Jones' impending victory was academic. After all, Jones parlayed the Walker Cup trip earlier that year - with the USGA paying all team player expenses - into British Amateur and British Open victories. He then won the U.S. Open at Interlachen Country Club in July. It set the stage for the 34^th U.S. Amateur, contested among 168 players from Sept. 22-27. No one got close to beating Jones that week; none of his matches went beyond the 14th hole.

"To win match play events, that's not easy to do," said Tiger Woods, a three-time Amateur champion. "It just takes one day that you're not quite there and some guy is sharp and you're gone."

Homans, meanwhile, eliminated Charlie Seaver , father of baseball Hall of Famer Tom Seaver, in the semifinals. But the consensus was that Homans would be Jones' sacrificial lamb.

"Poor Homans. He knows he's going to go down in history as the man who Bobby Jones beat to win the Grand Slam," said Merion historian John Capers.

That's how Walter Barrows ' father, Walter Barrows III , saw it too. Barrows remembered that his dad attended the match with guests. By lunch, with Jones holding a commanding 7-up lead after the morning 18, his father left and headed home. Barrows was taken by surprise when his dad asked if he wanted to go watch the end.

Gleefully accepting the white ticket that had a string looped through it, Barrows bolted for the door. He hopped on a trolley that took him near the course.

"When I got on the scene, they were playing the ninth hole," said Barrows. "There was a crowd around them, so I went to the 10th tee."

Barrows waited for the two competitors to make their way up, firmly entrenched in his spot as people jockeyed for position. He got so close that his right foot nearly touched the right tee marker.

"I was seven feet away from where he drove the ball," said Barrows. "It was the only ball I saw him hit."

Yet that swing made an impression.

"He took the club back very smoothly, with no effort. It went one way and the swing came back the same way," said Barrows. "It was like cutting butter with a heated knife."

At the time, it hadn't dawned on Barrows that he was immersed in what The Associated Press later labeled in 1950 as the greatest athletic achievement of the 20^th century. He was too busy trying to angle peeks through spectators' legs, although he disputes the notion that 18,000 people actually attended, as some accounts have indicated.

"I severely question that," said Barrows, placing the number closer to 14,000. "You couldn't get 18,000 people to attend an Eagles game in those days."

As the match wrapped up, with Homans missing a 25-foot birdie attempt on No. 11 and then conceding, Barrows said he recalled seeing "six or seven" U.S. Marines jump on the green and surround players and caddies, escorting them to the clubhouse.

Fifty-two days later, Jones, then just 28, announced his retirement from competitive golf. There was nothing left to accomplish.

Oblivious to all this was Riegel. Just 15 at the time, Riegel was at Merion that day as well, but for different reasons. Uninterested in golf, he wouldn't have recognized Jones from Charles Lindbergh . He had snuck on the course with a friend to watch the crowds, and to look for balls and snakes in streams.

"I thought guys who played golf were strange," said the mustachioed Riegel.

Seven years later Riegel took up the sport, crossing paths with Jones numerous times. The first meeting occurred in 1948, a year after winning the 1947 Amateur at Pebble Beach . Riegel was invited to play in an exhibition match with Jones, Billy Burke and Dick Garlington at Clearwater Country Club and the Duneadon Course at PGA National in Florida . Riegel had a grand time, showing up Jones and the others by carding three eagles and outscoring everyone. He admitted now that he's a little ashamed of his actions with what lie ahead.

Unbeknownst to Riegel, it had been about the time that Jones began suffering the onset of syringomyelia, the rare and degenerative disease of the central nervous system.

While playing at Duneadon, Jones asked Riegel, "Why am I hooking the ball?" Riegel, shocked that someone of Jones' stature would even ask him such a question, didn't know how to respond. He referred Jones to the star's archived footage, some of which resides in the USGA Museum today.

"He was always asking me questions and I was embarrassed," said Riegel. "But he had a marvelous sense of humor. I never saw him get mad."

Years later, after Jones' death, Riegel wondered whether he was the last person to play a round of golf with him. He was told that Tommy Barnes had hooked up with Jones during the illness. So Riegel figures he's the second-to-last person to play with Jones.

Sadly, it's not the memory of playing with Jones that grips Riegel. Rather, it's the heartrending moment in the 1950s when Merion celebrated Jones' 1930 victory by placing a plaque on a rock near the 11th tee. Jones and Riegel were both in attendance. By this time Jones had been confined to a wheelchair.

"To see Bobby sitting there in his wheelchair - he had tears in his eyes," said Riegel. "I said to myself, 'Bobby probably would give everything, his wins, to not be in that condition.' To see him in that condition was one of the saddest days of my life."

Others choose to remember Jones differently. There's little dispute that his Grand Slam victory shone the spotlight on Merion. It's the course where Jones played his first national competition as a 14-year-old at the 1916 Amateur. Club members wear the feat as a badge of honor because it represented amateur golf in its purest form.

"It doesn't bother us at all" that Merion is most identified with Jones despite the fact other great players have made their mark on the 109-year-old course, said Amateur general chairman Bill Iredale .

"That [the 1930 Amateur]," added Iredale, "created a sound foundation for amateur golf."

Ken Klavon is the USGA's Web Editor. E-mail him with questions or comments at kklavon@usga.org.