"A Difficult Par" - Biography of Robert Trent Jones Sr and the Making of Modern Golf

0:01 These two episodes combined into one is the full unedited hour long interview with James R. Hansen on his biography called A Difficult par Robert Trent Jones, Senior and the Making of Modern Golf. It was originally published as Golf Smarter episode's number four hundred thirty six and four hundred thirty seven from May thirteenth and twentieth, twenty fourteen. Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction Never gets Old. Our interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.

0:46 Maybe the most interesting crediting issue that comes up relates to Augusta National. In the late forties, Bobby Jones brought Trend in to do some significant. Remodeling of some of the holes at Augusta Number sixteen. As we know it, one of the great par threes in the world, was a very different hole before Trent Jones came in and redid it. The tea was right behind the fifteenth green. It was a little creek. It wasn't a lake, and the green was on the left of where it is now over that creek. It was a bad hole. Trent and the membership and the people who had been playing the Masters thought that sixteen was a week sister. And Jones comes in in redesigns that hole completely. I mean it's his hole. He redesigns the eighteenth green and the mounding around it. He redesigns the thirteenth green. He's the one that creates the tea on eleven from a dog lake right three hundred and fifty yard hole with a green where that lake isn't there, turns it into a longer four hundred Part four. It really kind of turns to the left and the green gets extended around this lake. And what's interesting about this is Augusta National never has credited Trent Jones for the work because they don't want to take any attention away from McKenzie or Bobby Jones.

1:59 A difficult part our biography of Robert Trent Jones, Senior and the making of modern golf. This is Golf Smarter. Welcome to the Golf Smarter podcast. Jim, Thank you very much. Fredd. It's a pleasure to be with you on this podcast. Thank you. I got a book in the mail from your publisher with your name on it, and I love the title of it, especially when I was reading what it meant. So why don't we just start with that. The book is called A Difficult par Where did that come from? Well, literally, it comes from the basic principle that Robert. Trent Jones Senior followed in the design of his golf courses really from the very start of his career to the end.

2:39 And that was the idea that every good hole should be a. Difficult par but an easy bogey. So that was kind of the ruling architectural principle for him, and I thought not only not only was it a mainstay of his architectural strategy, but I thought the title also, in a more metaphorical way, conveyed some other aspects of his career, because he had lots of ups and downs, and it was an immigrant boy, you know, that had big ambitions, and so it's really a uniquely American dream kind of story. And so the difficult part conveys, I hope, more than just the architectural principle.

3:20 And why did you pick? I mean, I looked at the other titles that you've written, and I was kind of baffled. Tell us about the other books that you've done. Let you do the talking on that one. Yeah, Well, my career. You know, I'm an academic historian. I think history at Auburn University here in Alabama, and I specialize really in the history of science and technology, and I've written most of my books on the history of aeronautics or the history of the space program. My one previous biography was Biography of Neil Armstrong, which I guess is book I'm best known for. But I always wanted to do something.

4:01 I wanted to do at least one book on golf because I grew up playing golf from the time I was nine or ten. I worked at a golf course from that same age. All the way through college, I played college golf. You know, I've always loved the game, and I wasn't good enough. To you know, to really play in any kind. Of significant way. But I wanted to do something, you know, for a sport that I loved so much. And I got this idea to do a Jones book, probably in part because I lived in Alabama and in the early nineteen nineties, the Robert Trent Jones Trail was being built all over the state, and that, I think kind of that converged with just my overall interest in the game of golf and my interest in doing a biography. And I actually contacted mister Jones when he was still living down in South Florida.

4:54 I wrote a letter to him, and I got a. Letter back from his lawyer saying mister Jones wanted to do his own biography. That never worked. Out, and then he died in the year two thousand and By that point in time, I was on to the Neil Armstrong biography, But as soon as that was published in. Two thousand and five, I got serious again. And I had to overcome a number of challenges related to the records of mister Jones and to the two sons of mister Jones, both of whom are prominent golf course architects. But yeah, it's strange that I would go to this topic. But if you know my own biographical story and the loves of my life, which one of which is golf, you know it's something I've really wanted to do for a long time.

5:36 Are you going to do biographies on your wife and children. You can talk about doing stories on the love of your life to that. And in fact, I hope no one ever does a biography of me, and not that they would, but you know, one of the amazing things about this particular biography is that I had access. To, really carblanche, all of. Jones's papers, personal and business, even his love letters to his wife to be that he wrote in the early nineteen thirties in the midst of the depression, when he was trying to get his career started and you know, wasn't getting jobs or wasn't getting paid for the jobs that he did do. And so I had amazing access to all of his records. And you know, you don't usually when you get into somebody's archives.

6:20 Usually you know they've pulled out a bunch of stuff that they don't want you to see. In this case, there was the sons of mister Jones just let all that material go to Cornell University without any kind of without any you know, censorship or restrictions. And so when I got into that archive, which was by special permission of Rob Trin Jones Junior, initially, I mean it was really verb you know, sort of. An impact file all. I mean, the boxes were basically the filing cabinet drawords that had been mister Jones's records for seventy years. Of all the characters that have come across and walked across a green, why Robert Trent Jones. Yeah, well, there's so many great characters, yea, And I mean I understand everything was uphill battle for him, including that love affair before he got married that was a strong uphill battle, and even becoming a golf course architect. From the way you describe it, everything was an uphill battle for him.

7:28 But was he that compelling of a human being? Well, it got easier for him because by the nineteen fifties, when he was becoming known as the Open Doctor. For his renovation of championship courses, mostly from the US Opened, but then for some of the other majors known notably the PGA, it got easier for him, and he got so successful and so prolific that it became kind of challenge just to keep up with all of his projects, because he was really considered to be the world's foremost golf architect at that point. My choice of Jones was really based. On partly instinct and partly I was pretty sure I had the information about this correct. I just didn't think there was anybody in American golf, and that includes all the professionals.

8:14 I didn't think there was anyone where you could tell more about. The history of the American golf course and about American golf generally. And I find a matter of worldwide golf than Jones, because you know, here's someone that worked that worked as an architect from nineteen thirty, from the Calvin Coolidge to two thousand, you know, to George Bush. So I mean, he had this very very long career and he designed golf courses in forty three different states of the United States and Puerto Rico on five different continents. He was certainly recognized. I mean, he really made golf architecture as a profession what it was, because I mean not that there weren't very talented maybe even you can certainly argue that there were even better architects and McKenzie or Donald Ross or someone, but they weren't really household names.

9:08 The name of the architect was not really well we think of today. We always know we're playing a gross course or a Pete Die course or whatever. But golfers didn't think that way. Prior to Robert Tren Jones. He was the first brand name in golf, and he was part K. T. Barnum and part Alfred Hitchcock. I mean was he was this really ambitious character. He was a great He was a great pitch man. He wasn't really a great businessman. As the book points. Out, his wife, i Owne, who he married in nineteen thirty four. She was a five paid, five bitakap, a graduate of Wells College, and she was smarter than Hack and she really kind of ran the. Business operation for Jones for most of his life.

9:51 And without her, you know, he probably would have failed. But he was just very, very good at convincing people that they should build golf courses, and he got to know. By telling his story, you're telling the story of most of the well to do gentlemen of. American society who got involved. In golf course development, everyone from the Laurence Rockefeller, who was building golf courses at some of his major resorts around the world, including Mona Kea in Hawaii, which became one of jones Is more prominent golf courses. Jones had correspondence with Bobby Jones and a close friendship with Gene Sarason.

10:34 He corresponded regularly with Francis who met of course, you know, his courses, to his courses in the fifties and sixties and seventies. You know, he's having interactions with you know, with Ben Hogan and Palmer and Nicholas. So I really went into it thinking that there was by telling Jones's story and using that as the skeleton of the narrative that you could really tell so many different story is about the development of American golf, and I think that, in fact, you know, proved to be the case. Yeah, I'm gonna I don't think you definitely know when you're on a golf course who it was. I mean, sure, there's a couple of names, but you know, like when you talk about baseball or basketball, there's a couple of names, you know, but then there's everybody else, right, you know, you don't know when you're on a Robin Nelson course or a Brad Brewer course, and why would you Right, it's never the first, But when they're famous courses in resorts you're going to, it's like they market that absolutely.

11:36 And that started with Robert Trent Jones. You don't the brand name of. The architect nearly meant virtually nothing in the marketing of the golf course, the promotion of the golf course to the public until Jones, until Jones after World War Two, and then it becomes you know, he sort of sets the standard that made it possible. I mean, now, when we think about. The great designers who were really really popular, I mean you're thinking about Nicholas and Bozzio and Tom Doak and cor and Crenshaw and gil Hans. None of those guys honestly could have had the careers they've had if not for Robert. Try Jones, because he created the. Profession and the model by which they would be successful, certainly financially, because he started to get major fees, you know, up to up you know, he was the first to get a million dollar fee for a golf course design.

12:26 Uh. And before then, I mean, even though Ross and McKenzie were much in demand, you know, they didn't get paid anything like Jones would get because Jones created that profession. It was fascinating to me, h and answer me if I'm right in assuming this, But it seemed like the depression helped get him going. Yeah, absolutely, the New Deal that Franklin Roosevelt started, you know, besides supporting through the public money and public relief work, I mean, people that were unemployed were put to work building roads and go the WPA right of THEPA Works Progress Administration.

13:15 The first money that Jones really started. To make as a golf course designer was in the state of New York, involved with WPA programs. There were a number of WPA courses that were built around the country. I mean Jones did a couple in New York, he did one in Florida, he did one in Illinois. And those jobs paid. I mean, the government was behind them. Whereas the jobs, the few jobs that he had gotten between say nineteen thirty and nineteen thirty five, you know, they were private jobs. And you know, he was getting stiffed on most of the most of his bills. I mean he was. If you at the book, will show and based. On the correspondence of his business records, I mean, this guy's living He's living almost the life of a pauper.

13:58 He's going into a coffee shop and ordering, you know, the cheapest bowl of soup and the glass of water. I mean, he's not making any money whatsoever. And the wife to be I owned, Tef Davis, who was this de wutant from New York City. You know, completely different social classes. That Jones grew up. He was an immigrant family. He didn't even have a high school degree. The I own's father, who was an executive at Bell Telephone in New York City, wouldn't let his precious little princess marry this, you know, Robert Jones until. Immigrant, Yeah, this immigrant, until he could prove he could make some money. So the WPA really is what lifts him into So it's a government, its state supported money that gets him going. And then the great irony of it is is the end of his career, after a number of very significant bad investments, which really bankrupted Jones in the late eighties in the early nineteen nineties, what comes along for him and saves his ba the Robert Trent Jones Trail, which is financed by state by a state retirement system. So on the front end of his career at state money and on the back end of his.

15:11 Career at state money. But in between, you know, he had a roller coaster ride through all kinds of different projects, public and private. I have a dream to go do the Robert Trent Jones Trail. It's hard for me to convince any of my friends to go with me coming from the West coast. Have you played those courses? Have you played the trail? There's a few of them that I've not been on, but we had. There's a Robert Trent Jones Society, a group of clubs that Jones designs that have come together in the past five or six years for the annual. Meeting and they go to different Jones courses and they played for a few days and last week or last year, I'm so I'm sorry.

15:53 And last year the society decided to come to Alabama, and many. Of these members of the Robert MS. Jones Society never even been in Alabama before, I don't think, came and they played a couple of different of the couple different facilities here in the state, and the reaction was was really I mean, they couldn't believe what they were seeing. Prices and everything the state of Alabama. You know, there's a lot some of the stereotype is correct. I've lived in the state and now for twenty six years. I grew up in Indiana, so some of the stereotypes are correct, but many of them are not. And as you know, in terms of the natural.

16:33 Beauty and the environment itself, to go from the Appalachians in. Northeast Alabama all the way down. To the Gulf Coast in the mobile area, I mean, and in between, there's big rivers, lakes, rolling terrain, And that's what makes the trail so interesting. It's the designs are very common. I mean, they're all Jones style designs. But the terrain and topography. You know that because these facilities go from top to bottom in the state. You know, the gland itself dictates a lot about golf courses. I'm everywhere, and it certainly does in the trail. So yeah, you need to convince your your friends to come down here. And so if I get if I get a long weekend and we get a chance to play three or four of the courses there, which ones would you recommend?

17:19 Because I'm taking. Notes, Well I'm biased. You know. I live in Auburn and nearby our sister city is Opalaika and the Grand National Facility. Almost all of the facilities are fifty four holes. There's to eighteen hole courses and then a short course and the short courses are. I mean a short course at Grand National is the hardest park of the course you'll ever want to play. Really, Oh, I mean the holes are you know, everything from you know, from one fifty to two fifty in distance and. It's all around this lake and the carries and bunk. I mean, it's it's a really really difficult short course. But I would start, I would come to Auburn. I mean it's we're only an hour and fifteen minutes from.

18:00 Atlanta, so you can Atlanta Airport so you can find Atlanta, get over here to Auburn real easily, and then grafts drive over a fifty minute drive from Auburn over to Montgomery. Just north of Montgomery is a little. Town called Prattville, And Prattville has a fifty four whole facility that's. Called and it's. Called the Capital, and it's kind of the home base of the trail since the retirement systems of Alabama, and is located in Montgomery. So I would do that if you only had two or three days. But if you were talking to people from Montgomery, they would say for you to come to Montgomery because there's two trail facilities right there. There's ross Bridge that has hosted a Senior Open, a senior event for many years, and then there's Oxmore Valley as well, and then Birmingham itself has Birmingham had some has some great golf. Birmingham country Club is Donald Ross Courses. Of course, there's the Nicholas Course that as hosted a PGA.

19:02 So Alabama's got a lot of great golf. Unfortunately, we get to play pretty much year round, except for you, except for maybe a few weeks in the middle middle of winter when it gets a little too cold or we get a dusting of snow. But what about spring, summer, fall, which would be the best time to come fall? I have question fall, and then you can also benefit from SEC football. You can. We'll get you to a. You know, an Auburn football game or an Alabama game, and you'll see what SEC. Football is all about. I went to Wio Date for graduate school, so I know, you know, I know what Big ten football is, and I know it's it's very popular, and you know it's got a lot of fanatics. But SEC football is such pageantry.

19:46 I don't think there's anything compared to it. So if you came down in the fall, sometime in October and we could get you at a night game, say LSU at Auburn. You'd have a And we did that when the Roberts and Jones society people came, and I can tell you, to a man, these gentlemen or I mean, they talked as much about going to that football game as they did playing the golf courses. Awesome. I'm gonna I'm gonna get in touch with you before we come down and you're coming with us. Absolutely, you know that would be great. That would be so much fun. So I'm I'm curious, did you in writing this book and choosing him, did you like him more before you started writing the book or after you started writing the book.

20:31 That's a really good and tough question for me to answer, because I think anyone who reads it will know that I've given a kind of a warts and all profile of mister Jones. Huh. He's not a perfect person. Who is? But he is? But he would tell you he is. Yeah. I got the sense his ego is enormous. Yeah yeah, yeah, And I've. Met I met Junior, and his ego has filled the room. Yeah. Well, I think maybe even more so than the data in that case, But no, I honestly like I like Jones a lot. I mean, when you you know, I lived the life of Jones. When I write the book, you know, that's just kind of what the biographer has to do. You lived the life of the person. And there are times when you regret decisions.

21:21 That he made or did not make. And I could go through you know, some of them are mistakes that he made in terms of business investments, you know, some were mistakes, and the ones that bothered me the most were things that had to do with you know, with personal issues. I mean early on, for example, his career got started because he became an associate of a Canadian architect by the name of Stanley Thompson, very prominent, probably the most prominent Canadian architect and one of the great architects really ever in the world. And Jones as a young man, because he didn't have any credentials, the clubs that were interested and maybe using Jones wanted to have Someboddy with experience looking over Jones's shoulder at least, and so Jones went into a partnership with Stanley Thompson, you know, as.

22:09 Soon as he went into business in nineteen. Thirty and Thompson really treated it with treated him like a son and treated and gave him a lot of business. And then there came a time after Jones, you know, was getting these jobs through the New Deal money and all of that, when Thompson wanted Jones's help, wanted him to come down to South America to help him do some work down there. And it seems like Jones kind of committed to doing that, and then he didn't do it, and he kind of, you know, when he needed Thompson, he used him, and then when he didn't need him, he kind. Of ignored him, you know. And so there were certain things that happened, you know, in that way as a biographer, you know, living the life of the person that you're studying, where you say, why are you doing that? You know, I didn't go ahead and do that. You had promised Stanley you were going to Brazil and now your opping out on it.

23:00 You know, So you do do things like that. But in the end, I mean, I certainly admire what he did, and I you know, have greater appreciations or what it takes to design and build golf courses. I learned a lot about the processes of that and do I like him anymore or less. I think I probably have to say I value him more because I have a greater deeper understanding of the man and and what motivated him. And you know, I certainly. I can tell you one thing may seem a little a little strange, But I played the Cornell course that he designed, if I played by myself one evening when I. Was doing archival research, and I sneaked out.

23:42 And I think I was the only one in the course that was kind of raining, and I kind of pretended I was playing the. Golf with with Robert Trent Jones. It was his golf course, and you know, I was kind of just in my mind imagining what kind of conversation I would have, what he would tell me about this hole or that bunker. And so you do sort of develop kind of this. Personal relationship with the person you're studying, because you just know, you know, there's not much about them that you don't know. And through my oral interviews, I you know, had long interviews with both of his sons and with other people that worked for him, and with had all those love letters, and I had on along interviews with the man who was his personal physician for many years, so you just really get.

24:26 To know the person. And I'd have a hard time in writing a biography of somebody that I just detested. I mean, like, I couldn't imagine imagine writing Adolf Hitler's biography. There have been a bunch of them, so they don't we don't need one of those. But I don't think I could write one of someone that I just I just had totally you know, despise. And that's certainly not the case with mister Jones. I find him, you know, very endearing. I just I regret some of the foibles in his personality and some of the choices that he made. But if someone did my biography, they they find even more to complain about.

25:09 The prolific and very successful biographer, Doris Kruns Goodwin is said that she feels like she has to go to bed and wake up with this person. You you like, you said, you just live your life with this Harrison. And so there are presidents you know that we're herd topic. There are presidents that she just doesn't want to go near because she just doesn't think she could go to bed with them every night. Yeah, you do, and they keep you up you know, they keep you from going to bed too. I mean, my my the working habits. You know, I've become very obsessive in when I'm writing a book and my family. I mean, I'm I can't my family just so, I'm almost impossible because everything I'm talking about, I'm just constantly thinking about the character that I'm writing about, and I want to share and you know, what I'm learning, and and they, you know, and unfortunately a family's been very supportive, but you know, at times.

26:02 I'm sure they just get Dad. You've got to you know, You're you're going on too long. Let's move on to another topic. Leads. Enough about him, what about me? No, he you mentioned he didn't have credentials before he started working with Stanley Thompson. I mean, he really wasn't very well educated, if at all. He didn't go to college. He didn't have it. He was able to convince Cornell to yeah, to start a program to teach him how to do this. I mean, he really was focused on wanting to be a golf course. Architect, absolutely, And it wasn't that they convinced him to start a program. It was basically that just they would give him special admission status to take just those courses that he thought he might need, you know, some agronomy, some landscape architecture, some business courses, some public speaking was a course he thought he needed to take.

26:52 So he took two years of courses. And the way that it worked out, because remember, here's a guy that doesn't have a high school degree. How does he get into an ivy league school like Cornell? And the way it happened, and this is what golf can do for people. Jones had as a young man in his early twenties, got a position up at Soda Spay on Lake, Ontario, a little golf course there. And one of the members at so To Spey was a man named James Bashford who was the owner of a vinegar factory, and he was kind of a wealthy man, and he had been a Cornell graduate. Well, it just so happens that, you know, Jones, as the club pro and manager of this course at Soda Spay gets he befriends mister Bashford, tells mister Bashford about his interests, and mister Bashford, you know, being a wealthy and influential person and a Cornell grad, said well, let's see what I can do for you. So he takes Jones down to Ithaca in his limsine and has an appointment made with the Dean of Agriculture. And it's really through Bashford's intercession that Jones is permitted to do this.

28:00 Jones learns from that, I mean, maybe he knew it even before, but throughout his air Jones cultivates friendships with powerful people, I mean the state in the state of New York. When he's working on these w these PWWPA projects. He needs to have James Evans, and he needs to have. Robert Moses, the central figures in the New York State Park System. He needs to have them on his side to give him these jobs. So he very consciously goes about cultivating friendships with powerful people. It's going to be I mean, all through his career. You can just make a long, long list of the important people that Jones cultivates friendships with, because it all started with James Bashford taking this young guy down to Cornell and getting him into some courses that he would never have gotten in on his own.

28:53 Clearly, the man was opportunistic, and we've already covered the egotistic part. What kind of family man was he what was his family life like. It was kind of an absentee landlord. He was gone, I mean by that. The boys were born in nineteen thirty nine, Robert and Jones Junior in thirty nine, and Rhys Jones in forty one, and Jones's career really picks up, you know, in the post World War Two period, and by the early fifties when the boys are just turning into their. Teens, he's he's everywhere. I mean, he's designing twenty different courses a year in different parts of the country, and then you know, before long he's off into the Caribbean and then points beyond.

29:36 So he's not home very much, honestly, and the task of raising the boys really fell to his wife. I own and Jones. When he was home, you know, he. Would be Golf was always kind of part of it. You know, he would take the boys to the driving range in the evening where if they were having a family vacation, it would really be down to a work side. If he was working on a course at Myrtle. Beach or you know, down in Florida, the family would jump in the car with him, but he would still be basically working. So you know, and not a father that was you know, really hands on very much with his boys, and the whole issue of the few that develops between the two sons, and it gets very very and it still is. It's something that will never get resolved, and the book sort of goes into the some of the issues of how this family sort of becomes dysfunctional.

30:30 Jones not being there, not being hands on, I think is part of is part of the explanation for that. I don't I don't think he was a bad father. I think he was just like a lot of fathers maybe of that generation in particular. Who who you know, where a career. Was put first and his love of golf was put first, and his ambitions which required all kinds of travel. The boys just you know, they they just sort of grew up, you know, on their own with their other but then they went to work for their dad. Yeah, it's like, how did it get to the point where they're both going, that's what I want to do dad, you know. Yeah, that's amazing to me that if they don't have a close relationship and he's an absentee guy, that they still see this as glamorous enough to I want to go do that too.

31:18 Yeah, it is. That is a very interesting issue. I think for the oldest son it's maybe a little bit easier to understand. He is the namesake. He's Robert tren Jones junior. He's quite a good golfer as a young as a boy, he plays in a lot of tournament events, and plays high school golf on a championship team, and goes to Yale and plays on the Yale team. So he's and the two boys. In fifty four. When the openers played at Baltus Royal, Jones took the two boys as teenagers. And one thing that Jones did, which was unprecedented for the USGA at the time, was he was keeping track of driving distances for the pros. Very systematic measurements and record kept of how far the pros were driving the ball, because Jones wanted to know when he was remodeling a course or designing a new one, where those fairway bunkers.

32:09 Needed to be. You know, if they some of the in the old classic courses of ross, for example, or chillinghasts, the bunkers might have been out between two hundred and two twenty. Well, you know, all the pros are driving over that and so when Jones came in to redo the courses, he had to have measurements. Well, he would take the boys along and they would sort of chase the balls down for him, you know, they would help he was. They were allowed inside the ropes when ropes were first used, I think, which was at Valdskaul, and so the boys, you know, they got to see they were taken to the Masters a couple of times, so they got to experience. Golf at a very high level. But Bobby wasn't, you know, oldest wasn't planning to be a golf architect. He went to law school at Stanford, and you know his version is that he you know, he kind of lost lost interest in and another version might be that he funked out. But he decided at that point that he was going to you know, that he was going to go to work for his dad, but not on the East coast where the Jones operation was based, which was in Montclair, New Jersey. But he was going to stay out in California and create a West coast office in Palo Alto, which is what he did.

33:20 Uh. And it didn't take long for Jones Junior to sort of go his own way. You know, he learned it, learned it from his dad, but he, you know, he wanted to be out on his own. And the book goes into some detail about the process by which Bobby, you know, uses this West Coast office which was ostensibly to be you know, an expansion of Robert turn Jones, Inc. The parent company, while Bob. Goes on to use that base to create his own, you know, his own company. Reese is the more interesting question, you know, the younger brother. Why would the younger brother, who's having issues with the older brother, why would he try to become a golf architect too.

34:03 I mean, I have an older. Brother and the last thing I tried to do when I grew up is, you know, I needed to do something very different from him. And yeah, but Reese wasn't like that. In fact, Reese, honestly he he had the idea of being a golf course architect, probably before Bobby did, and because when he went after he graduated from Yale, he decided to go into a landscape architecture. Program at Harvard, which which he did, and. So he was intending even I saw his letter when he was applying for college, and he was talking to golf course architect and following his father's footsteps even then. So Reese kind of just has decided to do this even before Bob. But Bob, you know, because things didn't work out with the law, Bob decides, well, and he's got the name after all, I mean, he's got he's right there with Robert Trent Jones, so he decides that that's the best career for him as well.

35:05 Are there three distinct different styles between the Joneses on their on their design work. Well, that's really a great question. I think that you know, I've played all a. Number of all three, and there's certainly some things in common between the father and the two sons, but there are also some clear distinctions, and there's some clear distinctions between Reese. And and and Bobby. I think Bobby, you know, is is you know, probably he's he's less into doing the championship courses, although he did in Chambers Bay, out. In Jugit Sound, Washington. You know, it's going to host the Open in a couple of years, and so it's not that he's uninterested in championship designs. But Reese, you know, kind of took on the mantle of his father of the Open Doctor and has been used by the u U, s g A and the p g A, you know a number of times to to redo championship courses. One thing that's really interesting about Reese's courses, the redesigns that he does of his dad's, is that, uh, he changes his dad's courses in some pretty significant ways.

36:11 And when the father was still living. There's some correspondence, for example, about Congressional that that mister Jones had redesigned back in the sixties, and then Reese comes in and does a couple you know, major remodelings at Congressional in the eighties and nineties that when mister Jones is still living, he's writing letters to to Reee kind of complaining about what Reese is doing to his courses. And so there is you know, Bobby suspects, I don't really take it quite this far, but you know, Bobby suspects that Reese was sort of consciously or unconsciously undoing some of his dad's designs. You know that he was. He was he wanted them different, he wanted them to change, he wanted them to be distinctive of his own style.

36:56 And and I think there is there is some truth truth to that. So yeah, you can tell the differences between between the three, but there are also some some similarities as well, because they all kind of learned. I mean, the boy learned a. Lot about courses are not just from their dad, but from the super from the men who were in charge of building Jones's golf courses, a man by Bill by the name of John Schmeiser and Bill Baldwin. And since the boys didn't want to listen to the dad that much, that wasn't especially true. In the case of Reese, the father put his construction form in charge of basically showing recent body how how you build golf courses, and so they learn, you know, the logistics and the nuts and bolts of golf course construction really from the same same people, and that that meant a lot of carryover.

37:50 So then what happened between the two brothers. Well, it goes it goes back to their boyhood. I I you know, I don't. I would have to be a professional psychologist really to explain what it is. I think Bobby as a young as a boy and going into his teenage years, I think Bobby just became Bobby, and you know, Bobby had, has a strong ego, has strong ambitions of his own, and he's not the kind of you know, he would be a hard you know, he would be a hard older brother to have. And I think it was hard for Reese from the beginning because Bobby wasn't a protecting, you know, supportive, you know, he was just a difficult older brother to have in a lot of ways. And it just got worse and worse once they started, you know, once they were in business with their dad, the differences they had, the differences of opinion that they had over how the parent companies.

38:50 Should be should be handled, and then when they both. Separated, they there were really hard feelings about how those separations took place. I mean, Reese was very upset with the way Bobby. He feels Bobby had taken advantage of his dad when he went out on his own. And then it just continues. I mean that they've suit each other a number of times, and they don't really have anything to do with one another at all. And that made my book very challenging, you know, because here I am in the middle of the two of them trying to write an objective, you know, third party account of their father's life, and I can't really tell that story without telling the story of the whole family.

39:31 And somehow I've got. To walk the tightrope between you know, two very talented and experienced men in their field. But somehow I have to be able to work with both of them and get them to both help me understand what their father's life was about. And understand what's going on in the family. So it was. It was by far the most difficult book, you know, I've ever I've ever written. And there are people that know a bit about the Jones stories, either because they're golf writers or a fellow golf architects, who have sort of said to me in private, they just never thought a. Book like this could ever get done. That you know, there had been earlier attempts and the problems dealing with Bobby and Reese on a project like this, or you know, some people felt were just insurmountable, and somehow, some way I was able to do it. I you know, I have to. I could write a book about writing the book.

40:29 Honestly, Wow, the stories that. I could tell, maybe someday I'll I'll. That's why you're here, my friend. I want the stories. Well, there are some real, real stories. And do you write as you're doing your research, or do you combine, do all your due diligence and gather all the information, throw it down and start writing at that point. Yeah, it's kind of a combination of the two. Certainly, when you're writing, you know, it's the fighting process shows you where you have gaps in the story that you need to fill in, So you know, I often have to pause, you know, and reconsider and go back and find more documents, or call you know, somebody up that's call one of the brothers up, or call you.

41:16 A key figure that I. That was important to the book is a man named Roger Rulwich, who was who worked for mister Jones from nineteen sixty one into the mid nineties when he was let go, and so he worked as Jones's chief junior designer for thirty years, and of course worked with the brothers closely for a long time and is a friend of Reese's, not so much a friend of Bobby's. So there would be times when you know, a question about a golf course came up, and I would get on the phone and call Roger up in Massachusetts and ask him if he could answer this or that. So it's kind of an ongoing thing. You start with a base of research, and you know, I spent three summers in Cornell going through what really as a massive collection. I mean, it's equivalent to like if you had three hundred file cabinet drawers stuffed full of stuff.

42:09 That's it's essentially what I had to look. Through and not and beyond that, you know, since it's we're talking about an architect you know, they have these cardboard tubes. You know, that are six feet long that are that are full of drawings, you know, rolled up. Sketches and blueprints and so forth, of all the different courses. Now I didn't use that kind of I didn't use those. Architectural drawings nearly as much as I use the regular documents. But from time to time I would have a question about a course design and how it might have changed, and I would have to, you know, go back into the architectural drawings as well. So it's just a you know, it took. It took those three summers, and even then, you know, I can't say that I looked at everything. You sort of have to sample, you know, the files, and sometimes you see a file, and it's and its title is something you don't think is really going to help you much, and.

43:04 So you might skip that one. But you know, I suppose out if you say, here's one hundred percent of the Jones material, I suppose I looked at eighty percent of it, you know, and hopefully the twenty percent that. I didn't look at, you know, either. Somebody else can make use of it someday or it really wasn't you know that bible to me telling the story. It's a five hundred page book anyway, so you know, more research would have just resulted in more pages. So from the time you decided to write the book until you handed the final draft of the publisher, how long a period was that, I.

43:45 Would say just less than two years, and. Your full time job in the interim. Well, fortunately I had just come out of a six year term as the director of the Honors College at Auburn, and thanks to that administrative service, I had earned a year of paid leave. Wow, and so the university haging and so I made Without that, I couldn't the book wouldn't have been done yet. So I had a year and and you know, and I work. When I start to write, you know, it's it can be. You know, I don't necessarily get up too early, but I had lots of nights that were till three and four in the morning. And as Doris Currins Goodwin said, you you know, you go to bed and sometimes even dream. You know, there are things in your dreams that are related to what you're doing. Your mind is just so full of the facts and questions. You know that you're just constantly it's constantly agitating.

44:38 In your mind one way or the other. And it's an interesting it's a very interesting process to go through. But it's also it's somewhat tortuous, you know, it really is. You know, it's a difficult I give I gave up golf through most of that. I didn't know. That's you know, I was thinking, I'm listening do you explain this and saying you had a year off? How diligent were you? How many days you just want to go I'm just going to forget it. I'm just going to go play golf today. There weren't many days like that. Oh my god, you're the well. No, I think manic maybe either, you know, I kept looking down the road. I kept saying when this book's done, I should be have I should be having a lot of opportunities, you know, hopefully getting invitations to go play some of these golf courses that I'm writing about. And and so I'm hoping, and I think it's it's starting to happen. I'm already getting some invitations from some of the Jones clubs to.

45:33 Come and talk about the book. And yeah, and I'm more than willing to come. So if you haven't contacted me yet, please do so, because I'd love to. I haven't played Hazel Team, I haven't played Bell Reeve. You know, There's just so many Jones courses that I haven't played. And and I you know, so I'm going to try to make up for some of those golf rounds I didn't get to play. As prolific as he was. And as we established how full of himself he may have been, are there courses that he takes credit for that he shouldn't. Well, his sons would say courses that they designed rather than him.

46:15 Is it the other way around? It's like the sounds these are ours? Well, yeah, there's there's there's a little bit of both. I mean, it was very at the end of the book, there's an appendix where I list all the golf courses that Joan Design designed or remodeled, and the trying to define which ones to use is really is really challenging. And what I ended up using as a criterion for that appendix was, was the course done under contract to Robert Trent Jones Inc. You know, that's the main company, that's the New Jersey based company. And if it was done by Robert Trent Jones, Inc. You know, then I think it deserves to be on the list. And Roger rule, which you agreed with me, that that was the only sensible way to do it. Of course, doing it that way it means that a course, say like Eugene Country Club or the renovation was done there, or a number of.

47:08 Courses that Bobby was involved with. You know, Bobby would have done most of most of the work, but it was done under contractor Robert Trent Jones, Inc. So my position is, well, they both can. Count them, you know if they want. If you're counting courses, you know, if you want to do something like that, then if it's under contract to the main company, you know, in most of those cases, Jones, mister Jones would have done something. I mean, he would have visited the property, produced them sketches that he would have given the Bobby. If we're talking about, you know, the West Coast courses or courses in Japan that they did together, he would have had some input, but he wouldn't have He might have only visited the property once or twice, and Bobby might have been there thirty times.

47:48 And so there are a number of courses that are credited to mister Jones that really are done by either his one of his two sons, or by Roger Rulitz, or by Cavil Robinson, who headed up Jones's European operation. But I don't really I mean, I don't begrudge him those really at all. And I think maybe the most interesting crediting issue that comes up is relates to Augusta National Agusta. In the late forties, Bobby Jones brought Trent in to do some significant remodeling of some of the holes at Augusta Number sixteen, as. We know it, one of the great par threas in the world, was a very.

48:30 Different hole before Trent Jones came in and redid it. It was just a little The tea was right behind the fifteenth green. There was a little creek. It wasn't a lake. There was just a little creek, and the green was on the would have been left of wards. It is now over that creek. It was a bad hole. Trent and the membership and the people who had been playing the masters thought that sixteen was a week sister. And Jones comes in and redesigns that hole completely. I mean, it's his hole. He redesigns the eighteenth green in the mounding around it, he redesigns the thirteenth green. He's the one that creates the tee on eleven. He changes eleven from a really a dog leg right three hundred and fifty yard hole with a green where that lake that you know.

49:17 Isn't isn't there to know. He finds a tee area back to the left, turns it into a longer four hundred yard part four that really kind of turns to the left and has that and the green gets extended around this lake. And what's interesting about this is Augusta National doesn't want to it never has credited Trenton Jones for the work because they don't want to take any attention away from McKenzie or Bobby Jones, Clifford Roberts, longtime director of the of the Club, President of the Club and director of the Masters Tournament, you know, never wanted to give Trent that credit. But you know, I've got documents that are letters. I mean, I have letters from Bobby Jones to Trent Jones, which is all about this remodeling work that Trent was involved with in the late forties early fifties. So to me, that was more interesting than maybe courses that he shouldn't get the credit for. Here's maybe the most famous course in the world except for the old course at Saint Andrews, and he deserves some credit that Augusta.

50:15 Never gives him. And so I mean, I'll be kind of interested to see what the reaction is from Augusta, uh to what I write about this in the book. But it's I have undeniable documentation from in the hand of Bobby Jones himself. Wow, did he have a course that was his show piece? They're his favorite that he would like to you know that he would say to people, this is mine. Yeah, he had an answer to that every time they asked him, and the answer was the next one is gonna be the next one. Well, yeah, it's like when someone's to me, it's like, what is the hardest shot in golf? The next one, the. Next, the next one. Oh.

50:55 He definitely had some favorites, but he you know, he always had that one line or you know, when to come back when anybody really asked him. But I think Spyglass with a course that he was very very proud of out on the Monterey Peninsula. I think he was very proud of the Dunes Club down of Myrtle Beach. I mean Myrtle Beach wasn't Myrtle Beach until I mean there was I think there was one course at Myrtle Beach when Jones designed the Dunes Club in the in the late forties. And how many courses are there Myrtle Beach now, I mean over well over one hundred, I think, so Jones is and so that's one of these designs that is well, very well known. I think he's proud of hazel Teine, even though it had a lot of controversy when seventy Open was played there and Dave Hill you know, said call it a Kyle pastor and said he would drive around into you know, drive a tractor under the course if he if he won the tournament and and so. But I think Jones had they made some changes, and he had strong feelings about Hazelteen, Bell Reeve and Saint Louis. I think he was proud of that one courses. I think of all of courses, maybe the course that's rated highest.

52:04 If there was a recent. Poll that the golf architects were raiding golf courses around the world, and I took a real close look at that, and the very top rated golf course by Jones. Was Valderama in Spain. Jones that was where the Ryder Cup was played in ninety seven. And before he did Valderama, in the same property, he did a course called Soda Grande and it was the first course where American turf grass was introduced into Southern Europe. And so it's a very significant course historically. And so Soda Gronde Valdorama, or certainly two of his better known It's Mona Kea in Hawaii. I think that's another one early on in the Hawaii the popularity of Hawaii as a tourist destination. That was part of a Lawrence Rockefeller resort development. I think those are all really in the you know, in the ballpark of his of his favorites.

53:05 Excellent. Wow, what an amazing story. Yeah it is, and uh it's you know, it's going to be challenging for me as I go around the country giving talks and try and keep it to twenty minutes if I can, Uh, you know, well, how to focus it because it is really an epic It's an epic American story, you know. That's why I hope. People will give it, will read it that are not maybe not even huge fans of golf or golf architecture, because it's a it's an incredible story of an immigrant coming to America with big dreams, big ideas, and and and doing different things and finding ways to achieve his goals, but at a price, always at a price.

53:46 Yeah, and big is an understatement. Yeah, yeah it is. Well the name again, the name of the book is a difficult part. Robert Trent Jones, Sr. And the Making of Modern Golf by James R. Hands, also the author of First Man, The Life of Neil Armstrong. What boy, what a dichotomy of going you have to write on that one. That's amazing. Jim, thank you so much for your time, and for the explanation and for your work here. This is spectacular. And I hope that I get together with you in Alabama and play some golf. You call me anytime. Fred Well, thank you so much. Jim, thanks a lot, you Bet, thank you very much,