The highest degree of excellence
typically carries with it a high price. Even a casual glance at Jones' achievements
in golf might give the impression that he must have done little else with
his time. Actually, quite the opposite was true. Even when he was playing
his best golf at the pinnacle of his career, Jones never regarded golf as
anything more than what it was-just a game. Later in life he would reflect
on his priorities saying, "My wife and my children came first; then my profession
(by this he meant his legal profession, not golf); finally, and never in a
life by itself, came golf."
Jones was born into a family whose men had a talent for sports and business.
The grandfather Jones was named after owned a cotton mill with yearly earnings
in 1925 exceeding $1.5 million. Jones' father, Robert Purmedus Jones, was
an Atlanta lawyer and superb athlete who was once drafted by baseball's Brooklyn
Superbras, a team that was later renamed the Brooklyn Dodgers. Bobby Jones
had a great relationship with his father-whom everyone called "Colonel"-and
enjoyed his company both on and off the golf course. Perhaps his closest friend
and favorite golf partner, Colonel Jones was a good player in his own right,
scoring in the high 70s. Jones would always look back fondly on the East Lake
club championship of 1915 when young Bobby, at 13 years of age, defeated his
father in the final.
Jones married his childhood sweetheart, Mary Rice Malone, on June 17, 1924.
They had three children: Robert Tyre III, Clara Malone, and Mary Ellen. Like
his father, Robert III took up golf, and even competed against Jack Nicklaus
in the first round of the 1959 U.S. Amateur Championship at the Broadmoor
Country Club in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
