The Robert T. Jones, Jr. Scholarship program began in 1976 after several years of planning and fund-raising, and has become a fixture at both Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland where it is a prestigious and sought-after overseas study award.

But the Bobby Jones Scholarship, as it is known colloquially, is more than an academic sojourn. Above all it is an ambassadorship, rewarding its beneficiaries for their exemplary citizenship and requiring them to exert themselves while abroad as active and energetic representatives of their college and country.

In this way the Scholarship fittingly recognizes the man for whom it is named: Robert T. Jones, Jr. (1902-1971), a golfer of extraordinary talent and a man of great character and achievement, who inspired all those whom came his way or followed his story. Jones, called Bob by his friends and Bobby by the world, may have been the greatest natural golfer who ever lived. Except for the year when he planned his conquest of the US Amateur and Open, and the British Amateur and Open championships, a never-equaled feat that has since been called the Grand Slam, Jones rarely made the game of golf his all-consuming passion. At times he would go weeks without picking up his clubs. More important to him were his family, his friends, and his profession of law, none of which he neglected.

Bobby Jones remains not only one of the best loved figures from the Golden Age of Sport -- the 1920s that saw the rise of Babe Ruth, Red Grange, Jack Dempsey and Bill Tilden; he also continues to capture the affection of golfers and non-golfers alike who admire his sportsmanship, integrity, intellect, courage, and capacity for friendship. Bobby Jones gave up competitive golf in 1930 at the age of 28, but he continued to serve his profession and the sport (he founded its most legendary tournament, the Masters, and the course on which it is played every April, Augusta National) until his death 40 years later.

It is for his human qualities -- his intellect, his exemplary courage and grace, and his modesty -- that Jones is remembered in the Robert T. Jones, Jr. Scholarship. Winners of this award need not be golfers, but they must be young people of extraordinary promise and impeccable character.

Each year Emory University sends four of its best students to the University of St. Andrews -- Scotland's oldest, founded in 1411 -- and receives four of that ancient institution's best in return, for an academic year of residence in the host country. Bobby Jones Scholars enroll as full-time students (a degree may be sought, but degree candidacy is not required) and are provided a vehicle in which to travel throughout either the United States or the United Kingdom. They are expected to engage themselves in the social life of their host university and the cultural life of their host country; to participate in extra-curricular activities; and to familiarize themselves with the customs and institutions of their temporary home.

In its perquisites the Jones Scholarship compares well with better-known fellowships. Scholars are awarded free tuition, room and board, an allowance for books, and a stipend for living expenses -- plus a travel stipend at the end of each term, enabling them to spend the Christmas season and part of the summer in travel. The travel dimension of the Jones Scholarship was proposed by Alistair Cooke, a member of two of the three committees that support the Scholarship.

Cooke, for over 60 years correspondent for the Guardian and the BBC, author of several books on his adopted country, and host of Masterpiece Theater, was himself the winner of a scholarship to the United States, granted by the Commonwealth Fund in 1930. That award required him to buy a car and travel the length and breadth of this country. Cooke did so, visited 46 states, fell in love with America, and became a US citizen in 1939. Later, as a committee member, he suggested that Bobby Jones Scholars would find their academic stay vastly enhanced by the opportunity to travel. Since that singular suggestion over 15 years ago, each contingent has enjoyed the use of a van or estate wagon with which to explore the farthest regions of their host country. Scholars from St. Andrews routinely visit the Grand Canyon, Bryce and Zion National Parks, Hollywood, San Francisco, and Glacier National Park out West, as well as Boston, New York, Washington DC, Charleston, Savannah, and Disney World on the eastern seaboard, and New Orleans on the Gulf – usually at Mardi Gras. They return home having seen more of the United States than most American citizens.

Emory Scholars at St. Andrews enjoy the same opportunities and, beyond the British Isles, have used railroads, airlines, and their thumbs to travel as far east as Egypt, Israel, and India.

Jones Scholars quickly involve themselves in the life of their host institution. In just the past few years at Emory, for example, Scholars from St. Andrews have served with Volunteer Emory; written for The Emory Wheel, the College's twice-weekly newspaper; spent midnight hours with Emory's First Responder, an emergency medical team; taught science to fifth graders at Cook School in downtown Atlanta; played on the Emory men's golf team and the women's tennis team; organized both a men's and a women's rugby club; interned at the Carter Center (and thereby traveled to Venezuela and Indonesia to monitor national elections); interned at CNN and Turner Broadcasting System; appeared in numerous Theater Emory productions; and written a book on the status of women at Emory.

The program is supported by the work of three committees: in New York, the US Committee for the Robert T. Jones, Jr. Scholarship, chaired by Richard K. LeBlond II; in Atlanta, the Emory Committee for the Robert T. Jones, Jr. Scholarship, chaired by T.G. (Tom) Cousins; and in Scotland, the Robert T. Jones, Jr. Memorial Trust of St. Andrews, chaired by Sir Michael Bonallack.

St. Andrews, the birthplace of golf, had a special place in Bobby Jones's heart -- and life. It was there that he won the British Amateur in 1930 on his way to the Grand Slam, and won also the undying affection of the townspeople and the British sporting public. So emphatic was their fondness for him, that the town virtually shut down on the day in 1936 when Jones quietly appeared at the Royal & Ancient to play an unannounced round of golf on his way to the Berlin Olympics. By the time he had finished the back nine a crowd of over 2,000 thronged the Old Course to watch this unparalleled golfer, now six years into retirement.

And in 1958 Jones was granted the Freedom of the City and Royal Borough of St. Andrews at a memorable ceremony in the University's Younger Hall. He was the first American since Benjamin Franklin, 199 years earlier, to be bestowed the honorary citizenship of St. Andrews. As Jones, no longer ambulatory due to a progressively crippling disease, left the hall by wheelchair, the audience spontaneously burst into an old Scottish song, Will Ye No' Come Back Again? An observer, the American golf writer Herbert Warren Wind, wrote "So honestly heartfelt was this reunion for Bobby Jones and the people of St. Andrews (and for everyone) that it was ten minutes before many who attended were able to speak again in a tranquil voice."

When Jones died in 1971 his friends, law partners and business associates, and admirers from the world of golf sought to memorialize him. They knew he would have shunned a physical monument or a building, for he was a modest and unpretentious man (he even resisted naming his invitational tournament at Augusta the Masters, as being sensationalistic; but the media-inspired title stuck). They hit upon the most appropriate monument possible for a man who enjoyed the affection of Americans and Britons alike, and who was devoted to scholarship and works of great literature (and who contributed eloquently to the body of writing on golf, where his fluency produced some of the game's most enduring works). Led by Ward Foshay and Joe Dey of the United States Golf Association and F.M. Bird, an Atlanta friend and partner in Jones, Bird & Howell, now Alston & Bird, the Scholarship's founders devised a program that would exchange students between Emory and St. Andrews Universities in perpetuity.

Jones, a mechanical engineering graduate of Georgia Tech who earned a master's degree in English Literature from Harvard, studied law at Emory in the late 1920s and is carried on the alumni rolls as a member of the Class of 1929. After his first year at Emory Law School Jones took the Georgia Bar examination as a practice exercise -- and passed it. Upon learning this good news in October of his second year at Emory, Jones immediately entered the legal profession.

Emory was chosen as a partner in this exchange not merely because of Jones's connection with it, but due to its similarity to the Scottish university. Both are great liberal arts institutions with schools of divinity. Thus students at the one are likely to find an appropriate academic fit at the other.

At each institution, Jones Scholars are encouraged to explore all academic offerings and to take courses that may be new to them. As they are not required to be degree candidates, they may experiment without fear of failure, and find genuine pleasure in intellectual stimulation for its own sake. St. Andrews Scholars, who have followed a deeper but narrower curriculum, are especially delighted to find such a smorgasbord of courses at Emory including programs like Southern studies or neurology and behavioral biology -- or even scuba diving and weight training -- that are unavailable to them at home. Similarly, Emory Scholars may study geography, Gaelic, and Scottish history, among other disciplines, for the first time.

In 1976, its first year, the Jones Scholarship exchanged one student; in 1977, two; in 1978, three; and since 1979 four Bobby Jones Scholars have crossed the Atlantic each way each year. As of the 2001-2002 academic year, 98 Scholars from Emory and 98 from St. Andrews have participated. The program, limited to two institutions and eight Scholars annually, may never reach the renown or approach the numbers of other fellowships. As an exercise in international friendship, and as a permanent tribute to a great athlete, scholar and gentleman, however, it has few equals.

Each gift to the Robert T. Jones, Jr. Scholarship goes into an endowment fund. Emory pays out about four per cent of the endowment's annual earnings, pouring the remainder back into the corpus and thus ensuring the fund's continued growth and providing a hedge against future inflation. Your contribution to the program may be made in the form of a check written to Emory University, or a gift of stock turned over to Emory, designated for the Robert T. Jones, Jr. Scholarship. Each gift is tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.

The program encourages supporters to consider it as they make their estate plans. Bequests to the Robert T. Jones, Jr. Scholarship enable friends to multiply their lifetime gifts and substantially secure the program's future.

"I could take out of my life everything except my experiences at St. Andrews and I would still have had a rich and full life."
- Robert T. Jones, Jr., St. Andrews, 9 October 1958.