Grand Slam Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf

In the wake of the stock market crash and the dawn of the Great Depression, a ray of light emerged from the world of sports in the summer of 1930. Bobby Jones, a twenty-eight-year-old amateur golfer who had already won nine of the seventeen major championships he'd entered during the previous seven years, mounted a campaign against the record books. In four months, he conquered the British Amateur Championship, the British Open, the United States Open, and finally the United States Amateur Championship, an achievement so extraordinary that writers dubbed it the Grand Slam. No one has ever repeated it. A natural, self-taught player, Jones had made his debut at the U.S. Amateur Championship at the age of fourteen. But for the next seven years, Jones struggled in major championships, and not until he turned twenty-one in 1923 did he begin to harness his immense talent. What the world didn't know was that throughout his entire playing career the intensely private Jones had longed to retreat from fame's glaring spotlight. The strain of competition exacted a ferocious toll on his physical and emotional well-being. So much so that soon after the Grand Slam, Jones made a shocking announcement: He was retiring from the game. His abrupt disappearance from the public eye into a closely guarded private life helped create the mythological image of this hero from the Golden Age of sports that endures to this day. Mark Frost uses a wealth of original research to provide an unprecedented intimate portrait of golf great Bobby Jones. In the tradition of The Greatest Game Ever Played, The Grand Slam blends social history with sports biography, captivating the imagination and engaging the reader. The Grand Slam is a biography not to be missed.Frost, Mark is the author of 'Grand Slam Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf', published 2004 under ISBN 9781401301088 and ISBN 1401301088.