Book description
In the wake of the 1929 stock market crash, an amateur golfer began a
decade of unparalleled achievement, seeming a ray of light in an
otherwise depressed America. Bobby Jones won the British Amateur
Championship, the British Open, the US Open and the US Amateur
Championship. A new phrase was born: The Grand Slam. A modest, sensitive
man, a lawyer from a middle-class Atlanta family, Bobby Jones had barely
survived a sickly childhood, and took up golf at the age of five for
health reasons. Jones made his debut at the US Amateur Championship in
1916 and his genius was recognised by his inspiration, Francis Ouimet.
However, his health was never good, and the strain of completing the
Slam exacted a ferocious toll; the US Open, played in July in blazing
heat, nearly killed him. Jones fought to keep his fragile condition a
secret from a country suffering from the Depression, but at the age of
twenty-eight, after winning the US Amateur, he retired. His abrupt
disappearance at the height of his renown inspired an impenetrable myth,
to this day still fiercely protected by family and friends. Mark Frost
is the author of THE GREATEST GAME EVER PLAYED, THE LIST OF SEVEN, THE
SIX MESSIAHS and BEFORE I WAKE. He has written and produced several
television series, including Hill Street Blues and Twin Peaks.
