By Tad Reeve
St. Paul Pioneer Press
May 22, 2005

America was gaga over baseball, boxing and college football during the
Roaring '20s, when this country's sporting heroes were Babe Ruth, Jack
Dempsey and Red Grange.

The spotlight on those three giants dimmed a bit in 1930, when Bobby
Jones, a graceful, charming young man from Georgia, lifted golf into
the public's consciousness, a movement that reached fever pitch right
here in the Twin Cities.

It started in the spring of 1930, when Jones became the first man in
40 years to win the British Open and British Amateur in the same
season. It was an astonishing accomplishment, and with the U.S. Open
and U.S. Amateur still to come, speculation started immediately.

It was unthinkable that one man could win the four biggest golf
tournaments in the world in the same season, but Jones was halfway
there when he pulled into the Minneapolis train station that June to
play the U.S. Open at Interlachen Country Club in Edina.

There was no name for such a feat until O.B. Keeler, an accomplished
Atlanta newspaperman who accompanied Jones throughout his career,
produced the phrase "Grand Slam," borrowing a popular bridge term, in
an article he wrote during his return trip from Jones' British
triumphs.

All eyes were on Jones during his week at Interlachen, and Ron
Rapoport, author of "The Immortal Bobby," a biography published this
spring in honor of the 75th anniversary of his Grand Slam, speculates
that it was the biggest sporting event--some would say the biggest
single event, period--the Twin Cities had ever known.

A heat wave swept through the Midwest that week, and temperatures
reached 108 degrees with 90 percent humidity during the first
round. Seventeen heat-related deaths were reported that week, though
that hardly dampened the spirit at Interlachen.

Two hundred twenty-six reporters from newspapers all over the world
were in town to cover the event, including reporters from the five
St. Paul and Minneapolis papers that published then.

Rapoport, a sports columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times whose first job
out of college was at the Minneapolis Star, spent a week here last
year conducting research.

"The newspapers in the Twin Cities were having a ball during the
tournament," he said. "The coverage was so modern. One thing they did
that I loved was they sent a woman out to report on the crowds, and
one of the things she wrote about was how women in red were always
able to get up front in the gallery."

Those crowds overwhelmed Interlachen, spilling into the fairways with
abandon. Small groups of spectators were the norm at golf tournaments
up to then, and there was no thought of separating those watching the
event from those playing, something that's strictly enforced today.

In fact, the crowd played a large part in perhaps the most famous shot
of Jones' career, the "lily-pad shot." Jones was about to hit his
second shot at the 530-yard, par-5 ninth hole when spectators started
to run across the fairway. He stepped away from his shot and started
again. This time, two small girls darted into his vision, and Jones
flinched--hitting a low, skulled shot right for the pond that sits 30
yards in front of the green.

As the crowd groaned, Jones' ball skipped twice across the water and
came to rest safely on the other side of the water. Speculation, then
and now, is that the ball didn't sink to a watery grave because it
bounced off a lily pad.

"When I saw that topped shot come off the water," Horton Smith, the
tournament leader at the time who would finish third, wrote for one of
the newspapers, "I knew nobody else had a chance to win the
tournament."

Instead of taking a penalty stroke and a likely bogey 6, Jones pitched
up to the green and made his putt for a birdie 4. Two days later, he
won the tournament by that two-stroke margin.

Two months later, Jones won the U.S. Amateur at Merion Cricket Club in
Pennsylvania, completing the first and last Grand Slam in golf.

Jones' feat was the end of an era in golf. Amateurs ruled the sport
until the 1920s, when professionals started dominating tournament
play. Jones was the last amateur to stand in their way, and he retired
from competitive golf after his remarkable season in 1930. He was 27.

Soon after, the U.S. and British amateurs were replaced in the Grand
Slam rotation by the PGA Championship and The Masters, an event Jones
created shortly after retiring at a course he built in his home state,
Augusta National.

"To me, that 1930 season was sort of the coming-out party for golf,"
Rapoport said. "All of the sudden, it was a spectator sport, which it
had never been. People were running all over the course and getting
hit by golf balls.

"Jones was playing a match against Cyril Tolley at the British Amateur
that year at St. Andrews, and he hit a shot that was headed toward
oblivion. Well, the ball hit a spectator, ricocheted onto the green
and stopped 10 feet from the hole. Everybody thought Jones did that on
purpose."

In September, the Atlanta Athletic Club, one of Jones' old stomping
grounds, will host a celebration of the 75th anniversary of his Grand
Slam. Representatives from Interlachen, Merion, Hoylake in England and
the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews will attend.

The U.S. Open hasn't returned to Interlachen, and it never will. At
just under 7,000 yards, the course is considered too short for Tiger
Woods, Vijay Singh and the rest of today's big hitters.

But the U.S. Women's Open is coming to Interlachen in 2008, and you
can bet Annika Sorenstam, Michelle Wie, et al, will write their own
chapters in the club's hallowed history.