Mark Frost

[Brad Klein]

Okay, so he got one right, Wayne. There's a still a lot to be answered for and as I finish the book (tonight) I'll add more to my above post, esp. as I've found some more whoppers in there - quite amazing mistakes.

[Robert Thompson]

I really like the book, but one of the errors seems to be his Frost suggesting that Marion Hollins co-designed Cypress with MacKenzie and that was the course that was the inspiration for Augusta. My understanding was that Hollins loved Cypress and therefore hired MacKenzie for Pasatiempo. Bobby Jones played in the opening foursome at Pasa, if I recall my round with the club historian correctly. Anyway, Frost appeared to have this wrong to me....otherwise, I'll be intrigued at what Brad noticed.

[A.G._Crockett]

I didn't pay a lot of attention to this thread when it started, but a friend gave me "Grand Slam" to read; I'm now about half finished.

Interesting book!  It is emminently readable, and highly entertaining.  I must say, though, that the factual "fast and loose" is weird, to say the least.

There is a episode in the book in which Jones' grandfather, R.T. Jones, meets Bobby in NY on his return from winning the '26 British Open.  The book says that the elder Jones had just doubled his fortune by becoming one of the first domestic producers of silk, after importing silkworms to Canton, GA, where he lived had had a mill.

The reality is that Canton was renamed in 1833 when some local residents attempted to start a silk trade comparable to Canton, China by importing silkworms to north Georgia.  (The previous name had been Etowah, among other things, I think)  The silk idea failed, (I've read that the climate was somehow not suited) but the name stuck.  The R.T. Jones mill was a cotton mill (remember, this is Georgia!) that primarily produced denim.  All of this information is available on the town's website, and if there was ever a silk industry in Canton, GA, no mention is made of it there or anywhere else.  There is today no silk industry, and never has been one to speak of.

R.T. Jones (the grandfather) was a hugely successful man financially.  The hospital in Canton was named after him, as well as the mills and about a jillion other things in that town.  Why that would need to be embellished by a story about silkworms is not something I understand, and, as mentioned earlier, calls other things into question needlessly.

[BCrosby]

I'll be interested to see what additional factual discrepancies people find, but the bottom line is that the book tells a story that has been told at least three times before at great length, in each case by better writers who were eye witnesses to the events discussed.

See books by O.B. Keeler, Grantland Rice and Bobby Jones himself. Herbert Warren Wind, Charles Price, Bernard Darwin and others did shorter well written pieces on the Grand Slam. I'm sure I'm forgetting some others.

The real issue with the Frost book is not whether it contains factual errors. The issue is whether - after all these prior treatments of Jones's career by the most distinguished writers in the literature - it tells us anything new.

It doesn't.

Or whether it tells the story better than they did.

It doesn't.

Bob

[BCrosby]

BTW, and slightly off topic, let me throw in a vote for O.B. Keeler as the most under-appreciated writer in the golf literature. He was very, very good. He read widely and his range of references was astounding. He also understood golf to his bones.

It's too bad he is so closely linked to Jones. He did write on other topics and it was at least as good as his Jones stuff. Maybe better.

Keeler deserves a seat at the table with Darwin, Wind and Updike, imho.

Bob