Can anybody contribute a few notes on Robt. Trent Jones?

[V. Kmetz]

Hi,

I'm trying to characterize RTJ's design ethos for a club history I'm working on, and I find that with such a massive volume of work; it's hard to quantify down to a few principles for some introductory passages.

What might you say in a couple of sentences or less or 2-3 bullet points.

Large greens? Advent of constructed water hazards?  Emphasis on heroic?  The visual over the strategic?

I'm kind of at a loss to boil it down to some top-line items...

please don't take this as an opportunity to make a glib zing, though I know in these parts this might be worthy.

thanks

cheers

vk

[Ian Andrew]

Some ideas to work with:


Praise for the work: There is no question that Robert Trent Jones was the champion for the average player. The variety in yardages and the mantra of a hard par and an easy bogie was something the public liked and the media embraced as good design. Trent Jones employed a common sense approach and a visual flair to create a “new” standard for golf design that was easy to understand and clear right from the very first play.

His courses featured huge tees and greens that were easy for maintenance. His designs had huge flexibility in set up that offered seemingly endless variety. He kept the challenge by building well defined pin positions into very large greens, but the real secret was the flexibility in the set up from long to short and from hard to easy depending on tee markers and pin positions that made the game much more enjoyable for the average player.


Criticisms: Trent Jones popularized the idea of creating ponds right up against greens to add beauty and challenge. He was particularly fond of this idea for par threes where the hole was all carry from tee to green. He believed this particular heroic shot made the holes memorable with the water heightening the excitement. The only problem with this was he overused the technique to deal with locations that lacked natural features.


Hopefully this will spur others to add their own thoughts.

[Ian Andrew]

A few more thoughts:


Mechanization of Golf: Robert Trent Jones’s emergence coincided with a change in how courses were built. Before the war, courses were still largely being built by hand, by the machine age was about to begin. Architects would soon utilizing large amounts of earthmoving equipment. Initially, this was done to speed up construction but it soon removed the limits on what could be accomplished. Architects like Jones seized this opportunity and began to move away from adapting their ideas to suit the site, and began a design era of adapting sites to suit their ideas. As harder sites were overcome, this eventually ushered in the idea that anything was possible and golf courses were built on more and more difficult sites – eventually capped off when Jones built Mauna Kea right out of old lava fields by crushing the rock and turning it into soil.


Designer as Celebrity: The 1951 US Open made Trent Jones’s famous because of the renovation to Oakland Hills. Trent created what he called target golf by pinching most landing areas on both sides with bunkers and heavily bunkering the greens to create difficulty. Depending on your point of view Jones was either the villain or the hero – but aside from that he was all of a sudden very well known. Trent continued to make use of this new found fame and actively promoted his work as a designed by Robert Trent Jones, and likely even coining the phrase of signature design too. Trent was a far greater salesman, than designer, and quickly became the architect that everybody sought out because he was the best known architect of them all. It could be argued this was the origin of the celebrity designer.


that's it ... this time I'm really done   

[Ronald Montesano]

that made the game much more enjoyable for the average player.


Criticisms: Trent Jones popularized the idea of creating ponds right up against greens to add beauty and challenge. He was particularly fond of this idea for par threes where the hole was all carry from tee to green. He believed this particular heroic shot made the holes memorable with the water heightening the excitement. The only problem with this was he overused the technique to deal with locations that lacked natural features.

I would NEVER have called RTJSR the champion of the average golfer. If anything, the courses of his that I have played have extended a massive middle finger to the average Joe and Tammy. In fact, your own criticisms support my theory. When an average Joe/Tammy plunks a few in the water, s/he is psychologically demoralized, unable to execute on the coming holes...

The average golfer is/was/forever will be, incapable of rebounding/getting it back. As a result, RTJSR's architectural head games drove this type of golfer to drink, throw clubs in the drink, and even to give up the game (which explains that bubble of enthusiasm for tennis.)

[David_Tepper]

"Landing strip" tee boxes: I played the RTJ course at Pauma Valley a couple of years ago. Rather than 3 or 4 separate tee boxes, virtually every teeing ground was a continuous strip 50 to 75 yards long.

[Bill_McBride]

that made the game much more enjoyable for the average player.


Criticisms: Trent Jones popularized the idea of creating ponds right up against greens to add beauty and challenge. He was particularly fond of this idea for par threes where the hole was all carry from tee to green. He believed this particular heroic shot made the holes memorable with the water heightening the excitement. The only problem with this was he overused the technique to deal with locations that lacked natural features.

I would NEVER have called RTJSR the champion of the average golfer. If anything, the courses of his that I have played have extended a massive middle finger to the average Joe and Tammy. In fact, your own criticisms support my theory. When an average Joe/Tammy plunks a few in the water, s/he is psychologically demoralized, unable to execute on the coming holes...

The average golfer is/was/forever will be, incapable of rebounding/getting it back. As a result, RTJSR's architectural head games drove this type of golfer to drink, throw clubs in the drink, and even to give up the game (which explains that bubble of enthusiasm for tennis.)

"It was a woman who drove me to drink, and I never had the decency to write and thank her. "
            -  W. C Fields

[Alex Lagowitz]

Hard par, easy bogey

[Adam Lawrence]

If you can wait until May, Professor Jim Hansen of Auburn University will be publishing 'A Difficult Par', the authorised biography of RTJ Sr. Jim has had unfettered access to Jones' papers, which are in the Cornell archive, and the full cooperation of the Jones family in putting the book together.

I just finished reading a galley proof version of the book, and it is outstanding - by a long way the best golf biography I have ever read.

[Tony_Muldoon]

V.   

It’s always of interest to me when people characterise a large body of work with a few sentences. We all do it, probably a lot more than we realise.


When you ‘ve had a few more replies would you like to say how closely the course you have in mind fits the answers given?

[Steve Okula]

One thing Jones has on every other golf designer is longevity, his career spanned some 60 years.

From what I know, his work was uneven. He evidently turned out some notable courses, Peachtree, Atlanta Athletic Club, Valderrama, and Hazeltine, to name a few. On the other hand, late in his life, (1989-1992) he designed the two courses where I'm the GCS at Golf de Joyenval near Paris. He was past his prime, and I suspect delegated too much responsibility to dubious subordinates, but the design and construction of these 36 holes on a terrific expanse of undulateing, mostly open land leave an awful lot to be desiired.

[Peter Pallotta]

Off Ian's post (and while accepting Tony's point), the "designer as celebrity" strikes me as most interesting aspect, and maybe the most important of all. Then and now, the 'celebrity' in any field is one who achieves wide-spread and popular recognition for a kind of work (or for his ability to explain that work in a way) that can be readily/easily appreciated and understood by the population at large.  So, for example, the movie star and the pop idol in the comedic and romantic idioms, since most of us can understand what 'acting' and 'singing' is, even if we can't do them, and most of us like to laugh and know what it's like being in love. Or, for example, Stephen Hawkings, who has been able to convey at least some of the meaning/purpose of (the otherwise to most of us unintelligible world of) theoretical physics in his book and lectures aimed at a broad audience. So, when it comes to RTJ: he did a kind of work (and explained and promoted it in a way) that, for the first time, could be popularly understood and appreciated. He conveyed to a broad audience that the "golf course architect" (was that term even in the lexicon of American golfing life before him?) used his ideas and his machines to "make" an existing course harder and more challenging for the best golfers (the stern but fair tests that fans expected their heros to face) or to "create" new courses and many new courses for the everyday golfer who could now find, near his home even, a place to play that would (because of the multiple/runway tees) challenge him with a "suitably/proportionally" stern but fair test, just like the pros.  In short, it seems to me that, besides essentially creating and popularizing the profession, RTJ also framed/contextualized its main purpose and function in a way that still today so resonates in popular golfing consciousness that every other golf architect since has had to understand and promote his own work in reaction to (either pro/con) RTJ's definitions. Shorter still: he gave the work a name, and dictated what that work was meant to do.

Peter

[Jeff_Brauer]

Probably not relevant to your piece, but RTJ was always gracious to me, starting when I was 14 and wrote a hopeful letter about some future employment in the golf design industry.  He (or maybe it was a standard letter prepared by a secretary, but I didn't know that) sent back the most encouraging letter you could imagine.  To this day, I am always encouraging to similar letters, although, they probably don't have the same effect.

On two occasions over the years, RTJ summoned me (well, he asked, but it always felt like being summoned by the King) to a meal with him.  Both times, he filled the time with great stories, in particular, at the 1995 Ryder Cup where he broke down all the changes he made to the course in 1956.  His son (Junior) questioned his memory a bit, and RTJ shut him down quickly with a "you weren't there Bobby, I was!"  Again, the details and though process seemed genuine, but were they a rehearsed mantra of an old man who was used to being on center stage?  I didn't think so.

Whenever I play a Jones course, I see a lot of subtleties that are supposedly supposed to be missing from his "typical" work.  Many of his greens are basically contoured with a tier, but he was always so artistic and put them at angles, with waves, the at first glance they don't seem like a simple stair step, so often seen by the rest of us. (of course, his greens were so large, he could waste a lot of green space that couldn't be cupped)

I believe he and Wilson built very good courses, and I think for the most part, they were well built, as well.  Looking at little drainage details and so forth, they paid more attention to them IMHO than some of us later designers.  On the other hand, both of them seemed stuck in the sand bunker mode as about the only hazard (unless on a site like Spyglass).  Greens were almost inevitably elevated and well bunkered, which turns out, is pretty tough on the average player, no matter how much he accommodates them with forward tees.

I think his bunkers style, of building mounds first and fitting the sand in the valleys was a bit different than Mac or other Golden Age guys, but maybe a natural evolution. Ditto the big tees.  I do recall him telling me that unless there was a tree or dramatic land form, he felt that curvilinear tees looked contrived, so he built rectangles in most cases.

As I said, l recall lots of other little details of our conversations over the years that probably strike non architects as a bit mundane, but they stuck with me because of who he was.

[Joey Chase]

Probably not relevant to your piece, but RTJ was always gracious to me, starting when I was 14 and wrote a hopeful letter about some future employment in the golf design industry.  He (or maybe it was a standard letter prepared by a secretary, but I didn't know that) sent back the most encouraging letter you could imagine.  To this day, I am always encouraging to similar letters, although, they probably don't have the same effect.

On two occasions over the years, RTJ summoned me (well, he asked, but it always felt like being summoned by the King) to a meal with him.  Both times, he filled the time with great stories, in particular, at the 1995 Ryder Cup where he broke down all the changes he made to the course in 1956.  His son (Junior) questioned his memory a bit, and RTJ shut him down quickly with a "you weren't there Bobby, I was!"  Again, the details and though process seemed genuine, but were they a rehearsed mantra of an old man who was used to being on center stage?  I didn't think so.

Whenever I play a Jones course, I see a lot of subtleties that are supposedly supposed to be missing from his "typical" work.  Many of his greens are basically contoured with a tier, but he was always so artistic and put them at angles, with waves, the at first glance they don't seem like a simple stair step, so often seen by the rest of us. (of course, his greens were so large, he could waste a lot of green space that couldn't be cupped)

I believe he and Wilson built very good courses, and I think for the most part, they were well built, as well.  Looking at little drainage details and so forth, they paid more attention to them IMHO than some of us later designers.  On the other hand, both of them seemed stuck in the sand bunker mode as about the only hazard (unless on a site like Spyglass).  Greens were almost inevitably elevated and well bunkered, which turns out, is pretty tough on the average player, no matter how much he accommodates them with forward tees.

I think his bunkers style, of building mounds first and fitting the sand in the valleys was a bit different than Mac or other Golden Age guys, but maybe a natural evolution. Ditto the big tees.  I do recall him telling me that unless there was a tree or dramatic land form, he felt that curvilinear tees looked contrived, so he built rectangles in most cases.

As I said, l recall lots of other little details of our conversations over the years that probably strike non architects as a bit mundane, but they stuck with me because of who he was.

Great post Jeff. 

Having worked for Roger Rulewich for almost a decade, I learned to shape from some of the guys that built or renovated courses for Mr. Jones.  It was great to hear stories about him from Roger and some of the other guys.  Aside from some of the somewhat contrived ponds on many of his courses, I enjoy playing them.  It is disheartening that so many dismiss his best work but revel in the most bland Ross course (a course that Ross likely never visited). 

To me, the drainage was always important to his work.  I recently played a course designed by one of the treehouses favorite architects and was surprised by the complete lack of concern for drainage that appears to be causing major problems for the maintenance staff, so I do agree with you on that. 

Also, it seems to me everyone thinks all of his courses have large, several tiered greens.  Visit Valderrama, it possesses greens that are almost too small in places, especially the front nine.  And although Troia is probably more Cabell Robinson than RTJ, it also has very small greens.

[Alex Lagowitz]

I believe he also tended to employ very long tee boxes, known as runway tees.
The reason doing so was to preserve the same angles off the tee for all golfers.

[Tim_Weiman]

VK:

Like Jeff Brauer, my only comments probably wouldn't be relevant to your piece, but friends at Ballybunion certainly provided many stories about RTJ during the process of building the Cashen course. Actually, one my closest friends was the person who both hit balls for Jones and did drawings for him.

I guess what I remember most  concerns opening day. While generally the Cashen has not received that much positive architectural acclaim, Jones himself was very proud of it. When the club asked him what he most wanted for opening day, Jones replied, apparently with some tears, that he really wanted his sons to attend.

Perhaps I don't remember the whole story correctly, but I think Ballybunion Golf Club made that happen.

[Bill_McBride]

Hard par, easy bogey

Have you played Spyglass Hill?

Brutal par, hard bogey.

[V. Kmetz]

My friends,

I cannot thank you enough for these contributions - what has been said has already been the absolute perfect word-tonic to capture, objectively, the RTJ Sr. "ethos", as it were.

Tony M (and all)

I must confess that I was asking for guidance on the top line Jones characteristics as a method of characterizing the work of one of his top lieutenants from the 50s/early 60s, Frank Duane. Frank had a truncated but prosperous career - owing to the fact that he contracted Gullaine -Barr syndrome - a parlayzing neural disease - from an insect bite...while he was--I think- working on Dorado Beach with RTJ Sr.

Brae Burn (born originally as Purchase Hills Golf Club, until a name change in year two-1965) was Duane's first solo design, and coincides with the year that Duane was parting from the RTJ aegis and would establish his own shingle, out of Port Washington, L.I., NY.

My own wits, experience at Brae Burn, and GCA investigations led me to see the parallels in the first solo work of the apprentice and how it reflects the hand of the master.

But your responses have given wonderful voice to just how that is so, in a tactile sense.

And this part is to give direct answer to Tony Muldoon. Tony...that's a big "Roger" on your inquiry. 

If its acceptable to say that the work of a master would naturally be reflected in the early work of his apprentice's independence, and thus, this first Duane design can be considered in the same principled-light that one would ascribe to RTJ, then...

Long tee boxes?  Duane's Brae Burn course is nothing but a thesis on long tee boxes.  Among several others, the 10th (noteworthy that it was the 1st Tee in the first two years of play, until the nines were reversed) is the ultimate runway tee box.  The teeing ground measures 8 yards wide x 78 yards in length of uniform rectangular-ity, arrowing straight at a green set 370 yards in the distance over rising ground.  The current 5th hole - the signature (at least in central "aesthetic) hole - is a par 3 that can play anywhere from 175 to 118, not because of length, but width.  The tee box is in the shape of a field hockey stick set perpindicular to play - which is a full carry over a man-made pond; it is 95 yards wide and eight yards in effective depth at any point, until the "blade."  While the tee box is not continuous (it could easily be) but is broken up near the "handle" to create two distinct teeing grounds...I think it is the widest tee in America.

Big greens...big enough to waste space to introduce tiers and levels vastly different cup positions, set at angles?  Brae Burns greens are all this, a wonderful challenge and just...so wavy, contoured, broad and truly beautiful i n their own right.  The main drawback is not the design or placement of the green itself, it is the constructed surrounds, especially the approach.  On almost every approach at the course, the ground for 15-30 yards in front dips and then swells up to the front edge...the effect being that almost every green has something of a "false front" This redundancy (and limitation of ground play over what is kept as country club plush turf) creates problems for BOTH styles of green slope...back to front, or worse, front to back.  This is compounded by too many and too large bunkers that eat into the green and/or ponds that abut four of the holes. From this, you may imagine that this breeds a very milque toast, soft center of the green, aerial type play for most holes' approach strategy... this when these greens can be as fun as Yale or  if you miss them in the right places and have a chance to pitch or chip it. As is, they present sheer "difficulty" and while that SHOULD be part of a proportional challenge to where you hit it...the redundancy of, "false front, bunker or pond, left and right, green slopes away from shot..." make sheer difficulty the best you're going to get out out of it.

Maximum flexibility? Though it may be mainly a child of the long (and sometimes wide) tee boxes...Yes, absolutely, one of the smart features of this course present in Duane's mostly extant work - especially for a member and sometimes even for a multi-round tournament player - is the number of different commands and variety of tasks that changing the tee markers can yield...different yardages, different aggressive opportunities, different cautions, different angles.  These, to me, keep the course fresh and along with the generally large greens, their tiers and pockets make for a pleasing difference from day to day.  This feature was greatly enhanced between 1975-1995 when the club adopted the "color" flag system for men's teeign markers.  there were three traditional colors: blue, white, yellow. On each hole a different color was "back" middle or front, meaning that on six holes the blues were back, on six they middle, and on six they were front.  the same rotation for white and yellow.  They flew a different flag over the putting green each day and one usualyy played the color - each "color course" having its notrious virtues and vices...if you wanted to play a back tee all day, you just played the back color on each tee...if you wanted a more middle official white tee, you played the MGA markers and so forth.  the club gave up the system in the mid 90s, whe na more "serious" breed of golfer came into political authority and got their way to go to a traditional system with expanded black tees for championship play. Even so, the markers one plays still have enough room to be regularly moved around and still enjoy the variety and flexibility that those huge tees and big greens yield.

Ponds/Constructed Hazards? - Duane's plan sees...a 200 yard hole with the green set originally 3 yards over a pond (now there's about 12 yards). A Par 4 with a pond eating into the front left of what would otherwise be a flat oval shaped green. Another Par 3 where Duane created a small pond to flank the left side of the green (this is that same 5th, to which the members later turned a wet meadow into that water hazard, carried from various spots along the massive tee width) and a reachable Par 5 with a front left pond abutting a shallow sloped target.

Drainage? - Yeah..Brae Burn has had terrible drainage, agronomically - compromised quality of greens, some fairways and definitely in the lower forest floor of the the 14th and 15th and 16th holes.  The greens were just built of area soils, little drainage or sub percolation, thatch, invasions, poa-conflict, lots of disease over the years...until the tenure of the most recent Super who has been aggressive in maintenance practice and in political advocacy for what will make these greens as good as any super can make them, short of rebuilding 16 of them.  Indeed, short of that, they've been clearing the once choked green surrounds, finding the right aqua balance, the right applications, and most wise of all, the right mowing height for the stress and activity they will encounter.  It's an advertisement for both he and I, but I know those greens as well as anybody who's ever lived.  I've literally read putts over the phone from my house there (in 2010, on the 4th green with a back center flag, putter coming from fringe directly beyond) and I can tell what "mood" they are in every day...Blake is masterful at balancing the members want of perfection with the weather, the water and the mowing height.  I can sense when he is touching the acceleartor or tappign the brake and I can understand his decisions as if they were my own choices. It's not every day, but on about 15 days a year, Brae Burn's greens are as fine, as fun and as worthy of slate of a putting surfaces as any in this glorious MGA district.  This is no mean feat given the haphazard-unknowing construction of the greens in material/drainage issues.

Average golfer's Hero/Hard Par/Easy Bogey - It's hard to say as a generality...I think I'd have to agree.  One coin in that pocket is that I do my best work guiding average golfers away from disastter and into comfortable, survivable bogeys.  I do that well even at WF, anywhere really, but at BB that is my absolute golden metier.  So if the top dog has that skill in spades, and BB gives great exercise to that skill, I'd have to sya that's pretty much correct...I change it to "smartly-earned par/trouble free bogey."

So yes, Tony, this Duane 1st Effort is a perfect time-capsule of RTJ's principles and to all of you , thanks for helping me find voice to what the topline of those principles are, in practice and reputation.


Please contribute more if you think of it...Hard 18th holes? Par 5s with water? Earth-moving?  Are there other traits some of you might isolate?

But thanks so much for these, they really are helping my production effort.

(I may bump this thread from time to time in the next month...not for glory, but to reference it instantly while I'm writing this up)
 
cheers

vk

[Steve_ Shaffer]

No pics? Try the website for some looks:

www.braeburncc.org

[V. Kmetz]

Oh i've got some...but I just couldn't collect them quickly enough and I wanted to address all the good info...

A little later in the day perhaps...

cheers

vk

[V. Kmetz]

Here's the first sequence I could get my files around...

The first photo is the extreme LEFT of the Par 3 5th hole tee. From this spot, the center of the green is about 120 away:


This next photo pans 90 degrees to the right looking back along the width of the tee...the green and pond are now out of photo to the left...you can see the "breakup" of continuity, but at one time this was almost a continuously maintained uni-tee, which only stopped as it crossed behind that tree in the left center (of which there were two before hurricane Sandy). Way in the right distance you can see the tee curve backwards to the right, where the yardage is about 170-75 from green center.

This tee is one of Duane's most striking piece of ingenuity in routing the course, as he used the footprint of a defunct railroad line to create it.  This was the Westchester Northern, a planned franchise of the Boston Westchester Railroad , of which Brae Burn contains the only extant "constructed" portions - evident here and in a stone trestle/overpass that divides the 15th and 17th holes in the lower section of the course.

Last photo is overview showing hole in its entirety


cheers

vk

[Rick Shefchik]

Here's the Minnesota part of the elephant...When RTJ was hired to create Hazeltine, he was determined to build a course that could not be overpowered by the pros. He cited a course in Puerto Rico on which Sam Snead had shot something like 20 under during a tournament, and announced that Snead and the other long-hitting pros would never do that to Hazeltine National Golf Club. It was no idle threat; Hazeltine was founded to attract major championships, and Jones's main strategy to frustrate the pros was to build sharp doglegs with blind landing areas. By the time Hazeltine held its first PGA event in 1967, Jack Nicklaus was the tour's longest hitter, so he became the personification of Jone's battle against the pros. Nicklaus played a preview round at Hazeltine a few weeks before the 1970 U.S. Open and ripped the course in Sports Illustrated, calling it "Blind Man's Buff" because, he said, you could stand on a number of tees at Hazeltine and have no idea where your ideal landing area was.

Nicklaus didn't complain to the press during the 1970 Open; he didn't have to. The other pros, led by Dave Hill, did that for him. But behind the scenes, it was Jack Nicklaus who laid down the edict that the pros would not return to Hazeltine until changes were made to the course. RTJ began a public feud with Nicklaus, knowing that Jack was beginning to dabble in course design with Pete Dye. He accused Jack of being incapable of playing a golf course on which he couldn't just bomb away with the driver; while Jack accused Jones of knowing nothing about pro golf or his game.

Hazeltine softened its doglegs -- and smoothed out some of the contour in its greens -- in the later '70s in an effort to woo the PGA and USGA, but Jack Nicklaus turned down the club's invitations to come back to the course and take a second look. Hazeltine was told through back channels that the pros would never come back as long as the course was associated with RTJ, but Hazeltine remained loyal to Jones and kept him as their consulting architect. But it wasn't until club members Reed Mackenzie and Warren Rebholz designed new 16th and 17th holes -- with minimal input from Jones -- that the USGA agreed to hold the Senior Open there in 1983. The players liked the course, and the U.S. Open came back to Hazeltine in 1991. It was a huge success, and though Hazeltine still doesn't have a lot of fans nationwide, it has become a tough, fair test of golf that has hosted some very exciting majors. It's not the course Jones originally designed, and he only grudgingly made the changes the pros insisted on. But you can still see the bones of what he set out to do.

I can't wait to read the forthcoming RTJ biography.

[Ronald Montesano]

So...arrogance?

I love Crag Burn, Golden Horseshoe Gold, Dunes (SC), Seven Oaks, and Cornell.

I'm ambivalent about Bristol Harbor, Glen Oak, Lyman Meadows, Tanglewood Park, Boyne Highlands Heather.

I want to play Green Lakes, near Syracuse (NY).

The guy always comes off as arrogant, self-absorbed and inflexible.

[Mike_Young]

My wife's father (Otto) and her uncle (John) Schmeisser both worked for Jones as young men after he had approached their father in Mimai and asked if he could hire them from him.  John stayed with him and became the head of his construction arm, Florida golf, building many of his more famous works. 
When one of John's daughters got married in the mid eighties he hosted the wedding at Turnbury Isle and I was seated at his table for four hours.  He was old at the time but it was obvious he was still very competitive and was not complimentary of other architects.  I've read all of the stories of his personality and family issues and take them with a grain of salt.  I do know that when John was sick with cancer in the late 80's he was very good to his family and he flew him privately to where he needed treatments etc.  The one thing I've learned over the years is that extremely competitive people can come of as jerks yet they often have a completely different side when you peel the layers.  I don't think many got to peel the layers on Sr.

[Peter Pallotta]

Jeff, Rick, Mike - good posts, thanks.

Jeff, Mike - hey, maybe you guys and Tom D and Ian and the other architects around here could all take on some of the RTJ persona for a little while, you know, confidence bordering on arrogant conceit and a bit a sandpapery grit and brittleness to top it off. It would be fun (at least for a while) to get the straight goods like RTJ served them up. And then when any of us disagreed with you, you could snap: "You weren't there [fill in the blank, let's say "Pat"]. I was!"

Peter

[Joel_Stewart]

If you can wait until May, Professor Jim Hansen of Auburn University will be publishing 'A Difficult Par', the authorised biography of RTJ Sr. Jim has had unfettered access to Jones' papers, which are in the Cornell archive, and the full cooperation of the Jones family in putting the book together.

I just finished reading a galley proof version of the book, and it is outstanding - by a long way the best golf biography I have ever read.

That should be interesting.  Some 10 years ago I was able to go through his archives while they were still in Ft. Lauderdale.  His sons had stored them in 3 self storage lockers.  The lockers had no air conditioning and all of those amazing documents where being destroyed.  I asked Rees to donate them to the USGA but he and Bobby couldn't agree.  Finally they went to Cornell.

One of the lockers was filing cabinets.  In there, fairly well organized was file after file on every course he had ever worked on.  Contracts, receipts, and notes.  In another large locker they had built some wood racks and all of his architectural plans in their rolled up containers  sat there.   What was amazing was the architectural plans he drew that were never implemented.  Hundreds of golf courses that were never built or plans for Cypress Point and/or Augusta that never came to fruition.

Another locker had his mementos, awards, desks and even his clothes.