Sweet Redemption: Jones Conquered Oakmont Demons by Winning the 1925 U.S. Amateur

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When Bob Jones arrived for the 1925 U.S. Amateur at Oakmont Country Club, he carried something in addition to his burgeoning golf reputation and his trusty putter, the first iteration of “Calamity Jane.” He had unfinished business.

Six years earlier at the acclaimed course outside Pittsburgh, in the first U.S. Amateur following a two-year pause because of World War I, Jones lost the final, 5 and 4, to a sturdy Oakmont member, S. Davidson (Davie) Herron, described by the New York Times as being “built like the proverbial brick wall.” Herron – a 20-year-old whose family lived across the street from the club – had touch to go with his power and possessed copious local knowledge from hundreds of rounds at Oakmont.

The outcome of the Jones-Herron match was sealed on the 30th hole, the par-5 12th. Jones was 3 down as he played his second shot with a 2-wood. During his swing, the talented teenager was distracted by a gallery marshal. Jones badly mishit the shot, lost the hole, and was closed out in short order to the delight of the many partisans cheering for Herron.

Jones was ready to make some noise of his own in 1925. He was the defending Amateur champion, having won the previous summer on the East Course at Merion Cricket Club over George Von Elm in the final. That victory had followed his triumph in the 1923 U.S. Open, when he broke through in the ninth major start of his career. Jones’ “seven lean years” of competing without a victory, as labeled by sportswriter and good friend O.B. Keeler of the Atlanta Journal, were long gone.

Despite being just 23 years old, Jones’ second Oakmont appearance was his eighth U.S. Amateur. Two months earlier, he had come within a whisker of a second U.S. Open title, losing to Willie Macfarlane of Scotland in a playoff at Worcester (Mass.) Country Club. Jones was becoming a fascination of the sports pages despite competing infrequently, on his way to becoming an iconic American figure in the realm of baseball’s Babe Ruth and boxer Jack Dempsey. 

Early in the proceedings at Oakmont, reporters asked Jones’ caddie, Luke Ross, about his player’s prospects. “I don’t know,” Ross said, “but he can give any man in this 4 up and [still] win.”

Jones was joined by eight other Amateur champions in the 1925 field: Robert Gardner (1909, 1915), William C. Fownes Jr. (1910), Francis Ouimet (1914), Chick Evans (1916, 1920), Herron (1919), Jesse Guilford (1921), Jess Sweetser (1922) and Max Marston (1923). At 47, Fownes – son of Oakmont founder and course designer H.C. Fownes – was one of the oldest golfers in the starting field of 133.

Thanks to a new format, the entrants faced what William D. Richardson of the New York Times called a “most grueling struggle.” In contrast to stroke play determining a 32-man bracket for match play – which had been the case starting in 1904 – only 16 players would get through at Oakmont.

Having advanced, they faced 36-hole matches in each round for the first time ever, all on a difficult layout that reflected the philosophy of its founder. “A shot poorly played,” said H.C. Fownes, “should be a shot irrevocably lost.”

Already widely regarded as the country’s toughest course in part because of its many furrowed bunkers prepared by rakes with wide tines, Oakmont was beefed up with more sand prior to the ’25 championship, including railroad cars full of Allegheny River sand to create a huge hazard on the 8th hole. P.C. Pulver of Golf Illustrated said the bunkers of “various shapes and sizes blot the landscape as thickly as freckles on a boy’s face.”

Oakmont’s demands suited Jones. “It’s still the greatest course in the world,” he told reporters after his first practice round, echoing his sentiment of six years earlier. “It is a wonderful course, a punishing course, severely trapped and with a heavy penalty for those who stray away from the straight and narrow path, but with a reward for those who hit them straight.”

Three days after traveling by train from his home in Atlanta to Pittsburgh, Jones impressed in his second practice round, shooting a course-record 67 that the Pittsburgh Post called “nothing short of marvelous.” Jones made it into the compressed match-play field with room to spare, at 147 for 36 holes, two strokes behind medalist Roland MacKenzie, just 18 years old. A handful of Jones’ fellow champions didn’t fare as well, with Ouimet, Evans, Gardner, Herron and Marston failing to qualify.

One of the qualifiers was not well known to most observers but very familiar to Jones. Watts Gunn, 20, was the defending champion’s protégé, a fellow member at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club and a pupil of the instructor so pivotal to Jones’ development, Stewart Maiden. Jones and Gunn – the 1923 Georgia State Amateur champion, who grew up in Macon – played a lot of golf together. Jones thought playing in the National Amateur would be good seasoning for Gunn, a Georgia Tech student, and convinced the younger man’s father to let his son accompany him to Pennsylvania. In the two weeks leading up to their trip north, Maiden worked daily with Gunn to help him hone his game for the big stage.

Jones and Gunn shared a room at the Schenley Hotel, an upscale, Beaux-Arts building replete with marble, chandeliers and a mirrored ballroom. The “Waldorf of Pittsburgh,” located near Forbes Field, home of the Pirates, catered to VIP guests, including business tycoons, politicians, actors and athletes.

Gunn raised his profile with a stunning first-round performance against Vincent Bradford Jr. Three down through 11 to the native Pennsylvanian, Gunn won a record 15 consecutive holes, which led to a 12-and-10 victory and underscored his nickname, “The Southern Hurricane.” Jones also cruised into the quarterfinal round by defeating William Reekie, 11 and 10.

Oakmont hardly needed the elements to make it a tougher test, but that was the case for morning play in the second round, when challenging winds blew across the property following overnight rain. The conditions didn’t hamper Gunn, who continued to impress as he trounced Sweetser, 10 and 9, after under-par golf over the first 18 holes. Gunn’s power was particularly notable in dealing Sweetser “one of the most decisive setbacks that he has ever encountered,” according to the Pittsburgh Post. Jones also continued to play well, defeating Clarence Wolff of Missouri, 6 and 5, the tricky winds not a deterrent to the defender’s pure ballstriking.

With Von Elm defeating Guilford, a repeat of the 1924 final was set for the semifinals. Gunn was matched against Richard Jones of New York. The Atlantans continued their winning ways. Jones defeated Von Elm, 7 and 6, while Gunn pulled away in the second round to beat his Jones, 5 and 3. The assembled reporters – and the telegraphers transmitting their stories – were busy documenting the action and hyping the mentor-pupil final that had developed to give the championship an intriguing storyline. An event that seemed to lose some of its luster when familiar names failed to make it into match play now had an unexpected plot twist.

Could Jones, now a proven winner, put aside friendship to take care of business and be the first to repeat as Amateur champion since Jerry Travers in 1913? Did Gunn have the skill and poise to break through with a tremendous upset over the favorite?

Fog the morning of the final forced a delay in the start of the match. Before the finalists teed off, they had a conversation. “All summer Bob had been starting me off 3 up when I was playing good and 4 up when I wasn’t,” Gunn recalled many years later to his hometown newspaper. “That day I asked him if was going to give me the usual ‘spot’ and he told me, ‘Before we’re through, I’ll give you a whipping, that’s what.’”

But Gunn gave no quarter once they got underway against, as Grantland Rice termed him, “his guide, trainer, playmate and friend.” Gunn continued his solid play, and the match was tied after nine holes. The underdog took the lead on No. 10. “Those who had expected him to break wide open before the supreme golf of Jones were dazzled by his brilliancy with wood and iron,” Rice wrote.

“Clubmates and warm friends – master and pupil, they called us – and before we reached the turn of the first round, I was wondering why I had begged Watts’ father to send him to Oakmont,” Jones later recalled in his 1927 book, “Down the Fairway.”

The tenor of the match began to turn on the 12th hole. One down, Jones was in serious jeopardy on the long par 5, bunkered in three while Gunn was on the green in regulation. As Jones would recount, “If Watts took that hole from me, I’d never catch him. He was playing the most ferocious brand of inspirational golf I had ever seen.”

After escaping the sand, Jones was faced with a crucial par putt he later gauged to be 10 feet; others pegged it at 14 feet. Whatever its exact distance, Jones sank it and stayed only 1 down. Then Jones went on a tear, going 3-3-4-3-3-4 to erase his deficit and surge to a 4-up lead through 18 holes.

As Jones and Gunn repaired to the clubhouse for a break on the hot day, Jones thoughtfully cautioned his opponent and friend not to take a cold bath, lest his muscles stiffen, a lesson Jones had learned by making that mistake, according to Keeler. The men got a rubdown, changed clothes and had lunch as a gallery of 6,000 awaited the resumption of play.

Jones began the afternoon as he had ended the morning – in control. He started birdie-birdie to go 6 up, which, in Jones’ description, “settled matters.” Watts would describe Jones’ flurry of six 3s in eight holes as “a little too hot for me.” Jones rolled to an 8-and-7 victory, for the second of what would be five U.S. Amateur titles.

“That kid had me groggy, and I am not ashamed to confess that he had me worried,” Jones told reporters before embarking on a train home. “Watts did not know how near he came to licking me.”

By Keeler’s accounting, Gunn was 26 over par in 151 holes – highlighted by a 50-hole stretch in which he was 4 under – while Jones was just 7 over in 152 holes on his way to victory two months after losing the U.S. Open in a playoff. “Congratulations,” Willie
Macfarlane wrote in a telegram to Jones. “Have always said you are the greatest golfer in the country, barring none.”

Two days following their match, Jones and Gunn arrived home as conquering heroes, met at the Atlanta train terminal by a brass band and carried to their cars on the shoulders of an admiring throng of supporters. Winner and loser, fellow East Lake
members, had become a part of history. Not since have two players from the same club squared off for the coveted Havemeyer Trophy.

Bill Fields is an award-winning freelance writer whose work has previously appeared in Golf Journal and the USGA website.