By Judy Taylor Cramer
Managing Editor, Florida State Times
Before the million-dollar prize money, before the lucrative endorsements,
before the made-for-TV skins games, there was Bobby Jones.
Amateur golfer, Grand Slam winner, Augusta National founder, Harvard graduate,
lawyer, author, family man, but most of all, gentleman.
It was Bobby Jones, the gentleman, who first fascinated Tallahassee attorney
Sidney Matthew (FSU Law '74). And it was Jones' life on and off the golf
course that has become Matthew's "ultimate obsession."
That obsession has taken shape in a coffee-table book, The Life and Times
of Bobby Jones, in its third printing, and a documentary of the same name
scheduled to be aired on national television before the final rounds of
this year's Masters tournament in April.
Matthew, who has practiced law in the same downtown Tallahassee office for
20 years, considers himself a student of golf history.
"I grew up in a golf mecca without paying much attention," he
said of his boyhood in Dunedin, Fla. He was surrounded by some of the big
names of golf from the '40s and '50s, but he and his friends just thought
of them as " a bunch of old men who didn't feel very well."
After he broke his neck playing high school football, Matthew switched to
golf and became a student of the game under the wise and watchful eyes of
some of those same "old men."
During his law school years at FSU, Matthew spent a term at Oxford and "took
the train to every golf course in Scotland and England." Years later,
Matthew was taking a deposition in Atlanta in the Bob Jones Conference Room
at the Atlanta law firm of Jones, Byrd, and Howell, where Jones practiced
law beginning in 1928.
"As I looked around and talked to some of the partners who remembered
Jones, I began to think, 'Hey, this was a pretty interesting guy.'"
By the time this "interesting guy" retired from golf in 1930 at
age 28, he had won every important tournament as an amateur. He had won
the four majors in a single season, a feat that has never been duplicated.
Jones also held degrees in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech and
English literature from Harvard and had passed the bar exam in Georgia after
only a year of law school.
Matthew began reading Jones' writings and collecting information about his
golf clubs. The result was Matthew's first book "The History of Bobby
Jones' Clubs." He broadened his personal collection to include golf
balls, films, photographs, even the type of shoes Jones wore.
Matthew resolved to do another book because "I was concerned all that
history could be lost." It took him 10 years to compile the 297-page
"pictorial biography" while at the same time producing the film
History and Tradition of Golf in Scotland and the Jones documentary.
Since he's finished (for now) writing about golf, Matthew may actually have
time to play golf. He used to play two or three times a week, and even caddied
for former FSU golfer and PGA touring professional Kenny Knox at the 55th
Masters Tournament.
"I'm a typical struggling player who will look forever for all the
secrets but never find them," said Matthew, sounding like a true gentleman
of the game.
The Life and Times of Bobby Jones, by Sidney L. Matthew, Copyright 1995,
Sleeping Bear Press, $49.95