The spirit of Bobby Jones oozes from every corner of the Atlanta Athletic Club. Its address is Bobby Jones Drive. A statue of golf’s greatest amateur stands in front of the English manor clubhouse. The largest collection of Jones memorabilia anywhere is housed in the museum inside. Of the three Georgia golf shrines to its native son – Jones’ legend was born at AAC’s original East Lake golf venue and his legacy was built across the state at Augusta National – the club where he once presided as president and maintained a lifelong membership until his death in 1971 is where Jones’ love and devotion to the game and its amateur practitioners most actively resides.
Fittingly, it is also where the culmination of Jones’ greatest competitive achievement – the 1930 Grand Slam clincher in the U.S. Amateur – will celebrate its centennial.
The Atlanta Athletic Club will play host to the 2030 U.S. Amateur Championship on the 100th anniversary of Jones’ final competitive victory that capped his Grand Slam season in 1930. That event will take place in the month after the 2030 U.S. Open is held at Merion Golf Club, where Jones won the last leg by beating Eugene Homans, 8 and 7, in the 36-hole U.S. Amateur final. He returned to Atlanta with the trophy and promptly retired from competitive golf at age 28.
“For me personally to know that the centennial of the Grand Slam is coming to my grandfather’s home club in my hometown, it’s almost moving beyond words,” said Bob Jones IV, the grandson of Robert Tyre Jones Jr. and a member of the Atlanta Athletic Club. “We have an opportunity for us as a club and us as a family to, over the next seven or eight years, retell the Bobby Jones story for a new generation and get people to see him more in living color than just simply as a sepia photograph. We’re very excited about it.”
“I don’t think there can be anything bigger than that,” said Kevin Costello, the AAC president, of getting to celebrate Jones’ centennial victory at his home club. “He’s the most famous member of our club and the best amateur of all time. To be able to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his slam with the Amateur, there’s nothing that could have been better for us.”
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