Bobby Jones had three great female amateurs who intersected with is life at key times, influencing his temperament, golf game, humility and ultimately, his vision for Augusta National.
The conclusion of the Augusta National Women’s Amateur Saturday – won by Jennifer Kupcho – allows us the opportunity to showcase three of the all time great female amateur golfer: Alexa Stirling, Joyce Wethered and Marion Hollins (above). Jones was an outlier when it came to admiring, respecting and benefitting from his friendships with these women.
The story is told in this a Golf Channel feature produced by Dominic Dastoli and written and voiced by this author:
In the meantime, David Owen, who contributed to the feature, continues the great work of David Outerbridge and Bob Beck in telling the story of Hollins, the 1921 U.S. Amateur champion, a giant figure in the 1920s golf world and an underrated figure in shaping the development of Augusta National.
From Owen’s New Yorker piece this week:
Hollins, in addition to providing the original model for Augusta National, made one small direct contribution to its golf course—as I myself discovered in the late nineties, while I was researching my book “The Making of the Masters.” In 1931, Roberts complained to MacKenzie, in a letter, that MacKenzie wasn’t spending enough time in Augusta during the construction of the course. The main reason was that MacKenzie had money troubles of his own, including the fact that Augusta National had stopped paying him. But in his place he sent Hollins, who at that point was more than flush. “She has been associated with me in three golf courses, and not only are her own ideas valuable, but she is thoroughly conversant in regard to the character of the work I like,” he wrote to Roberts. “I want her views and also her personal impressions in regard to the way the work is being carried out.” Roberts was unhappy not to have MacKenzie himself, and he said that Jones would be unhappy, too. But MacKenzie defended Hollins in another letter, to the engineer who was supervising construction of the course. “I do not know any man, who has sounder ideas,” he wrote, and added, “She was most favourably impressed with it.”
The 83rd Masters begins on Thursday.
