The Lily Pad Shot

Despite a particularly dire weather forecast, we got our 4th of July round of golf in, finishing shortly before the storms arrived.  We have eight players in our group, and draw tiles Maggot had printed for the occasion for the groupings.  Lately our starter has requested that he have the groupings earlier, so Maggot's housekeeper typically draws the names mid-week.

Today we experienced shrinkage (not that kind), as the weather forecast left us with five players.  In golf, as opposed to romance, five is the loneliest number, or at least the most awkward...  With no openings elsewhere he let us go as a five-ball, and of course we waited on the four-ball in front on almost every shot (though they might not have been the guilty party).

So we had lots of time to tell jokes and stories, as well as to make fun of Nathan's outfit.  On No. 6, a stout Par-4 with the second shot over water (it's our No. 2 handicap hole), Maggot's second came up short, but miraculously skipped across the water and onto the green.  On the next tee I asked if anyone had ever heard of the lily pad shot, and since no one had I filled them in on some Bobby Jones golf history.

Now I got the gist of it right, but I confused some of the particulars, so this will be part mea culpa, part correction.  It took place at Interlachen in 1930, in the second round of the U.S. Open.  From the Bobby Jones website:

"During the second round of the tournament, Jones pushed his tee shot to the right on the ninth hole along the bank of a lake. Attempting to go for the green in two, Jones was in the middle of his backswing when two young girls broke from the crowd and ran toward the fairway. Jones, catching a glimpse of them with his peripheral vision, flinched on the shot and topped the ball toward the lake where it struck the water some twenty yards short of the far bank. Amazingly, the ball skipped like a flat stone on the water and came out on the other side just thirty yards short of the green. Jones would chip to within two feet and finish the hole with an unlikely birdie. Although Jones would later refute the notion, spectators swore the ball had struck a lily pad floating in the lake. Forever dubbed the 'lily pad shot,' this strange event merely added to the already larger–than–life legend of Bobby Jones."

Readers will recognize that as Jones's Grand Slam year, and his two-shot victory over Macdonald Smith was the third leg.  Since the fortuitous bounce logically saved him at least the two strokes, it's importance in golf history is assured.  And since we're recounting ancient history, Macdonald Smith's second place check (which would have been the winner's purse had a professional won) was $1,000.

Two other items of possible interest from that event.  First, Jones was the beneficiary of an extremely favorable ruling late in his final round:

A third-round 68 gave Jones a 5-stroke lead heading into the final round. But Jones made it

interesting when his tee ball on the 17th hole - a 263-yard par-3 - couldn't be found. It was finally determined the ball must have wound up in a water hazard, even though nobody actually saw that happen. Jones dropped and made double-bogey, cutting his lead over Macdonald Smith to one stroke. 

But on the final hole, Jones rolled in a 40-foot birdie putt to win by two. Jones completed the Grand Slam by winning the U.S. Amateur shortly after at Merion. He then retired from competitive golf.

Did you catch that?  A 263-yard par-3 in the era of hickory shafts?  And we think golf is hard now!

That's not all that was brutal that week.  Notwithstanding that the Open was held at Minnesota's Interlachen, the week saw a brutal heat wave, with contemporary accounts noting temperatures north of 100 degrees in the shade.  And this was of course in the days before air conditioning (not to mention breathable microfibers) but well within the era when the U.S. Open concluded with 36 holes.

Jones was fond of a certain tee of the era that happened to be red.  One can imagine that the heat in his front pockets approached 125 degrees, and caused the red from the tees to seep into his light-colored pants, leading many to conclude that he was bleeding.  Fortunately no, but he was sweating profusely as was everyone else there that week.

And thus concludes today's history lesson.