The Slam: Bobby Jones and the Price of Glory

by Curt Sampson

Book Overview

An intriguing and detailed look at the greatest season a golfer has ever had--when Bobby Jones became the first golfer to win all four major championships in one year The year 2005 marks the 75th... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159486120X
• ISBN13: 9781594861208
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Rodale Books
• Length: 262 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Best Book Yet by Sampson

I was pleasantly surprised with 'The Slam'. I have come to enjoy Curt's books over the years, but this one is his best, by far. (...)

Interesting, enlightening, but with a certain tunnel vision

A marvelous look at the pressure that a champion athlete faces as he attempts to achieve something never done before. Few accounts offer the depth Mr. Sampson does as to the pressure Bobby Jones faced and the turmoil he experienced as he attempted to win the 1930 Grand Slam. The Bobby Jones of "The Slam" is a fellow you would want to play a round with and then drink a round with, and not the marble statute of most golf hagiography. Jones comes across as talented, driven, conflicted, troubled, yet handling the pressure with grace and resolve. Mr. Sampson has a cynical side to his writing, and it comes out in this book in his accounts of Jones and the USGA. Mr. Sampson spends a significant amount of time in explicit and implicit references to a controversial ruling on the next to last hole of the 1930 US Open. The ruling may have kept Jones from missing first place. However, as much time as Sampson devotes to what is arguably the critical point of the 1930 campaign, he still does not fully bring the point home. The ruling was based on a local rule, and Sampson suggests that the rule was not made evident to the players. Yet Mark Frost's biography of Jones indicates that all players were made aware of the rule. Who is correct? Sampson talks about players complaining about the ruling, but who were the players? Supposedly the ruling not only saved Jones a stroke, but placed him in an exceptionally advantageous position for his next shot...but from Mr. Sampson's description I could not get a good fix on the geography. A map would have been helpful. A good book, and a book that does Bobby Jones a service in making him human again, but often hampered by the author's tunnel vision about "The Ruling" and the man who made it, Prescott Bush. Yep, the future US Senator and father and grandfather to presidents.