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7 books for golfers and fairway fans

4. “A Difficult Par: Robert Trent Jones Sr. and the Making of Modern Golf”

  • By Ross Atkin Staff writer

By James R. Hansen

Gotham Books

500 pages

(Robert Trent Jones Sr. was a renowned and prolific golf course architect who designed about 500 courses around the world.)

“Robert Trent Jones himself called the property that became the golf course at Spyglass Hill his 'dream' golf course and 'the greatest challenge of his life.' It was located on the breathtaking Monterey [Calif.] Peninsula, some ninety miles south of San Francisco and one of the most beautiful spots in all of America. In his rare visits there, Trent Jones had watched blue-green waves from the Pacific crash against copper-brown rocks where colonies of seals alternately frolicked and dozed; seen beachcombers picking up shells or straining to hear the call of whales; pondered the hills and craggy bluffs that tumbled into the sea, and surveyed the uneven, snow-white sand dunes, twisted wintergreen cypress trees, and towering virgin pine. 

“… Trent absolutely loved the way his design of Spyglass Hill turned out – all 6,972 yards and par 72 of it. … He loved the course’s dramatic change of pace; if some saw the mixture of woods and open sand as ‘severe,’ so be it, but for most golfers, Jones felt, the combination was highly original and extraordinarily rare in its beauty. For Jones, Spyglass Hill would always be ‘a very special course’ and one that he believed was ‘unique as well as great’ because there was ‘such a variety in the character of the holes.’ Especially on the opening five holes played in the dunescape down by the ocean, the wind played havoc, disguising its direction and velocity and ‘making great shots land in such unanticipated locations’ that the golfer could ‘become really confused and lose patience.’’”

Reprinted by arrangement with GOTHAM BOOKS, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © JAMES R. HANSEN, 2014.

Available for pre-order now and available everywhere books are sold in May.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

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