The Legend of Bagger Vance: A Novel of Golf and the Game of Life by Steven Pressfield
“What motorcade?”
“Don’t y’all know nothing? The motorcade out to Krewe Island!”
Eight
TO UNDERSTAND BOBBY JONES’ STATURE in the South at that time, you have to remember that the War of Northern Aggression (as we called it in our family), or Civil War as the Yankees preferred, had by no means then receded into the benign past. Its memory was fresh as a still-open wound. Not so much the war itself, for the South had achieved abundant glory on the battlefield, nor even the fact of defeat, for in surrender the nation yet maintained a certain grim dignity. It was that obscene and lingering hell euphemistically labeled Reconstruction that rent the Southland’s soul and ground her honor into the dirt.
As recently as the 1870s, private property was still being confiscated under the Domestic Reparations Act. My own grandfather had all his weapons, including two antique shotguns and a Tennessee long rifle forcibly taken from his house by Federal officers in ’79. I still recall the cold rage of that proud gentleman when he spoke of the helplessness and despair he endured in that moment. Families were still being put off the land in the 1880s, and the poor agrarian Negro, who of all was most blameless, was still being exploited by that element of shameless Northern locust known as the carpetbagger.
Then must come the admission that in each Southerner’s private heart, even the most ignorant cracker and peckerwood’s, lay hidden the dishonorable truth that our side, however valiant its champions, however noble its defense of sacred home soil, was the side that stood in line with human slavery and fought for its preservation.
This secret knowledge of our collective guilt, which none but the most courageous would give thought, let alone voice to, lent an added agony to our nation’s vanquishment and prostration. My father said many times that the wonder wasn’t that the South expressed so much rage, as that she expressed so little. Compare her to Weimar Germany, after its mortification at Compiègne.
It was that same pain, the loss of national manhood, that the South felt so keenly. Not just the men, whose culture had been built on a beau ideal of manly pride and virtue, but the women, children and servants whose psychological security depended upon the stability and power of their fathers, brothers and sons.
The Great War helped. The heroics of Southern warriors like Alvin York of Tennessee and General Black Jack Pershing. But even their spectacular exploits were performed beneath the stars and stripes of the hated Yankee flag. As late as the 1920s, the South had not produced a champion with the combined virtues of spectacular achievement and Southern purity.
Not until Robert Tyre Jones, Jr., of Atlanta.
Permit me, Michael, passing over his scores of lesser triumphs, to recall only the major championships Jones collected over a brief seven years.
1923 U.S. Open
1924 U.S. Amateur
1925 U.S. Amateur
1926 British Open, U.S. Open
1927 British Open, U.S. Amateur
1928 U.S. Amateur
1929 U.S. Open
1930 British Amateur, British Open, U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur
In that brilliant span, Jones won 13 of the 21 national championships he entered. He won all three of the British Opens he played in and one of the two British Amateurs. In nine U.S. Opens from ’22 to ’30 he finished first four times and second four times. So dominant was he in his prime that the two professional titans of the day, Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen, never won an Open championship, in Britain or America, in which Jones was also entered.
Bobby crowned this incomparable stretch, surely the most glorious ever in American sport, with the Grand Slam of 1930. He retired from competitive golf then at the pinnacle, at age twenty-eight.
I remember the city of Savannah, and no doubt the entire South, glued to the radio broadcast of the ticker-tape parade down Broadway, when Bobby returned from Britain with the first two legs of the Grand Slam. You could hear the cheers and the music, the harsh Yankee voices of the broadcasters describing the scene. Then the microphone was placed before Jones. Over the air came that soft Georgia accent. My father had to turn his face away to hide his emotion. My mother wept openly.
Here at last was our Grail Knight, our Parsifal. Jones’ triumphs, the very fact of his existence, seemed all by themselves to recall the South from decades of ignominy and exile. His graciousness, his gentility, the fact that he was not a coarse Northern striver but a gentle-born chevalier, an amateur. Jones embodied the finest qualities of Southern manhood and he had not just whipped the Yankees but the whole damn world.
And now here he was. In our city. Crossing the causeways in an open car toward our own Krewe Island. From our perch atop Albert’s watermelon truck, my brother and I could see the glistening wetlands extending ahead for half a dozen miles and, rising out of them by the sea, the towers of Krewe Island’s grand hotel. It was a pilgrimage. The motorcade stretched a hundred cars ahead and hundreds more behind; Model A’s and Plymouths, Reos and Auburns and Packards, crawling, sputtering, backfiring from their sizzling-hot, trembling exhausts. Farmers’ wagons choked the route. Autos would overheat and stall and be pushed out of the way by the onswarming pilgrims, sometimes straight into the wetland muck, like casualties being shouldered aside by an advancing army.
Hagen was up there beside Bobby, suntanned so dark he looked wood-stained, grinning to the girls and favoring the matrons with a little cavalier gesture of his hat. Flowers were being tossed into the open back of the car. Bystanders pressed apples and pears on the heros. “Bobby! Bobby!” they cried, even the barefoot swampers for whom golf, or the idea of sport period, was as alien as some notion from the moon.
Bobby was their knight too. He had crossed the ocean to take on the world’s best and come home bearing not just their silver cups, but their admiration and respect as well.
Jones stood on a par with the other titans of the decade—Lindbergh, Dempsey, Tilden, Ruth—and, in the eyes of many, surpassed them all.
But where was Junah?
Had anyone contacted him? Did he even know that Jones and Hagen had arrived? Would he miss the practice round? I strained my eyes in every direction but saw no sign of the Ford or the Chalmers.
At Krewe Island, the scene broke down into pure merry bedlam. Cars parked anywhere they could, on fairways, levees, raw gooey muck; a mass surge swept Hagen and Jones on toward the hotel and the tented pavilion that had been erected outside. Garland and I wriggled forward, worming our way through the crowd. With a leap and a hand from Judge Anderson, we were home free. Up there! On the podium.
There must have been fifty reporters, plus every political scalawag for 500 miles, all jostling for position in front of the cameras. Adele Invergordon was up front, looking glamorous and mouthing words of welcome which were utterly lost in the feedback and echo of the microphones sputtering for power. It took almost ten minutes for something resembling order, not to mention electrical current, to arrive, and Garland and I used every second to wriggle our way closer. I was scuffling with one meaty fellow, right up near the mikes. He stepped on my foot, just about breaking my toes; I turned to curse him and saw his huge suntanned hands. It was Hagen.
He squeezed through, up to the mikes, just as Adele Invergordon finished introducing Bobby. I couldn’t take my eyes off Hagen’s suntan. It was the darkest, most glistening and flawless I had ever seen. Even the crinkles around his eyes were bronze. This was in the days, remember, when men did everything to stay out of the sun. Hats were universal, collars high; to see a man bareheaded outdoors was a rarity and being tanned or burned was a sign of low station, of one whom necessity forced to labor in the heat of the sun.
Yet on Hagen, that tan shone like a badge of honor. It evoked sun-drenched fairways and Côte d’Azur beaches, deck chairs on the France and champagne at concours d’elegance. Every kid within eyeshot vowed instantly to spend each future second in the sun, till he too had achieved that godlike luster.
The Haig was thirty-eight then, with his name engraved on the
But it was Bobby who was speaking now before the mikes. From the far side, at last we saw Junah arriving amid an escort of troopers with Bagger Vance striding powerfully beside him. They made their way swiftly through the crush, Vance helping Junah ascend to the platform, then himself withdrawing among the crowd. Jones noted Junah’s arrival with a cordial nod, gesturing for the others on the podium to clear a space. A reporter called out, “Sir! Mr. Jones!” It was Arnold Langer, just below Bobby in the crush.
“You’ve been quoted as stating that golf is actually three different games. Golf, tournament golf and major championship golf. In which category, sir, would you place this match?”
Jones smiled and the throng chuckled with him. It was a good question.
“There is always one measure by which any match can be evaluated. That is the skill and courage of one’s opponents. When a man’s foes are worthy, every match is at championship level.”
Hagen grinned broadly and made a little impromptu bow. The crowd roared with affection and approval.
“My worthy adversary here, for example.” Jones gestured not to Hagen, but to Junah. “I’ve never actually had the pleasure of competing head-to-head with Mr. Junah, but he and Jess Sweetser did skin five dollars from myself and Watts Gunn in a practice round before the ’28 Walker Cup.” A surge of laughter and applause from the throng. “I don’t believe Mr. Junah missed a putt under ten feet all day—and certainly not when there was money to be made!”
The crowd roared with delight and appreciation. Many of them, no doubt virtually all of the out-of-town arrivals, had never heard of Junah and almost certainly regarded his inclusion in this event as a rather embarrassing sop to local pride. Now they relented somewhat in this harsh appraisal. It was Jones’ doing, deliberately, being the gentleman he was, to include Junah and set him in the light of a credible opponent.
On Junah’s face could be seen acknowledgment and gratitude for this gesture. Yet still his emotion, if a word must be given to it, was mortification. He seemed self-conscious and uncomfortable, standing there as the cheers of the locals rang around him and Jones’ smiling gesture turned to the other side of the platform. To Hagen.
“As for this fellow”—Jones’ soft accent reverberated through the loudspeakers—“whose name for the moment escapes me…”
Deafening laughter and applause. Hagen beamed. Jones had won the crowd utterly. With a modest wave (you could see he relished the act of public speaking not at all), he stepped back and turned the microphone over to Hagen.
A fresh surge of enthusiasm swept through the crowd as the Haig came forward. He was wearing gray plus fours with matching argyle socks and the type of two-tone shoe we used to call “spectators.” His linen shirt was white, with a dove-gray tie the precise hue of his plus fours. Everyone else was wringing and sopped. Hagen’s shirt betrayed not a smack of sweat.
“It is indeed an honor,” Hagen spoke slowly and clearly into the mikes, “to compete against a man whom many consider to be the greatest ever to pick up a club. A man not only blessed with matinee-idol good looks and animal magnetism, but also one of the truly fine gentlemen of the era. But enough about me….”
The crowd roared. Jones was laughing with genuine enthusiasm, I could see Keeler rocking appreciatively and nodding his head.
Hagen, it should be remembered, of all the knights who ever strode the fairways, ranks behind only Jones and Jack Nicklaus in number of major championships won. Eleven in all, ahead of Hogan, Snead, Palmer, Watson, ahead of all save the two greatest ever. The Haig took the U.S. Open at Midlothian in 1914 and at Brae Burn in ’19. He captured the British four times, at Royal St. George’s twice, in ’22 and ’28, at Hoylake in ’24 and one final time at Muirfield, 1929.
Then there was the PGA, which was held at match play in those years. Hagen transformed this championship into his own private fiefdom, winning first in ’21, then four times in a row, ’24, ’25, ’26, ’27.
Then there was that royal shellacking he gave Jones in their first head-to-head exhibition match in Florida. The fans hadn’t forgotten it and neither, the bet was sure, had Bobby.
As I watched that brilliant pair up front on the podium, a thought, or more precisely an emotion, struck me then with a power that has not left in all these years.
I had the profound sense of these two, Jones and Hagen (and even Keeler in an odd way), as being something other than mortal. They seemed a breed beyond. A finer, higher order of being. Creatures who inhabited a nobler, loftier plane than we mundane humans; beings bordering on, and perhaps at times crossing over into, being gods.
I looked at Hagen, beaming with his glowing dark skin and brilliantined hair, holding the multitude enthralled with his power and magnetism. You could understand how this man had defeated 22 opponents in a row, 22 of the finest players in the world, over four consecutive PGA championships, all of which he had won. It was a function not so much, one felt, of his skill as a player, as of his power as a competitor. He was daunting, intimidating, overwhelming.
I turned next to Jones. There are two things that photographs, and even films of him, never quite depict. First was his athleticism. Even at his modest height and size, even with the air of intelligence and gentlemanliness he projected, even in his shirt and tie when he seemed more a figure for a veranda than an arena, he exuded a youth and strength that were frightening. His shoulders underneath his cotton shirt were broad and powerful; he stood like a supple god. There was something almost Greek about him, and yet at the same time consummately American.
Then there was his handsomeness. You’ve no doubt seen numerous photos of the man, Michael, perhaps even some of this very day at Krewe Island. But none do justice to the man that stood before the multitude in his youth and prime. My God, he was handsome! His skin, like Hagen’s, seemed to glow with an inner fire that the rest of us had been denied. His eyes were bright with power and intelligence and his whole modest understated demeanor only added to what I must call, for no other word will accurately describe it, his beauty. Almost unaware of it, vaguely embarrassed by it, never dreaming of capitalizing on it. If it makes sense, I may say his good looks were “amateur.” Do you know what I mean?
The terrifying thought occurred to me, as perhaps it did simultaneously to the whole crowd, or at least our local Georgia half of it, that these two titans would utterly trample and annihilate our homegrown knight. A chill coursed through me. I knew I must turn next to Junah, but I was afraid to. Afraid that after the glow and power of Hagen and Jones, that my eyes would settle on our local champion and find him a mere mortal. I had to force myself, force my eyes to swing and focus on Junah, whom I could sense now moving to the microphones. I heard his voice before I could make myself actually look.
“Now I know what a sacrificial lamb feels like.”
I opened my eyes…and Junah held up! Thank God! A wave of relief flooded through me at the same time the crowd’s enthusiastic laughter swept upward to the podium. Junah too had that look. That look of power and athleticism, the capability, one sensed, of rising to levels beyond the mortal. He too seemed cut from that same transcendent cloth.
The whole crowd must have been silently thinking the same thing, for at that moment an audible “Ahhh” seemed to expel from a thousand throats. In that instant, the people of Savannah took Junah to their hearts. He became in that instant their champion, and all their hopes attached themselves with joy to his fate.
“So be it”—Junah gestured toward Hagen and Jones—“lead me on to the slaughter,” and the crowd inundated him and the platform with their heartfelt cheers.
Right behind Garland and me stood Judge Anderson, the man whose prideful insistence had forced Junah into this match and o
Junah melted back, away from the microphone, as the cheers redoubled in anticipation of the upcoming practice round. I had one brief moment to glimpse his face, before dozens of swarming bodies intervened, and what I saw confused and chilled me.
Not warmed whatever by the applause, Junah’s expression seemed more than ever to be one of distance and despair. Dark clouds lowered upon him. I glanced into the crowd and saw Bagger Vance, watching just as he had that first night, with utter detached objectivity. Then he too was swallowed by the throng.
Nine
THAT AFTERNOON PASSED as the most excruciating hell I had ever experienced in my young boy’s life. It was torment at its purest, for I was dispatched onto the course, supposedly in a position of responsibility and honor, yet that very position kept me just out of range of seeing the players and the round. I missed everything.
Do you know what a forecaddie is, Michael? I didn’t, until I found myself in the tumult following the welcoming ceremonies being swept up by two of Dougal McDermott’s assistant professionals and whisked with seven other boys, amid much urgency and excitement, into Krewe Island’s staff locker area. There tailors were waiting to fit us (and scores of other marshals, officials and gallery guards) with navy-blue plus fours, white linen shirts with the Krewe Island monogram, and matching navy neckties. It was clear this was a great honor; my inclusion was apparently in deference to my father’s position in the community, and also a reward for my own work of the night before. It meant nothing to me; all I wanted was to be with Junah and Bagger Vance.