Bobby Jones’ 1937 Masters Green Jacket 

 

Before Augusta National presented a Green Jacket to its champion, club co-founder and Walker Cup great Bobby Jones wore this one. Its history, construction and remarkable provenance produced a six-figure auction result.

 

When the 51st Walker Cup begins Saturday at Lahinch Golf Club, nobody in the field will earn a cent for winning a match. That is part of the competition’s appeal. The players represent their countries and the amateur game, with no purse waiting at the end.

Few golfers embodied that ideal more completely than Bobby Jones.

Jones represented the United States in five Walker Cups from 1922 through 1930. He won nine of his 10 matches, served as playing captain in 1928 and 1930, and helped the Americans win every time he appeared.

Seven years after his final Walker Cup, Jones wore a green wool jacket at Augusta National Golf Club. It was not presented for winning the Masters. That tradition had not yet begun.

The jacket nevertheless became one of the most financially significant pieces of golf clothing ever offered publicly. Heritage Auctions sold it for $310,700 in August 2011.

The Jacket Before the Prize

 

 

Augusta National members began wearing Green Jackets in 1937. The familiar garment initially identified club members rather than tournament champions.

Jones’ personal jacket was made by Haskett of New York. The Augusta National emblem was embroidered directly into the lapel pocket instead of being attached as a separate patch, a distinguishing feature from later jackets. Brass buttons remained on the green wool garment, while the initials “RTJ” were embroidered inside the chest pocket.

The tailor’s label offered another important piece of evidence. It carried Jones’ name, “Robert T. Jones Jr.,” along with “Feb/37” and the number 6133.

Heritage described the jacket as the only known surviving example from 1937 and the prototype for the Green Jackets that followed. That distinction is based on the auction house’s research and should be understood as an attributed conclusion rather than an independently established census of every early jacket.

The jacket was created 12 years before the garment became a prize. Sam Snead became the first reigning Masters champion to receive one in 1949, with jackets later presented retroactively to previous winners.

Jones’ example belonged to an earlier chapter. It was a club founder’s jacket, worn when the tradition itself was still taking shape.

From the Walker Cup to Augusta

 

9-time USGA champ Bob Jones (back right) made his final Walker Cup start in 1930, and was joined by 1913 U.S. Open champ Francis Ouimet (bottom row, 2nd from right) and 1926 U.S. Amateur champ George Von Elm (top left), the runner-up in the 1931 U.S. Open. (USGA Archives)

 

The Lahinch connection is not that this jacket appeared in a Walker Cup match. It did not.

The connection is Jones.

Long before he helped establish Augusta National and the Masters, Jones was one of the defining players in Walker Cup history. His appearances stretched from the inaugural match in 1922 through the 1930 contest at Royal St. George’s, where he captained an American team that included Francis Ouimet, George Von Elm and George Voigt.

Jones’ Walker Cup career belonged to the competitive portion of his life. The jacket belonged to what came afterward, when his influence moved beyond trophies and scoreboards.

That progression gives the object much of its historical weight. It connects the great amateur competitor with the club founder who helped create a tournament and visual tradition that reshaped golf.

Collectors are not simply looking at green wool, brass buttons and an embroidered pocket. They are looking at a physical marker between two chapters of Jones’ life.

What the $310,700 Sale Actually Shows

Heritage Auctions sold the jacket on Aug. 4, 2011. The company reported a realized price of $310,700, and the auction carried a 19.5% buyer’s premium.

That figure is a documented historical sale result. It is not a current appraisal, nor does it establish what the jacket would bring if it returned to market.

The result becomes more revealing when compared with Jones collectibles that have a direct visual connection to the Walker Cup.

In October 2006, Heritage sold a large photograph of Jones posing with the four trophies from his 1930 Grand Slam. The Walker Cup appeared at the center of the display. Jones had signed and inscribed the photograph, which sold for $13,145 in an auction carrying a 19.5% buyer’s premium.

Another signed 1930 photograph showed Jones with writer O.B. Keeler and the same collection of trophies. Jones inscribed it to Keeler, whose estate retained it until 1966. Accompanied by a letter tracing that provenance and a PSA/DNA authentication letter, it sold through The Golf Auction in March 2022 for $8,674.51, including a 19.5% buyer’s premium.

Those photographs are important Walker Cup-related artifacts. Their results, however, remained far below the price reached by the 1937 jacket.

The comparison is not exact. The objects were sold in different years, through different auctions and under different market conditions. It does show how the identity of an artifact can matter as much as the identity of the person connected to it.

Provenance Made the Difference

A famous name alone does not explain a $310,700 result.

According to the Heritage lot record, Jones gave the jacket to the artist who painted his portrait for Augusta National. A notarized 1991 letter documented the subsequent chain of custody. Frank Christian, who served for decades as Augusta National’s club photographer, also provided a letter addressing the jacket’s early style.

The interior markings supplied physical evidence. The direct embroidery of the club emblem distinguished the jacket from later examples. Its reported original condition further strengthened its presentation when it reached the auction block.

Together, those details addressed the questions serious collectors should ask:

Is the object precisely identified?

Can its ownership history be followed?

Do its construction and markings fit the period?

Has a knowledgeable authority examined it?

Does the artifact occupy an important place in the larger story of golf?

For Jones’ jacket, the auction record offered answers to each question.

A Piece of Golf’s Changing Identity

The Walker Cup and the Green Jacket represent different parts of golf, but Bobby Jones gave lasting meaning to both.

At the Walker Cup, he represented an amateur tradition built around competition without prize money. At Augusta National, he helped create a tournament whose symbols became recognized around the world.

His 1937 jacket stands between those histories.

Its $310,700 sale attracts attention, as it should. The deeper value of the artifact comes from what survived with it: the tailor’s label, Jones’ initials, the unusual embroidery, the ownership trail and the story of a tradition before anyone knew how enduring it would become.

A scoreboard can tell us that Jones won nine Walker Cup matches. This jacket preserves something the record cannot. It allows us to see the moment when one of amateur golf’s greatest competitors began wearing the symbol of the institution he helped build.