The 1916 U.S. Amateur Program That Caught Bobby Jones at the Beginning

 

 

                 1916 National Amateur at Merion GC Rare Program – Bobby Jones Debut at 14yrs Old. Credit: The Golf Auction

 

At first glance, it is not an especially imposing object.

The softcover program is yellow, with binding staples that have rusted with age. It was printed for the National Amateur Championship held Sept. 4-9, 1916, at what was then Merion Cricket Club. According to a 2023 auction description, the Northeast Brooklyn Daily Eagle published it.

Nothing about the booklet could have told its original owner what it would eventually represent.

Anyone who has worked around golf tournaments knows what normally happens to programs. They are folded into back pockets, marked with scores, left in hospitality areas or tossed into a car after the final round. They are useful until the championship ends. After that, survival depends on someone deciding that a disposable piece of tournament paper is worth keeping.

This one survived 110 years.

With the U.S. Amateur back at Merion this week, the booklet offers a remarkably direct connection to the championship’s first visit to the East Course. It also takes us back to Bobby Jones before the championships, the Grand Slam and the legend made his success look almost inevitable.

A Paper Trail We Can Follow

 

 

1916 National Amateur at Merion GC Rare Program – Bobby Jones Debut at 14yrs Old. Credit: The Golf Auction

 

The public history of the program becomes clear in 2005, when it was displayed in the World Golf Hall of Fame exhibition “Bobby Jones: A Salute to the Grand Slam.”

Golden Age Auctions later reported that the program came from a private Midwest collection assembled over three decades. Several pieces from that collection were loaned to the Hall of Fame for the Jones exhibition, alongside material from the USGA, The R&A, Augusta National and Merion.

In August 2014, Golden Age sold the program for $10,714.55 after 29 bids. The archived lot does not explain whether that total includes a buyer’s premium, so the safest approach is to report the figure exactly as the auction house does.

The program resurfaced in June 2023. The Golf Auction identified it as the same copy exhibited at the Hall of Fame and previously sold through Golden Age. The familiar custom clamshell case provided another point of comparison. It brought one bid and realized $11,950, including a 19.5% buyer’s premium.

That gives the program a useful modern trail: exhibition in 2005, a documented sale in 2014 and another in 2023.

What it does not provide is a complete ownership history dating to 1916. The successful buyers have not been publicly identified, and the auction records do not explain where the program spent its first nine decades. Its current ownership is also unconfirmed.

Those gaps should not be hidden behind the word “provenance.” What we have is a strong record of the program’s recent history, not an unbroken chain back to Merion.

The Week Jones Became a National Story

The star of the 1916 U.S. Amateur was supposed to be Charles “Chick” Evans.

Evans arrived at Merion three months after winning the U.S. Open at Minikahda Club. He defeated defending champion Robert Gardner, 4 and 3, in the 36-hole final, becoming the first golfer to win the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur in the same year.

Yet much of the attention shifted toward a 14-year-old from Atlanta playing outside the South for the first time.

Jones traveled to Philadelphia with childhood friend Perry Adair. The USGA’s account says they stayed at the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel, rode the train to Merion each day and traveled lightly. Jones brought one pair of pants and one pair of shoes, apparently not expecting an extended stay.

He stayed longer than most people expected.

Jones defeated 1908 U.S. Amateur champion Eben Byers, 4 and 2, in the opening round. He followed with another 4-and-2 victory over Frank Dyer before Gardner eliminated him in the quarterfinals.

The program could not know that any of this would matter beyond the week. To its first owner, Jones was one name among the entrants. Evans was the established champion chasing a historic double. Gardner was the defending titleholder. Jones was simply the unusually talented boy people had begun following around Merion.

That uncertainty is now one of the program’s greatest strengths.

By 1930, Everyone Knew Who Jones Was

 

 

1930 US Amateur Championship at Merion Program – Bobby Jones Completes Grand Slam! Credit: The Golf Auction

 

A surviving program from the 1930 U.S. Amateur shows just how much had changed.

By then, Jones had won the U.S. Amateur four times, including his first title at Merion in 1924. He returned in 1930 after winning The Amateur Championship, The Open Championship and the U.S. Open. Merion stood between Jones and the Grand Slam of his era.

Heritage Auctions sold a 96-page program from that championship in May 2015. Its original owner had penciled the match-play bracket on Page 35, following the field until only Jones remained.

The copy had been used. Heritage noted a tear along the right edge of the cover, paper loss, a faint vertical bend and scattered toning. For this particular object, those marks add context. Somebody carried the program and updated the bracket while Jones worked his way toward the final.

An estimated 18,000 spectators came to Merion to see him defeat Eugene Homans, 8 and 7. Nobody in that gallery needed to be told that Jones mattered.

The marked program realized $3,107, including Heritage’s 19.5% buyer’s premium. Another 1930 program, described by The Golf Auction as being in excellent condition with all pages intact, sold in June 2018 for $5,033.70, including a 17.5% premium.

Those sales do not establish a fixed value for all 1930 programs. They involved different copies, different condition reports and different pools of bidders. They are reference points, not price guarantees.

Scarcity Claims Need an Expiration Date

Both auction houses that handled the 1916 program described it as the only known surviving copy. Golden Age based its 2014 statement partly on the 2004 edition of Gilchrist’s Guide to Golf Collectibles, which reportedly listed no known examples.

That is meaningful evidence of scarcity, but it remains an auction-catalog claim. Another example could be sitting unidentified in a club archive, family collection or box of old tournament material.

Collectors should treat “only known” as a statement about the evidence available at a particular moment. It is not a promise that another copy can never surface.

The market history deserves similar restraint. The 1916 program realized $10,714.55 in 2014 and $11,950, including premium, in 2023. The later sale attracted one bid. Those facts document two transactions involving what the auction houses identify as the same object. They do not create a reliable appreciation rate or establish its present value.

Its appeal is rooted elsewhere: the early date, the Merion connection, its reported scarcity, its Hall of Fame exhibition history and its association with Jones’ first national championship.

The 1930 program records the ending everyone came to see. Its marked bracket tracks Jones through the final championship of his competitive career.

The 1916 program is different. It carries no such certainty. It caught Jones when he was 14, lightly packed and largely unknown outside the South. Golf history had not yet cleaned up the story and made his rise seem inevitable.

That is why the earlier program may be the more revealing object. It preserves Bobby Jones before anybody knew they were supposed to save something with his name on it.