In early March, shortly after the conclusion of the PGA Tour’s West Coast Swing, I paid a visit to Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawaii to catch my breath and perform a bit of ambassadorial work for the resort. I anticipated sort of a busman’s holiday featuring some work, a little golf and a lot of sleep, the latter two of which are in short supply at CBS Sports during the long NFL and early PGA Tour seasons.
What transpired was one of the more sentimental golf experiences I’ve had in years. Joining our group on the first tee of the famed Mauna Kea Golf Course was Robert Trent Jones Jr., 85, one of the great course architects of all time, who just completed a restoration of the course. “Bobby” as he’s known (not to be confused with that Bobby Jones) arrived in a “Field of Dreams” manner, as though coming out of a mist. With his prominent brows, commanding set of eyes and sturdy torso, he bears a remarkable physical resemblance to his legendary course-architect father, Robert Trent Jones Sr. His arrival gave the startling impression the two men had blended into a single personage. Bobby is in the twilight of his designing career, which over 60 years has produced a sprawling portfolio of some 280 courses across six continents and 40 countries, including—I can’t get over this—Moscow Country Club in Russia.
Bobby doesn’t play golf much these days. But full of vitality, he walks with a cane and hits shots occasionally. This he did at Mauna Kea, exhibiting traces of the form that in the 1950s made him a prominent national junior player and member of the Yale golf team.
What Bobby can do is reminiscence and tell stories, which he’s inclined to do on special occasions, and this one was indeed special. Mauna Kea was originally designed in 1964 by Jones Sr., who is credited with more than 500 designs, many among the world’s finest. Years later, in 2008, Bobby’s brother Rees—now 83 and a renowned architect in his own right with 200 courses bearing his signature including Atlantic Golf Club and Pinehurst No. 7—redesigned Mauna Kea. When Bobby completed his restoration early this year, it marked the first time that a father and each of his two sons independently did design work on the same course, decades apart. It’s unprecedented and unlikely to happen again.
Mauna Kea holds a special place in Bobby’s heart, as it did for Jones Sr. and Rees. It wasn’t the first course in Hawaii, but it was first to establish the islands as a golf destination. The site for the course was ideal, and Jones Sr. wanted to make the most of it. He brought along Bobby, who was only 22 when they walked the property in 1963. Bobby recalled asking his father how in heaven they were supposed to grow grass on lava beds at the foot of an extinct volcano. Jones Sr. instructed his son to pick up two lava rocks at their feet. “Dad said, ‘Now clash them together,’” Bobby recalls. Bobby did so, and when the soft rocks crumbled, Jones Sr. said, “There’s your answer. We’ll pulverize the lava and use it as topsoil.” It worked like a charm.
The course, in keeping with Jones Sr.’s mantra of “easy bogey, hard par,” was no pushover. He was, remember, the Open Doctor who beginning in 1951 established a U.S. Open course-setup template that prevailed for decades. Narrow fairways, punishing rough, firm greens and difficult bunkering were the order of the day. Bobby recalled that his father brought him and Rees along to Oakmont Country Club for the 1953 U.S. Open, which returns there for the 10th time in June. He had them mark distances of tee shots on the 18th hole for each player. Rees, age 11, marked the precise spot where the ball landed, while Bobby, 13, marked where it came to rest. The field average: 240 yards carry, 261 total. The purpose was to determine where fairway bunkers should ideally be repositioned for future championship sites.
Mauna Kea, in keeping with his father’s partiality to stern tests, is a beast, especially when stretched to its full length of 7,370 yards. The 250-yard, par-3 third hole—to this day one of the most picturesque in golf—requires a huge carry over the Pacific Ocean. It really was the hole that seemed to popularize golf in Hawaii. Bobby noted that when Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player first observed the hole on the eve of a “Big Three Golf” TV presentation that would showcase the course, Jack and Arnie balefully pointed out they would need full-blooded drivers to reach the green. Gary complained he wouldn’t be able to reach the green at all and demanded they play from 205 yards. Gary got his way but wound up bogeying the hole anyway. Bobby thought the course was too hard and encouraged his father to ease the hole routings and soften the green complexes.
Bobby’s approach to design is markedly different than his father’s distinctive style and also that of brother Rees. He believes the emphasis should be on nature, sustainability and the environment. “You follow the land; you don’t change the land,” he says. On the par-3 11th, the ocean sits hard behind the green, where you can see waves crashing toward the beach. One touch he made on the hole was a bunker with an undulating shape that suggests a continuation of the waves beyond—what he calls, “golf poetry.”
Collectively, the three Joneses have designed about a thousand golf courses. Although I can’t help but wonder if many more projects are in the two brothers’ futures, in the end it’s not really about numbers.
Bobby told me that shortly before his father passed away on the eve of the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, he, Jones Sr. and Rees collectively attempted to arrive at the exact number of courses the three of them had produced. Bobby and Rees arrived at a precise number, but their father’s was two higher.
“How can that be?” Bobby asked. “Because I also created the two of you,” replied Jones Sr. The recollection caused Bobby’s eyes to well up a bit and as a father of three myself, I admit I got a little dusty, too.