Bobby’s Opus

For Robert Trent Jones, Jr., the 2015 U.S. Open is a symphony 50 years in the making

RTJ at Chambers

by Brian Beaky
CG Editor

Robert Trent Jones, Jr. — “Bobby,” as his family and friends have always called him, in deference to the elder “Bob,” whose reputation was already blossoming when young Bobby came along in 1939 — has designed more than 270 courses in his lifetime. They span 32 states and more than 40 countries, and include some of the most recognizable courses in the world — Princeville, Poppy Hills, Spanish Bay, Cordevalle, Poipu Bay and dozens more.

But in a career spanning almost exactly 50 years, he has never seen anything quite like Chambers Bay.

“I remember the day we received the RFP [request for proposal] from Pierce County, we looked it up on Google Maps and immediately went, ‘Whoa, look at that!’” he says, of what was at the time an abandoned sand and gravel pit in the little-known Tacoma suburb of University Place. “It was all on sand, it was right on the water. Where many people saw a degraded piece of property, I saw great opportunities for golf sculpture.”

Indeed, when Jones finally saw the land in person for the first time, he “was like Michelangelo walking among the Carrara marbles,” he recalls. “Golf architects will kill for pure sand. I knew immediately, from having done Spanish Bay 20 years before with Tom Watson, that this could be a special place.”

There was just one problem. While Jones had a vision of a pure links golf course to rival those his father had grown up playing on the windswept shores of the United Kingdom, the RFP had requested a different vision — 27 holes, to be exact, parkland-style, to be squeezed in as tightly as could be between the bluffs to the north and east, the railroad tracks to the west, and a sewage disposal plant to the south. It would have been a perfectly good course, beautiful even, and probably one of our region’s best — but to Jones, whose passion for golf is rivaled only by his passion for the arts, it was like being given the opportunity to conduct the London Philharmonic, then asking them to play “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.” Jones’ mind stirred with the notes of a much grander symphony, one the whole world would want to play.

RTJ II Design Architects submitted a 27-hole design that met all of the county’s requirements. They also, however, offered an alternate vision — an 18-hole golf course where holes weren’t wedged tightly together but instead sprawled across the landscape, with fescue fairways, just one tree, and enough leftover space for massive, scenic sand dunes, public parks and walking trails that could double as staging areas for a potential championship tournament down the road.

At the conclusion of their presentation, RTJII’s bid presenters offered bag tags that read, “Chambers Bay — Site of the 2025 U.S. Open.” They beat it by 10 years.


Jones (left) at Chambers Bay with 2010 U.S. Amateur Champion Peter Uihlein and Titleist CEO Wally Uihlein.
Jones (left) at Chambers Bay with 2010 U.S. Amateur Champion Peter Uihlein and Titleist CEO Wally Uihlein.

That story — and the legacy of the man behind it — was about all I knew about Bobby Jones when I arrived last summer at Kauai’s Prince Golf Course, considered by many (including Jones himself) to be one of his master works. The first person I saw was my playing partner for the day, general manager T.J. Baggett, who regretfully informed me that he wasn’t going to be able to join me — Robert Trent Jones, Jr., who owns a home in nearby Hanalei, had just dropped by for lunch, and T.J. couldn’t break away.

“Do you want to meet him, though, before you go out?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied, “that would be great.”

We chatted for a few minutes, as I asked Jones for tips on navigating The Prince for a first-timer, and he asked my opinion on another of his Kauai designs, Poipu Bay Resort, which I had played the day before. When I mentioned that I was from the Seattle area, I could see his eyes light up. As his salad sat uneaten, we talked at length about Chambers Bay — about preparations for the Open, my personal experience with the course, and that controversial new bunker on 18. (“In my opinion, it’s not really in keeping with the course aesthetic, but that’s OK,” he says. “We can just fill it in after the Open.”) We parted ways after a much longer conversation than I had initially anticipated, and I headed to the first tee with a memorable encounter to tell my friends and family about.

The next day, after coming back from the beach, I saw a voice mail on my phone from a number I didn’t recognize — “Brian, it’s Bobby Jones,” the message began. “I don’t know if you’re still in town, but if you are, I’d love to buy you a mai tai this evening and talk some more.”

For an hour that evening, my wife and I sat enthralled in a local bar, The Hanalei Dolphin, as Jones shared stories from his career and expounded on topics ranging from literature to history to musical composition, revealing fascinating insights into golf course design that touched on poetry, humor, classical symphony and the game of chess. At Hakodate Onuma Prince Golf Course, in Hokkaido, Japan, Jones designed a green structure that precisely mirrored the slopes of the mountain whose beauty provides the hole’s stunning backdrop. Another time, to clear his mind, Jones meditated on a series of rocks in sand. At the end of his long meditation, a monk asked what he saw — “I see a bunker with rocks in it,” Jones replied. Sure enough, his next course featured a bunker with large rocks, an inside joke only he would understand.

Most interesting, though, was his answer to my question about his penchant for difficult opening holes — the first hole at The Prince course is one of the most notorious in golf, while the first at Chambers Bay can be a brutally long and challenging par-4.

“To me, a golf course is like a symphony,” he said. “And the greatest symphonies get your attention right away. At Chambers Bay, we call upon the strings early, the trumpets late and the woodwinds in between. The course has a narrative structure, just as a full symphonic work would have. And just like everyone at the symphony will have their own favorite melody that they’ll be whistling on the way out, so will everyone who plays one of my courses have their own favorite hole.”

By the time we’d reached the bottom of our mai tais, I saw Jones in a new light. The poetry, the music, the golf courses — they’re all just different variations on the same theme; a passion not for art, exactly, but rather for beauty, simplicity, creativity, order and authenticity. In talking about encountering Chambers Bay for the first time, Jones referenced Michelangelo walking among the Carrara marbles; my conversation with Jones had been like thinking I understood art from reading a book about art history, then walking for the first time into the Sistine Chapel.

It was clear that Jones sees the world through a much more vibrant lens than most of us, which of course begged the question, “Where did all of this come from?”

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