{"id":860978,"date":"2026-08-19T15:54:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T15:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/860978\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T15:54:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T15:54:16","slug":"is-this-the-most-important-shot-in-golf-history-australian-golf-digest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/860978\/","title":{"rendered":"Is this the most important shot in golf history? \u2013 Australian Golf Digest"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019re reading this, you know Bobby Jones\u2014the most decorated amateur golfer of all time and founder of Augusta National. For those of us at Inwood Country Club, site of his 1923 U.S. Open, we\u2019ve been fortunate to study Jones\u2019 first major title at our storied club. We believe this statement wholeheartedly: Jones hit the most important shot in golf here at Inwood.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s set the scene: Jones was all square in a playoff to decide the U.S. Open, and his opponent, Bobby Cruickshank, hooked his drive into trouble, forcing him to lay up short of the large burn that guards the final green. Jones had 190 yards to the hole with a stiff wind in his face, and his ball sat in the right rough on a bare lie.<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/www.golfdigest.com\/content\/dam\/images\/golfdigest\/fullset\/course-photos-for-places-to-play\/inwood-country-club-long-island-new-york.jpg\"\/ <\/p>\n

A current-day look at Inwood Country Club\u2019s 18th green.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of the club<\/p>\n

Jones was only 21, but he\u2019d already spent seven years finding a way to narrowly lose the big ones. He had a reputation as a player who couldn\u2019t close, and he\u2019d arrived at that Sunday playoff against Cruickshank only because his own final round had unraveled the day before with bogeys on 16 and 17 and a double bogey on 18 that let Cruickshank, playing a few holes behind Jones, force an 18-hole playoff with a clutch birdie on 18. Furious with himself, Jones told friends, \u201cI finished like a yellow dog.\u201d He\u2019d already confided that if he didn\u2019t win at Inwood, he was done with competitive golf for good.<\/p>\n

RELATED: The shot that made Tiger: A complete history of The Stinger and how Woods turned it into the ultimate weapon<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the weight Jones carried as he approached his ball sitting on dirt in this crucial moment. Should he play safe and lay up near Cruickshank, who had been getting up and down all day? Or choose the aggressive shot with no margin for error? It\u2019d be a hard choice for anyone. For Jones, it\u2019s a choice that not only defines his career, but the future of golf.<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/www.golfdigest.com\/content\/dam\/images\/golfdigest\/fullset\/2026\/8\/bobby-jones-bobby-cruickshank-inwood-country-1923-us-open.jpg\"\/ <\/p>\n

Bobby Cruickshank (left), Inwood Country Club\u2019s president Al Steiner and Bobby Jones (right), pose for a photo before the playoff for the 1923 U.S. Open at Inwood Country Club on Long Island.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of the club<\/p>\n

He pulled a cleek, the hickory-shafted long iron of the day, and swung away, striking the ball perfectly, and watched as the ball covered the water guarding the green and came to rest six feet from the hole. Cruickshank could not get up and down while Jones two-putted for his first victory in a major.<\/p>\n

Call it courage. Call it recklessness. Either way, it worked. Jones went on to win 13 major championships over the next seven years, capping his career in 1930 with the Grand Slam, sweeping the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, the Open Championship and British Amateur in a single season.<\/p>\n

Now imagine the other outcome where the ball finds the water. Jones\u2019 competitive career might\u2019ve been over, and the devastated 21-year-old could\u2019ve walked away from the game for good. His grandson, Dr. Bob Jones IV, told the New York Times a few years ago: \u201cIf he had not executed that shot and won, I think he would have given up tournament golf and become an obscure sports trivia item.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without Jones\u2019 legacy, does Augusta National ever get built? No Augusta means no Masters Tournament. And no Masters means no modern idea of a Grand Slam.<\/p>\n

\"https:\/\/www.golfdigest.com\/content\/dam\/images\/golfdigest\/fullset\/2026\/8\/inwood-country-club-bobby-jones-plaque.jpeg\"\/ <\/p>\n

A plaque sits to the right of Inwood Country Club\u2019s 18th hole today, memorializing the significance of Bobby Jones\u2019 shot.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of the club<\/p>\n

But the real loss would run deeper than trophies. Jones\u2019 victory was reported on the front page of the New York Times, the first time a golf-related story appeared there. He became the ultimate ambassador of the game. The values we associate with golf\u2014the honesty, the self-policing, the idea that a player calls penalties on himself when no one else would ever know, all trace back to Jones.<\/p>\n

Take away that one shot at Inwood, and it isn\u2019t just a championship that disappears. It\u2019s the character of the game itself and golf as we know it today.<\/p>\n

Clearly, it\u2019s the most important shot in golf.<\/p>\n

Brian Ziegler is the golf chairman of Inwood Country Club.Daniel Friedman is the greens chairman of Inwood.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on golfdigest.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you\u2019re reading this, you know Bobby Jones\u2014the most decorated amateur golfer of all time and founder of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":860979,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[4225,64,63,38935,755,138747,85],"class_list":["post-860978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-article","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-courses","tag-golf","tag-golf-digest","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=860978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/860978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/860979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=860978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=860978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=860978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}