I never learned anything

I never learned anything from a match I won.

Bobby Jones

The meaning of the quote

In 1921, a 19-year-old Bobby Jones hit his ball into Hill bunker on the 11th hole of the Old Course at St Andrews during the Open Championship. It took him 4 shots to get out. On the green, with a short putt left for a 6, he picked up his ball and tore up his scorecard.

Six years later he came back to the same course and won the Open by 6 strokes. On the second day, he played the 11th in 2.

Jones wrote the quote in Down the Fairway, the autobiography he wrote with Atlanta sportswriter O.B. Keeler in 1927, when he was 24. By then he had lost plenty of matches, and he had worked out that those losses did the teaching.

A win tells you that you did enough on the day. It doesn’t tell you what nearly went wrong, and you rarely go looking because you’re busy celebrating. A loss stings enough to make you replay it. You go back over the shot you rushed or the question you guessed, and you find the weak spot.

Losing on its own doesn’t teach you anything, though. Plenty of people lose the same way 10 times in a row. The lesson comes from looking back at the loss once the sting fades and asking what you’d do differently.

Action steps

You don’t need to lose on purpose. You only need to get more out of the losses you already have.

1. Write down the moment it turned.
   Within a day of a loss, name the exact point where it slipped, like the rushed slide in a presentation or the exam question you guessed, and pick one fix to try next time.
2. Ask the same question after a win.
   Look for the moment where you nearly lost. A win you pull apart can teach you something too.

Your next loss is your own Hill bunker. Go back and study it.

About the author

Robert Tyre “Bobby” Jones Jr. was born in Atlanta in 1902 and was so sickly as a child that he couldn’t eat solid food until he was 5. His family moved next to East Lake Country Club, hoping the outdoor life would make him stronger, and by 14 he was playing in the U.S. Amateur.

Then came 7 years of losing. Jones had a fierce temper and threw clubs when shots went wrong, and the torn-up scorecard at St Andrews came late in that run.

Those were the matches he learned from. Once he kept his temper in check, the titles came fast, starting with the 1923 U.S. Open. From 1923 to 1930 he won 13 of the 21 majors he played, and in 1930 he won the U.S. Open, British Open, U.S. Amateur and British Amateur in the same year, a Grand Slam no golfer has repeated.

The temper never fully left. Jones kept throwing clubs in private matches late in life and only stopped when steel shafts replaced hickory and the clubs got harder to break.

At 28 he retired from competitive golf, went back to his law practice and helped found Augusta National Golf Club and the Masters.

In 1958, St Andrews gave him the Freedom of the City, an honor only one American had received before him, Benjamin Franklin. Standing in front of the town that had watched him storm off its course 37 years earlier, he said:

“If I could take out of my life everything but my experiences at St Andrews, I would still have led a rich, full life.”

He tells the story of those losing years in the book Down the Fairway, where you can find this quote.

Resources

• Down the Fairway (Book)
• Bobby Jones: Stroke of Genius (Movie)
• Bobby Jones receives Freedom of St Andrews (Video)
• Bobby Jones at The Open (Article)
• Bobby Jones (Wikipedia)
• An expert is a person (Article)