Page 37 - Demo

GOLF EARLY TECH GOLF
Georgia Tech organized its first golf team in 1918, a formidable four-man unit including future Tech Hall of Famers Perry Adair of Atlanta and Ewing Watkins of Tennessee. Tom Prescott of Atlanta was elected Tech’s first team captain, while Fred Howden of Savannah was named team manager.
That spring Tech took on three eastern opponents and defeated them all in match play, the format of the time. The Jackets blanked the University of Columbia, 15-0, followed by wins over Yale (17 – 1) and Pennsylvania (14 – 3).
WATTS GUNN
The Rambling Wreck and the name of
Watts Gunn rose to supreme heights in 1927. Becoming the first Georgia Tech golfer to win the National Collegiate Championship, Gunn shot 302 over 72 holes at the Garden City Country Club to win the medal competition. He went on to dispatch Walker Cup team member Roland McKenzie, 10 – 9, to win the individual title, and his 69 in the final round broke the course record. He helped Tech win the Southern intercollegiate title the same year.
BOBBY JONES
Georgia Tech golf has had a long and distinguished history, with two national champions and numerous all-Americas. Not only is Tech golf rich in winning tradition, but the student body was the source of golf’s greatest legend.
Bobby Jones, the greatest amateur golfer in American history, won the Grand Slam of golf in 1930, which
at the time included the U.S. Open, the British Open, the U.S. Amateur, and British Amateur. He remains the only golfer to ever win all four events in the same year.
Jones who earned a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Tech in 1922, also earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Harvard, attended Emory Law School, passed the Georgia bar and practiced law in Atlanta while he was winning national championships in golf.
In 11 of his last 12 United States or British Opens, he finished no worse than second and won seven of them. In winning five U.S. Amateurs, his average margin of victory in those matches scheduled for 36 holes was ~ 9.
From 1923 through 1930, he won 13 of the 21 National Championships in which he played. Then he quit competitive golf
at the age of 28, built the Augusta National Golf Club with architect Alistair Mackenzie and founded the Masters tournament there in 1934 with financier Clifford Roberts.
H.E. DENNISON
Dennison, a Tech professor and Hall of Fame member, became Georgia Tech’s first official golf coach in 1931 and led a resurgence in Tech golf in the early 1930s with the playing trio of Charlie Yates, Berrien Moore and Frank Ridley, all of whom are in the Tech Hall of Fame.
That trio led the Yellow Jackets to three consecutive undefeated campaigns from 1923–34. Included in this streak was the rout of Georgia at the Augusta National and a third-place finish in the 1934 National Collegiate Championship.
CHARLIE YATES
Yates, who won Georgia State championships in 1931 and 1932, reached the semi-finals of the National Collegiate Championship in 1933, advanced to the second round of match play in the
U.S. Amateur and was the low amateur in the 1933 Masters.
He culminated a fine college career by winning the National Collegiate Championship in Cleveland, Ohio, joining Watts Gunn as the only two Tech golfers ever to do so. Yates, Ridley and Moore all qualified for the championship flight, and Yates had the tough assignment of meeting Ridley in the semi-finals. Yates prevailed and went on to defeat Ed White of Texas for the championship.
Yates played in the first 11 Masters tournaments, five times finishing as low amateur and three times finishing in the top 24.
Tech Greats: Watts Gunn & Bobby Jones.
TOMMY BARNES 1939 Southern Intercollegiate Champion.
Bobby Jones with the four cups he won the year of the Grand Slam – the British Open and Amateur and the
American Open and Amateur.
ALBERT SWANN
TOMMY PLAXICO Tommy Plaxico,
who had an outstanding track career at Tech, became golf coach in 1956 – a position he would until 1983. He is in the Tech Hall of Fame, both as an athlete and a coach. Prior to the mid 1970s, NCAA golf was primarily a dual match sport and Plaxico led his teams to a cumulative 126-36-8 record. He coached all-America and 1978 Masters champion Larry Mize.
Bobby Jones started his golfing career as a small boy at the East Lake Country Club.
Albert Swann won the Southeastern Conference in 1948, Tech’s only individual champion to date, and led the Yellow Jackets to their only team title the next season.
BUNKY
HENRY
In 1930, this New York parade welcomed Bobby Jones after he won the British Open and Amateur Championships.
Bunky Henry, Tech’s two sport stand-out, finished second to Hale Irwin in the 1967 NCAA Championships, shooting an even par 288 and was named a first team all-America.