Reporter met golf legend in his prime

Last update: June 27, 2008 - 8:38 PM

The last time Interlachen Country Club played host to a U.S. Open, Dick Gordon was a 19-year-old student who was determined to get an interview with an amateur by the name of Bobby Jones.

"That was 1930," said Gordon, a former Minneapolis Star reporter who's now 97. "That was before reporters went into the locker rooms to talk to the athletes."

Gordon, a freshman at Princeton at the time, was granted the interview. He was told to meet Jones inside the locker room at Interlachen the weekend before the 1930 U.S. Open.

"I was pretty nervous," Gordon said. "I was 19. Jones was 28. I called him, 'Mr. Jones.'"

Jones was in his prime, having won the first two legs of the Grand Slam. But he told Gordon he was considering retiring from competitive golf after the U.S. Amateur, the fourth major of the year then.

Gordon's exclusive ran in the Daily Princetonian and was picked up by newspapers in New York. Jones, of course, went on to win the U.S. Open and the U.S. Amateur before retiring with what remains golf's only Grand Slam.

MARK CRAIG