BOUNCING BETWEEN AUGUSTA AND AIKEN -- That annual April pilgrimage to Augusta is always a joy, though you would have to say it often reaches the level of invigorating. This year, for sure. With players ranked first, second, and third in the Official World Golf Rankings finishing second (Scottie Scheffler), first (Rory McIlroy) and tied for third (Cam Young), respectively, it should be celebrated with a robust spirit.
Makes you wonder how very cool it must have been to be a part of the Masters experience in 1942 when two of the game’s titans went toe-to-toe in a playoff, Byron Nelson edging Ben Hogan, 69 to 70. Then in ’54 came another epic extra session, Hogan losing once again, this time to Sam Snead.
The Masters, of course, has had a plethora of great, top-heavyweight leaderboards like we did this year. How about Tom Watson holding off Johnny Miller and Jack Nicklaus in 1981, or a gathering of The Big Three in 1965 when Nicklaus won and left Arnold Palmer and Gary Player with a share of third. Tiger Woods’ fifth Green Jacket in 2019, with Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Xander Schauffele next in the standings, was quite good, as was Langer prevailing in 1985, trailed by a splendid trio (Seve Ballesteros, Raymond Floyd and Curtis Strange) in a tie for second.
Ah, we could go on and on, so let’s just accept that the Masters is premium theater and wander off on another tangent. That is, this balance between history and tradition and bright and new that that co-exists nicely when you are in this area around Augusta, Ga., and Aiken, S.C.
Consider that when Augusta National arrived on the scene in late 1933 and hosted its first Masters a year later, the area already had a solid lineup of golf clubs. Palmetto GC dates to 1892, Aiken GC to 1912, Augusta CC came along around that time, and in 1926 Forest Hills GC was founded.
Deep roots with storied histories, all of them, but it is worth noting that we have arrived at a point where this area is clearly a golf destination. Oh, conversations about the 2026 Masters were everywhere last week, but just as prominent was the buzz about some glittering new arrivals – Old Barnwell GC, the 21 Golf Club, Zac Blair’s Tree Farm, and even The Patch, a Tiger Woods design – that have helped make this area a serious golf destination.
What you get when you bounce around in this area is a serious contrast in landscape. With Augusta being quite busy, now the second most populous city in Georgia, you only need to drive a short distance over the border into Aiken, S.C, where flags in the downtown area boast that you are in the “Best Small Town in the South.”
Chalk it up to a love of history and nostalgia that my spirit refuses to shake (thankfully), but to be in this area is to rekindle memories of a golfer from another era. Whether Bobby Knowles, who lived from 1914 to 2003, was famous of infamous depends on what stories you embrace, but one thing is for sure – he lived his life for golf.
Born into privilege, Knowles lived that lifestyle his entire life and there are fascinating lines of lineage in play here. His great-grandfather was the famed poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (“Listen my children and you shall here . . . “) and his wife, Barbara Rutherfurd Knowles, was the daughter of Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, she of the long and sustained love affair with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Now, back to the golf. Knowles was clearly quite good at the game as you cannot argue with how he etched his name into the record books. He won the Massachusetts State Amateur in 1949, the New England Amateur a year later, then he ran in elite circles thanks to making the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur in 1950.
He was named to the Walker Cup in 1951 (in his only match he and the legendary Dick Chapman won, 1-up, in a 36-hole game of foursomes at The Old Course) and was invited to play in both the 1951 and 1952 Masters.
Knowles biggest prize might have been his French Amateur title in 1951, not only because that tournament counted heavily in that time, but due to the fact he put a stop to four consecutive wins by French icon, Henri de Lamaze.
Just steps off a tee box at Aiken Golf Club, you are served notice that a name of intriguing history once lived in this lovely town.
Now no one will ever put Knowles’ name on par with the master amateurs of that era – Bill Campbell, Frank Stranahan, Charlie Coe, Ted Bishop, or Chapman, just to name a few. But those who remember him will forever run a colorful gamut of descriptions when recalling Knowles.
The opportunity to cross paths with him at the Myopia Hunt Club during the mid-1990s was memorable. Prodded by the late and great Dick Haskell, executive director of the Mass. Golf Association, to ask Knowles about his longtime membership at Myopia and his disdain for working, the answers he provided are forever emblazoned in my memory banks.
He preferred the solitude of Myopia to the elite atmosphere at The County Club where he had been a member for decades “because they’ve turned The Country Club into the YMCA.” When asked what he did for work, Knowles shrugged. “I tried it one day (work, that is) but I didn’t like it,” he said.
“Now that sounds like Knowles through and through,” said Bill Safrin, for years esteemed and longtime head golf professional at the Myopia Hunt Club. Safrin said Knowles’ favorite golf partners were Charlie Mulcahy, longtime owner of the Boston Bruins, and Charlie Sumner Bird, who, like Knowles, spent winters at Palmetto GC in Aiken and summers at Myopia.
Those who knew Knowles might describe him as a curmudgeon, cantankerous, perhaps, but if you suggested he was a scoundrel, folks who knew him might shake their head in agreement.
“He was privileged. He knew it and he loved it,” said Safrin. “He would shake up the entire club (at Myopia Hunt) when he came back from Palmetto (in the summer). Everywhere, games popped up – bridge, golf, cards. Bobby loved the action, loved to gamble.
“He wasn’t Francis Ouimet, let’s just say that.”
Tom Moore, the hugely popular head professional emeritus at Palmetto GC, which is arguably one of the great golf experience one can have, understood that flavor of Knowles. When he arrived at Palmetto in 1981, Moore got to Knowles, who was well past his prime, but he could spin a tale or two or even three hundred.
When Moore asked why Bobby had never accepted a membership at Augusta National, just 30 minutes away, “he told me that he didn’t want to be a member there because he liked to gamble and he couldn’t get a good game there.”
Knowles, however, did work the Masters for years on the scoring committees there, sometimes manning the main board.
Unlike at Myopia Hunt Club where Knowles complained to Safrin that his picture wasn’t displayed in the clubhouse, the cozy and quaint clubhouse at Palmetto is adorned with framed newspaper articles, photos, and other items from Knowles’ life in golf.
He even gifted to Moore the putter he used in the 1951 Walker Cup.
Knowles lived for years off the 16th green at Palmetto and his family was deeply entrenched in local politics, philanthropy, and goodwill endeavors. While playing Aiken GC, which is minutes from Palmetto GC, it was impossible for yours truly to miss a street sign that read KNOWLES TR SW 300.
While Moore conceded that he didn’t exactly know what the street sign signified “the guess is it’s a horse trail of some sort but I can tell you that his name was huge in this town for years.”
If he had to circle one story that Knowles told him, Moore said this one captured the man’s passion to play hard and always with something on the line. “He played a lot with JFK, back when he was president,” said Moore.
“They were playing for some money one day and JFK was losing and had a putt that Bobby probably should have given him, but he refused. He told me he said, “I don’t care if you are the President of the United States, I don’t give putts.’ ”
