Bobby Jones' Personal Iron

from the Jeffrey Ellis Collection

        Golf Club collector and pioneer Jeffrey Ellis assembled the most significant vintage golf club collection in history. The sale of his collection at Sotheby's in 2007 netted over $2 million. Golf clubs from that sale now carry an added prestige - just for being part of the famous "Ellis Collection".

        Presented here is unquestionably one of our favorite items from the Ellis Collection - the unique Tom Stewart (St. Andrews) 7-iron that is attributed to Bobby Jones. Only a couple "Robt. T. Jones, Jr." stamped Tom Stewart irons are known to exist, and are widely believed to have been produced for the great Bobby Jones himself.

        Was this exact club used by Bobby Jones? We cannot say definitively, as the evidence of its use has been lost over the past several decades. However, the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.

        What we do know is that the greatest golf club collector of them all, Jeff Ellis, attributes this club to Bobby Jones, and that he thought so highly of this club as to showcase it as a part of his prized collection. Ellis also featured this club in his historically significant book, The Clubmakers Art. Bobby Jones himself stated that he only owned or tried 200 clubs during his entire career, which leads Ellis to presume that this is one of those 200 clubs. We also know that Bobby Jones was very fond of Tom Stewart and ordered clubs from him. And that few, if any, other Tom Stewart irons are stamped "Robt. T. Jones, Jr.", a designation widely believed to indicate that the club was produced for Bobby Jones. It is also worth noting that Stewart certainly did not make any of these irons for commercial sale (Stewart famously made some sets with Jones' initials before being told to stop by Bobby Jones - only two of which are known to exist). We also know that this exact club was offered by Sotheby's in 2007 as part of the Jeffrey Ellis Collection.

        This exquisite golf club contains a spectacular assortment of marks. Notably, it contains the stamp of famed St. Andrews clubmaker Tom Stewart, as well as Stewart's now-famous pipe stamp. However, most significantly, this club is also stamped with the script signature of "Robt. T. Jones, Jr."

        While the exact connection or use of this club by Bobby Jones has been lost over time, golf club historian Jeff Ellis is certain that this club is connected to Bobby Jones and sold it as such during the historic sale of his collection. Included in the sale is the page from Ellis' famous tome "The Clubmaker's Art" signed by jeffrey Ellis.

*** Added on 4/4/11: A noted golf club collector and historian has pointed to us a great passage from Mark Frost's best-selling book The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America and the Story of Golf, which provides some sensational information on the clubs produced by Tom Stewart for Bobby Jones when Jones visited Stewart's shop in St. Andrews for the first time in 1926:

"One idle afternoon [O.B. Keeler], Bobby, and some other Americans paid a visit to the St. Andrews factory of legendary club maker Tom Stewart. In the aftermath of the East Lake fire, Bobby had cobbled together a set of mismatched clubs to replace those he'd lost; a handful turned out to be the products of Tom Stewart's forge. The son of  blacksmith, Stewart had been crafting irons for over thirty years. Entering the anonymous shop on Argyle Street from off an alley, identified by a single signed, Bobby and Keeler witnessed 'twenty hardy Scots toiling like a platoon of Vulcans in the forge room, sixteen more at the finishing wheels next door.' Out of these grubby, cramped rooms emerged what those in the know considered to be the game's finest instruments. Old Tom Stewart seemed equally impressed with Bobby's knowledge of club design and mechanics; their meeting signaled the start of a significant relationship. Stewart provided Bobby with a duplicate set of clubheads before he left England - they wouldn't be fitted for shafts until he returned to East Lake - and continued to supply him for the next few years. [Francis] Ouimet, [Watts] Gunn, and [George] Von Elm all ordered clubheads as well at a cost of $1.25 apiece, stamped with a small round dot signifying Stewart's personal seal of approval and his now legendary trademark, the silhouette of an old clay pipe."

        Presented here is believed to be one such club - a Tom Stewart iron with his clay pipe trademark, small round dot signifying his personal seal of approval, and, most importantly, this name "Robt. T. Jones, Jr."