Is this the most important shot in golf history?

If you’re reading this, you know Bobby Jones—the most decorated amateur golfer of all time and founder of Augusta National. For those of us at Inwood Country Club, site of his 1923 U.S. Open, we’ve been fortunate to study Jones’ first major title at our storied club. We believe this statement wholeheartedly: Jones hit the most important shot in golf here at Inwood.

Let’s set the scene: Jones was all square in a playoff to decide the U.S. Open, and his opponent, Bobby Cruickshank, hooked his drive into trouble, forcing him to lay up short of the large burn that guards the final green. Jones had 190 yards to the hole with a stiff wind in his face, and his ball sat in the right rough on a bare lie.

Jones was only 21, but he'd already spent seven years finding a way to narrowly lose the big ones. He had a reputation as a player who couldn't close, and he'd arrived at that Sunday playoff against Cruickshank only because his own final round had unraveled the day before with bogeys on 16 and 17 and a double bogey on 18 that let Cruickshank, playing a few holes behind Jones, force an 18-hole playoff with a clutch birdie on 18. Furious with himself, Jones told friends, “I finished like a yellow dog.” He'd already confided that if he didn't win at Inwood, he was done with competitive golf for good.

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That's the weight Jones carried as he approached his ball sitting on dirt in this crucial moment. Should he play safe and lay up near Cruickshank, who had been getting up and down all day? Or choose the aggressive shot with no margin for error? It'd be a hard choice for anyone. For Jones, it's a choice that not only defines his career, but the future of golf.

He pulled a cleek, the hickory-shafted long iron of the day, and swung away, striking the ball perfectly, and watched as the ball covered the water guarding the green and came to rest six feet from the hole. Cruickshank could not get up and down while Jones two-putted for his first victory in a major.

Call it courage. Call it recklessness. Either way, it worked. Jones went on to win 13 major championships over the next seven years, capping his career in 1930 with the Grand Slam, sweeping the U.S. Open, U.S. Amateur, the Open Championship and British Amateur in a single season.

Now imagine the other outcome where the ball finds the water. Jones’ competitive career might’ve been over, and the devastated 21-year-old could’ve walked away from the game for good. His grandson, Dr. Bob Jones IV, told the New York Times a few years ago: “If he had not executed that shot and won, I think he would have given up tournament golf and become an obscure sports trivia item.”

Without Jones’ legacy, does Augusta National ever get built? No Augusta means no Masters Tournament. And no Masters means no modern idea of a Grand Slam.

But the real loss would run deeper than trophies. Jones’ victory was reported on the front page of the New York Times, the first time a golf-related story appeared there. He became the ultimate ambassador of the game. The values we associate with golf—the honesty, the self-policing, the idea that a player calls penalties on himself when no one else would ever know, all trace back to Jones.

Take away that one shot at Inwood, and it isn't just a championship that disappears. It's the character of the game itself and golf as we know it today.

Clearly, it’s the most important shot in golf.

Brian Ziegler is the golf chairman of Inwood Country Club.
Daniel Friedman is the greens chairman of Inwood.