Ernest Jones (golfer)

He tutored Virginia Van Wie for many years, including during her stretch of three consecutive U.S. Women's Amateurs from 1932 to 1934.

He also worked with Glenna Collett Vare, Lawson Little, Betty Hicks, Phil Farley, George Schniter, Horton Smith and other top players of the era.

While a severe injury on its own merit, Jones was afraid it would be a handicap and perhaps be the end to his career as a professional golfer.

Able to walk using crutches, he proceeded to attempt his first round of golf at Royal Norwich in 1916 where he carded an 83 (38/45) on that first outing.

During this time he would book almost 3,000 lessons per year at the exorbitant price of $5 teaching from 9:30 in the morning until he need to leave to catch the 6:08 train for Glen Head, Long Island.

Jones found that he could achieve better success with his students indoors because they would not be distracted by ball flight and instead focused on performing the swing correctly by focusing on swinging the club with the intention of creating centrifugal force in the club that could in turn propel the ball.

Jones began to ask himself how it could be that he could yet score so effectively, with such a radical change needing to be made to how his body swung the club having only one leg.

Jones had happened upon the then-little-understood fact that the human brain need only experience a person's desire to perform a task.

The drastic simplicity of his approach to golf instruction met with rancor and objection when he was invited by the PGA (Professional Golfers' Association of America) to present his work.

Perhaps much to the PGA's chagrin, whereas an average pro would have given about 600 lessons a year, Jones would give many times that number.

Manuel de la Torre was the preeminent authority on the Ernest Jones approach and further developed it in his teaching.

Along with Harvey Penick, Tommy Armour, and Percy Boomer, he was inducted into the World Golf Teachers Hall of Fame in 1977 [1].