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Bobby Jones is the only golfer in history to win the Grand Slam – all four major championships in the same year, which now include The Masters, PGA Championship, U. S. Open, and Europe’s Open Championship. Remarkably, Jones earned his living as a lawyer and competed in golf as an amateur.

He dominated amateur competition from 1923 to 1930, winning 13 of 20 major championships. And while he never turned pro, he competed against the world’s top professionals, including Walter Hagen and Gene Sarazen. Jones also founded and helped design the Augusta National Golf Club and co-founded the famed Masters Tournament.

Yet Jones was a private man, and few know that he battled a disease that diminished his athletic talents.

Syringomyelia is a rare yet devastating disease of the nervous system, in which a fluid-filled cyst forms within the spinal cord. This cyst is referred to as a syrinx. As the syrinx expands and lengthens over time, it compresses and damages part of the spinal cord from its center outward.

Last Saturday, guests– including Jones’ two grandsons and six of his great grandchildren– gathered at Atlanta’s Bobby Jones Golf Course, which has been transformed by its namesake foundation (and the design talents of Bob Cupp) into a revolutionary new reversible design.

The $25 million dollars invested in what some are calling “the most innovative golf course in the world” – and its practice facilities – were built with private funds – and attracted the headquarters of the Georgia State Golf Association, the Georgia Section of the PGA, and Georgia State University’s golf team.

And while guests tipped their caps to Cupp’s remarkable transformation of a public course and its addition of a state-of-the-art practice facility, the main purpose of the day was to announce the renaming of the Chiari & Syringomyelia Foundation, Inc. to The Bobby Jones Chiari & Syringomyelia Foundation (Bobby Jones CSF), which reflects the Jones family’s commitment to medical research.

The Bobby Jones Chiari & Syringomyelia Foundation (www.bobbyjonescsf.org) will remain a non-profit organization with the goal of raising awareness and finding a cure for Chiari malformation (CM), syringomyelia (SM) and related disorders.

Guests were treated with the reminiscences of Jones’ two living grandsons, including Robert Jones Black, and Dr. Bob Jones IV, who underscored the foundation’s slogan. “This man made the best of his life. He was a man of integrity and wisdom,” Dr. Jones said. “And his slogan was anything is possible.”