A Slice of Golfing Literature Part 15: Gary Moran reviews Golf is my Game, a classic of golf writing that not only advises but also outlines the intriguing career of its writer, Bobby Jones

There are conflicting views on the wisdom of sportsmen "getting out at the top" or playing on with their skills in decline. Golf, in particular, doesn't lend itself to an early exit but in the case of Bobby Jones there can be no doubt.

Jones retired at his peak as assuredly as Everest is a high mountain. He played his final serious tournament at the age of 28 and by winning the 1930 US Amateur at Merion, he completed the "Impregnable Quadrilateral" of the Open and Amateur Championships of the United States and Britain in the same year.

His intention then was to turn his mind fully to the legal profession but he remained in golf's clutches.

Freed from the strictures of maintaining amateur status he got involved in projects including instruction films and articles, club design and manufacture and course architecture including consultation with Alister Mackenzie on the layout of Augusta National which he co-founded with Clifford Roberts.

So by the time he came to write his autobiography, Golf Is My Game, in 1959, Jones had some pretty decent raw material. He fashioned it into three parts covering instruction, his playing career and other reflections and if every sports autobiography was as well written, the world would be a better place.

The instruction section, "Improving Your Golf", is thin on drawings or photographs but makes a lot of sense and it is striking how many of the key points are echoed so closely in later books by the likes of John Jacobs, Jack Nicklaus and particularly Bob Rotella.

Jones clearly had an early and keen appreciation of the primacy of the mental side of the game and stressed "thinking through the playing of shots and managing one's resources so as to more often enable the player to approximate the highest level of performance to which he has a right to aspire".

Perfection is unattainable and it is a "delusion" from which he suffered briefly "to think that one should be able to reduce the simple physical act (putting) into a precise routine of infallible accuracy".

On shot selection one must trade off risk and reward: "The best shot possible is not always the best shot to play" and you must play to win: "You don't have to be a doormat to be a good sport."

There are technical points, and good ones too, but like Rotella, Jones wouldn't countenance trying to work on his swing during a round: "The golf course in the midst of a round is no place to experiment or try anything new. If one has not learned enough of golf by the time he steps on the first tee, he has run out of time."

Part two, "Competition and the Grand Slam", recounts his early career and some of his contemporaries and includes chapters on each of his four major wins in 1930.

His one regret after retirement was that he felt he hadn't overcome his biggest flaw as a competitor which was a failure to keep playing positively when closing in on a title: "I was no longer playing the shots for definite objectives, but was rather trying to keep away from hazardous places."

The final part of the book deals with many of his other golfing projects and in detail with the formation and design of Augusta National. This book like that course is a gem. For one man to be so good a golfer and so polished a writer seems almost unfair.

You can no longer see Jones play but Golf Is My Game can be obtained from specialist internet supplier www.classicsofgolf.com.