- THE TSARS ALIGN
FALL 1973
Robert Trent “Bobby” Jones Jr., celebrated course architect
and son of legendary course designer Robert Trent Jones Sr.: [American
business tycoon] Armand Hammer, who was chairman of Occidental
Petroleum, had a longstanding relationship with the Soviet Union’s
oligarchs. Having gone over there at the beginning of what was
later called détente, with Secretary of State Kissinger’s delegation,
Dr. Hammer made a statement that if the Soviets were going to open
up their closed society to Western and Japanese business, they needed
two things: a golf course and a Cadillac. I read that in the New York
Times. So I called Occidental’s office and identified myself to a
manager of some kind. I’m waiting on hold, and suddenly I heard,
“Armand Hammer here.” I was actually speaking to the chairman!
I said, “Do you want to do a golf course, and can we help you?” He
said, “Why should I take you?” I said, “Well, I’ve been to the Soviet
Union. After I got out of Yale, I went on a tour.” He said, “That’s
unique.” Then he said, “Shouldn’t we use Arnold Palmer?” I said, “My
father’s much more famous about building golf courses. Arnold tends
to play.” Dr. Hammer didn’t know much about golf. This was a Thurs-
day. He said, “I can’t see you tomorrow—be here Monday morning.”
Meantime, he had a friend on the USGA Executive Committee
named Bob Dwyer, who was a timber man. The Soviet Union had
lots of timber, and he and Dr. Hammer were trying to harvest and sell
Siberian timber together. Dwyer and my father met a few months later
at a USGA meeting. He convinced my father, who was a little reluc-
tant to go, that Dr. Hammer was very well connected in the USSR.
The following June, we all flew in a private plane that Dr. Hammer
had. Onboard was a Soviet in his military uniform, to make sure we
didn’t deplane to do anything weird.
he 19 60 s began with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev banging his
shoe—definitely not a FootJoy—on a desk at the United Nations. A couple
of years later came the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was as close to a
nuclear holocaust as the world had come before or since. The Cold War
continued in full freeze until the end of the decade, when U.S. President
Richard Nixon, his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, and Khrushchev’s
successor, Leonid Brezhnev, tried to thaw things out.
Détente between the Soviets and the U.S. took on many forms. Perhaps
the most surprising was plans for an American-designed 18-hole golf
course on the outskirts of Moscow, the first in all of the Soviet Union.
By the time it was done,
perestroika and glasnost
had cleared the way for
playing golf—and theSoviet Union had dissolved. Here, some of
the key players on one of the unlikeliest golf
course projects ever share their recollections.
We met with the mayor of Moscow, Vladimir Promyslov, and the
foreign minister in charge of properties, called UPDK, a man named
Vladimir Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov had been posted as ambassador
to Malaysia, where he learned to play golf and would play with the
U.S. ambassador at the Royal Selangor Golf Club so they could have
backchannels about the Vietnam War. He’d become hooked on golf.
My dad and I went skinny-dipping in the Volga River after too much
vodka. My dad didn’t drink much, and I drank too much that day.
But over time we made friends with these people. We didn’t see it
as a commercial opportunity. It was an adventure.Over a five-year span, from 1974 to 1979, Jones Jr. and Sr. made several
visits to Moscow to look at potential course sites.Jones: Eventually, they chose the site, Nakhabino, about 45 minutes
from Red Square, because it was in the woods and nobody would see
what they were doing. They didn’t want anybody to know they were
making a golf course. There was no golf in the Soviet Union. It was
considered an English sport and symbolic of the enemy, meaning the
English, who had invaded and held Murmansk during the revolution.November 1979
Jones Jr. went with Kuznetsov to see the Olympic Stadium, where Mos-
cow would be hosting the 1980 Summer Olympics.Jones: I was walking with Mr. Kuznetsov, and it starts snowing. And
because they had a SALT treaty that our Congress did not approve, I
said, “How are things between our two countries?” He said, “They’re
colder than these few snowflakes. And by December, they’ll be very
cold.” I took that as a sort of metaphor. But what he was hinting at
was the Soviets were about to enter Afghanistan.The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, which led to a
freeze in cultural and sports exchanges. The Moscow Country Club pro-
ject was mothballed for another six years, during which time Jones Sr.
left the project. Then Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.Sam Nunn, U.S. Senator from Georgia: The first time I met Bobby
was in the ’80s. I was a guest out at Cypress Point. A friend of mine
from Rand Corporation introduced us. It rained about 14 inches88 GOLF.COM / S e p t ember 2019
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