At Oakmont

The good green-gangsters who manicured, shampooed and mud-massaged the course of the Oakmont Country Club (Pittsburgh) for the last week's National! Amateur Golf Championship were exceptional fellows. They entertained a lively interest in the sport. They knew all about Robert Tyre Jones, Jr.--may even have known, indeed that his father, a Georgia lawyer, is associated in business with William Gunn, father of Watts Gunn, the 20-year old youth whom Jones brought North to the tournament to "get some experience in championship play."

The waiters at the Oakmont Club, on the other hand, knew little, or cared less about Jones, nor had they if the truth were known any high regard for the game of golf. They had heard too many members play around "one of the most difficult courses in the country," stroke by stroke, over their meals, to be enthusiastic. What though Von Elm, Jess Sweetser, Guilford, Mackensie and the rest had come to compete in the National Amateur? The waiters asked questions about the Shenandoah (See Page 31); they interested themselves in the acrobatics of dice and the scores of distant baseball teams.

The press of the whole country was concerned with Oakmont. Famed reporters wrote about Watts Gunn, told how much his style resembled that of Jones, his friend, companion, coach; described his nervousness before a gallery, even fabricating a ludicrous story of his attempts to turn off an electric light hinged on a closet door. Young Gunn played the famed Jess Sweetser. His 27 holes were in 2 strokes under par; his approach work was sharpshooting, his putts were as accurate as target pistol-shots, his drive was a cannonade. He beat the onetime amateur champion 10 up and 9 to go. Next day he defeated Richard A. Jones Jr. of Manhattan, 5 and 3; Robert Tyre Jones put out George Von Elm of Los Angeles. Gunn and his friend from Atlanta would meet in the finals. Ha! drama, wrote the reporters, human interest.

A good golf game, like a good short story, has a pattern; events climb up to a climax, poise for a moment, then climb down again. So it was with the match of Gunn against Jones. The knot in the chain, the plateau of the climb, the scene the reporters were waiting for, came at the 12th hole.

Until that moment, young Gunn was the protagonist. A clever writer, fashioning a story of that morning's play, would make the reader feel that Gunn was going to win. He would dwell on the amazing machine-like perfection of Gunn's every stroke. He would describe how since Jones was playing par golf, Gunn shot under par to win holes from him. He would hint that Gunn could not keep it up. The reader would gather the conviction that Gunn was most certainly going to keep it up. But this would be a literary trick.

He went out in 35, two under par. At the ninth he stood all even. He won the tenth and his putt for a birdie 3 at the eleventh lipped the cup and hung upon edge. Then came the moment which would serve as a climax for the writer.

The twelfth green. A ball glistened 15 feet from the pin. It was Gunn's. Another huddled in the sand of a nearby pit. It was Jones'. Both had played their third shots. The champion was one down. He grasped a niblick and walked into the pit.

Pff! the ball rose in air, a little fountain of sand fell back into the hollow carved by his perfect explosion shot. He sank his putt for a half. Readers of the story who had believed until that moment that Gunn might win, and witnesses of the match who had been likewise deluded, realized their error. Jones began to drive 300 yards with infallible precision. He put his approach shots against the pin. Gunn, in an unwise effort to equal his distance, began to press, to book. Jones finished the last six holes of the morning's round with 3, 3, 4, 3, 3, 4, which put him four up.

That afternoon, Gunn dragged himself from the bunker to rough to the eleventh green where he gave over the match, the National Amateur Championship, to Robert Tyre Jones.*

In Atlanta, Georgia, a short time afterward, two elderly gentlemen sat down to read the story that the clever writer had fashioned about the memorable game played on the Oakmont links by their two sons. And in a room near the pantry of the Oakmont golf club, the waiters sat down to a game of pinochle.

* He is the only golfer in the last twelve years who has been able to win a National Amateur Championship twice in succession. In 1913 Jerome D. Travers successfully defended his title in Chicago.