U.S. Open

U. S. Open

In no sport is the strain of a championship match so prolonged as in golf. Even in chess, which takes no account of the body, the strain ends when you stop playing, but a golf match can go on and on long after you have played your last stroke. Perhaps Joe Turnesa of Elmsford, N. Y., reflected on this paradox when, with his sticks put away, he stood in front of the Scioto Club (in Columbus, O.) and watched Robert Tyre Jones win the American Open.

Perhaps Jones reflected in similarwise as he got ready to make his last drive. The gallery had formed before his eyes in two deep banks between which trickled a tapering lane, the fairway.

To Joe Turnesa, waiting beside the green for Jones's club to swing down, the strain was quite as great as it would have been if, in match play, he had been taking stroke for stroke with Jones. It had been a strange tournament. Most of the scores were posted in the club house, but anyone might still win it--even Jones. Turnesa had the likeliest chance. His 294 led the field. Leo Diegel, until he took a six on the short sixteenth, had seemed a sure winner. Hagen --"Third Round" Hagen--had thundered around, burning up the course, 4, 4, 3, 2, 4, with four bad holes to spoil his chances at the end. "Wild Bill" Mehlhorn, he of the huge feet and iron wrist, had undone his hope only by an overbold attempt to gobble a long putt on the last green. The 294 was still best; Turnesa waited, and. . . .

The driver of Robert Tyre Jones swung down, flicked a blade of grass, a chip of rubber, came to rest over his right shoulder. Three hundred yards down the course the ball stopped rolling. Jones took an iron, swung it up--down. One hundred and eighty yards, splitting the pin all the way, the ball flew as if drawn on an invisible wire, slid four yards past the hole. Turnesa, watching, brushed his hand across his forehead. So it was all no use, his own fight over the harsh Scioto course, with its clods like stones, no use, the 294 that meant riches, pleasure, fame. Jones had two to win. His first putt missed. Turnesa was frozen now. If someone yelled, if a lightning bolt fell, if a caddy dropped a bag, Jones might. . . . But already the second putt had clinked into the cup. Jones's score was 293.