"Sure & Far"

Fifty-seven years ago, the cathedral town of St. Andrews, Scotland, went daft over a youth of 19 whose serious face was just beginning to sprout the mutton-chop whiskers then in fashion. His name was Tom Morris Jr. With his long-necked clubs, lumpy balls and tarn o'shanter, he had gone over to Prestwick on the west coast andi for the third year running, whipped all the golfers in the land for the British Open Championship. They gave him the champion's belt, to keep permanently. The next year they did not bother to hold the tournament.

In 1872, a championship cup was donated. Tom Morris Jr., his whiskers now fully and handsomely grown, went again to Prestwick and won the first leg on the cup. Scottish golfers were dismayed but cheerful. What could you do against the son and pupil of old Tom Morris, who had himself won four of the first ten championships after they were started in 1860?

Tom Kidd, Mungo Park and Willie Park Sr. managed to overcome the Morrises the next three years. And then, on Christmas Day, 1875, Tom Morris Jr. died, aged but 24. Tom Morris Sr. lived on, but never again was a Morris champion. St. Andrews "canonized" the pair of them and erected a statue of Tom Morris Jr. making an iron shot. The statue's legend reads: "Sure and Far."

Golf spread and changed after 1875. Champions rose and fell. Harry Vardon won the British Open six times; J. H. Taylor and James Braid, five times each. But they were grown men before they became golf masters, and the few youngsters that flashed into prominence from time to time winked out briefly." Not until 1926, when he won the British Open with a 291 that tied J. H. Taylor's record of 1909, did another young man come along who really played them "Sure and Far." Last year Robert Tyre Jones Jr. of Atlanta, with his 68 at Sunningdale (while qualifying) and his undeviating deadliness to win at St. Ann's, looked very much indeed like another Tom Morris Jr. Aged 25, he appeared to carry on where Tom Morris Jr. left off.

Hence the unusual crowds last week at St. Andrews, cradle of golf. They banked the fairways with solid walls of humanity, 20,000 strong. An obscure Frenchman named Rene Golias led half the qualifying play with a 71, and Cyril Tolley, the ponderous English amateur, led the whole flight with 144. But the main galleries followed "Bawby" Jones. Excursion trains stopped to watch him. Clergymen, grandmothers, policemen, cripples made shift to get a view. Wet greens-had bothered his putts at first but his second score, a 71, was a portent. Less whiskery than Tom Morris Jr. but quite as serious, "Bawby" started the tournament proper by playing four holes steadily and, at the 530-yard fifth hole, putting his second shot on the edge of the huge plateau green. Peering off at the cup about 40 yards away, he said: "This is the longest putt I ever had to make." He sank the putt.

Entering the treacherous "loop" stretch of the old course, where the holes criss-cross among wiry gorse and whins, he played the next four holes in twelve shots. He finished the round in 68, tying the course record. He clicked off his next round in 72, forcing players with more than the respectable total of 155 out of play. /- His pluperfect form lapsed to mere perfection in a third round of par 73. He finished with another 72, six strokes ahead of two British professionals--Aubrey Boomer and Fred Robson--who had brilliantly equaled the previous tournament record.

That evening on the streets of St. Andrews, newsboys sold "Bawby's" picture framed beside that of Tom Morris Jr. One dismayed Scotsman growled, "Ye're nae a gowfer at a'-ye're juist a machine." Another said: ". . . the gr-reatest gowfer in the wur-rld." Carried on Scottish shoulders to his hotel (beside the 18th fairway), Gowfer Jones hastily sought privacy. The terrific strain had ended in an attack of nausea. When it had passed he said: "I'm too happy to talk. To be a champion at St. Andrews is quite too much for me."

Instead of bringing the trophy home, "Bawby" gracefully asked the Royal and Ancient Gowf Club, of which he was last year made a life member, to "mind" it for him. But Scotsmen were pleased to think that the trophy's ultimate destination was, if "Bawby" could come over again next year, about as sure as it was far.

*In 1913, so much rain fell on St. Andrews during the finals of British Amateur that the fire department was called to pump out the bunkers.

/-To narrow the field, those using 16 or more strokes above the leader's total for 36 holes are automatically eliminated from the British Open. Jones's 140 cut the field from 104 to 53 players.