Lady Medalists

Seventy-two holes of tournament golf is a lot of tournament golf for a woman when it is all medal play. The first such tournament was played last week at the Flossmoor club near Chicago where women's par is 80 strokes. Four times par was broken and once it was equalled, but the final scores in a field of 49 were a long parade beginning 14 strokes behind the par 320 scored by chunky, freckle-some Helen Hicks of Long Island. She had two course-record-breaking 78's to start with, which gave her subsequent 83 and 81 comfortable leeway under Virginia Van Wie of Chicago who managed to rush up from ninth to second place by finishing with two 79's. Other competitors included the Midwest's seasoned Mrs. Lee Mida and stocky Maureen Orcutt of the East. Conspicuously absent were Glenna Collett, Edith Cummings, Mrs. Dorothy Campbell Hurd, Edith Quier, Mrs. Harry Pressler. The tournament, called variously "The Derby," "The Inaugural" and the Western Women's Medal Play Championship, may be made a national fixture, with hard-hitting Helen Hicks as first defender of a title comparable--although there are no known women professionals--to the na- tional open championship for men.