Golf

Agua Caliente. In 1922 Gene Sarazen was sitting on a rail fence behind the clubhouse at Skokie when someone came running out to tell him that Walter Hagen was half way around and breaking the course record. Sarazen, then 21, lately a caddy, was unconcerned. "Well, I've got mine--they've got to get theirs," he said. The 288 he had posted a few minutes before justified his confidence in it, for in spite of Hagen's spurt, 288 won the National Open championship. Since then Sarazen has played round the circuit every year. No golfer has been more consistent, but many have been more brilliant. Finishing in the first five in almost every tournament he enters, Sarazen has had a way of winning the unimportant ones, of yielding in big events to the inspired rallies of inferior players. Two weeks ago he broke his custom of staying in Florida all winter by going to Agua Caliente, Mexico. The men who have built hotels, casinos and a race-track there to attract the money formerly spent at Tia Juana, a few miles away, tempted him and other famed players by making the prizes of their first tournament bigger than those of any other tournament in the world.

Walter Hagen was there, and George Von Elm, Horton Smith, MacDonald Smith, Johnny Farrell, Al Espinosa. Leo Diegel was the resident professional. When the tournament was postponed for six days because of rain one-eyed Tommy Armour and a few others had to go home. Then the rain stopped and the cups were set into the greens on the brand-new course on which, until the first tournament competitor started over it, no one had ever played a stroke. The qualifying round was notable chiefly for the bad golf played. At the end of the first round Sarazen was fourteenth. When he started the last round he was fifth. He was two over par on hole No. 10 and one over on No. 11, but he made three straight birdies on the last holes. People who had been following Horton Smith, considered the winner till then, dropped back to watch Sarazen. His final 68 set the course record, his total of 295 won him the first prize of $10,000. Horton Smith and Al Espinosa tied for second, got $3,750 apiece. Amateur George Von Elm tied for third with the Dutra brothers, Mortie and Olin, who got $1,250 each.

Pan American. Because the women golfers who travel from tournament to tournament had nothing to do between autumn days in the East and the first southern events in February, a committee in Biloxi, Miss., organized an event for them two years ago. For a reason never clear and now forgotten, it was called the Pan-American. The greatest women stars in golf played in it when it started; this year the gathering was less notable. When all the matches but one had been played, the field was cut down to Mrs. Marion Turpie Lake and Mrs. Melvin Jones. Mrs. Lake, who won many cups as Marion Turpie, married late last year and decided that the happiest way she could spend her honeymoon was playing in the Pan-American. Mrs. Melvin Jones is the champion of the Olympia Fields club in, Chicago. She belongs to the old school of golf women and takes her game more seriously than most professionals. Mrs. Lake's 77 had broken the record of the course at the Edgewater Gulf hotel, but Mrs. Jones had her six down at lunch and polished her off, 5 and 4, in the afternoon. This week there is a Pan-American for men.

Writers & Artists. Grantland Rice, sportswriter, makes more money than anyone else in his profession by his combined activities--as colyumist reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, editing short cinema "sportlights," editing his magazine The American Golfer, which he recently sold to publisher Conde Nast. Once a year he demonstrates his knowledge of golf by competing in the artists' and writers' championship in Palm Beach. Last week, after eliminating his fellow Nast editor, Frank Crowninshield of Vanity Fair, he won the tournament for the third time, beating Jefferson Machamer, Manhattan artist, 2 and 1. Cartoonist Rube Goldberg, with a handicap of 35, qualified with 140 for 18 holes, then lost his first match without winning a single hole.

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