Open Golf

Gene Sarazen. defending champion, was so disgusted with his driving that he took a lesson from Jock Hutchison--which failed to do any good. Crack amateurs like Maurice McCarthy, Neil White, Johnny Fischer and Johnny Goodman scored lower than most of the Ryder Cup team professionals -- Horton Smith, Dudley, Diegel, Shute--on their first round. Tommy Armour, lean one-eyed Scot who learned golf at Edinburgh before the War, wrapped a bit of adhesive tape around a scratch on his right thumb. It seemed to help his putting and his first round score-- a course record of 68--put him five strokes ahead of the field. All this, on the first day of the U. S. Open Golf Championship, over the long, clover-covered course of the North Shore Golf Club at Glenview, Ill., last week was fairly orthodox.* What happened on the second day was not orthodox at all.

Slim young Johnny Goodman, Omaha amateur who was left off last year's Walker Cup team partly because the U. S. G. A. Committee did not think he was good enough, partly perhaps because they disapproved of his having arrived at major tournaments in cattle-cars or auto-trailers, started his second round with three birdies in a row, got another at the fifth, played the other holes on the first nine in par and turned in 32. The gallery that had seen Horton Smith go out in 33 and blow up miserably with a 43 on the back nine hurried back to see Goodman do the same thing. Instead, after bunkering an approach at the tenth and three-putting the eleventh, he steadied and played three holes in par. At the fifteenth, his approach bounced three times and stuck between the flag and the rim of the cup for an eagle three. Goodman needed three hard pars for a 67. He got two of them. Then, on the last hole, he sent his 170-yd. approach, shot from the edge of the rough, three feet past the pin. He sank the putt for a birdie, a record 66 and a two stroke lead over Armour who, his thumb still taped, had putted poorly for a 75.

Most medal play tournaments are won in the third round. Goodman, who had used only 25 putts for his 66, was putting nearly as well the next morning. This time he took 28 putts for his round, finished with a 70 that left him six strokes ahead of the field. Ralph Guldahl, an obscure St. Louis professional who had been playing steady golf in the first two rounds, was closest with a third round 70 for 217. Craig Wood, biggest winner in last winter's tournaments, was a stroke behind. Armour a stroke behind Wood.

Most medal play tournaments are lost in the last round when, very often, the late starters who have a chance to win are too rattled to play their games against a posted score. At North Shore last week, there was less uncertainty than usual. After a brisk lunch of cottage cheese, Goodman started in his usual style with a par, an eagle, a birdie. Then he wasted six strokes on the next six holes, turned in 39, struggled through the last nine in 37 and lay down in the locker room to wait. His total of 287 was only one stroke behind the joint record of Chick Evans and Gene Sarazen for a U. S. Open. The news that Walter Hagen, after hooking his drive out of bounds on the 17th had managed to post a 66, did not worry Goodman at all. It left Hagen with 292, tied with Tommy Armour, two strokes behind Craig Wood and five behind Goodman. The only man Goodman had to worry about was Guldahl who had picked up four strokes on the first nine and needed only 35 on the last nine to tie. On the 18th tee, Guldahl needed par. His approach was trapped but he exploded out within five feet of the cup. Then he leaned over his short putt and knocked it nervously past the cup, for a four-round score of 288.

When Johnny Goodman beat Bobby Jones by one stroke in the first round of the Amateur at Pebble Beach in 1929, few people outside of Omaha knew much about him. Even when he was the low-scoring amateur under Jones at Interlachen in 1950, and again when he was low-scoring amateur at Fresh Meadow last year, there was a tendency to underestimate his achievements. His game, steady but nothing special off the tee, sure on the fairways, sometimes, as last week, brilliant on the greens, is more efficient than spectacular. Last year, angered at being left off the Walker Cup team, Goodman beat three members of it in the Amateur before losing to Ross Somerville (who last week finished far down in the list in the Royal St. George's Vase tournament at Sandwich, England) in the final. Said Goodman after his victory last week: "I sort of lost my head when I got that eagle on the third. . '. . Right on the tenth tee I decided that if I was going to win I had to be satisfied with par. . . . My plans? No, I'm not going to turn professional. I'm going back to Omaha to sell as much insurance as I can. . . . Got to make some dough."

*The tournament was held two weeks earlier than usual to avoid hot weather. Temperature the first day: 97DEG F. in the shade.

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