Unknown Comes Through

Unknown Comes Through

In the last round of the U. S. Open Golf Championship, there is usually one unknown player who seems almost sure to win but somehow misses out. Last week, at Oakmont, Pa., where 66 of the ablest golfers in the world had struggled for three days over what most of them considered the world's hardest course, the unknown's name was Samuel McLaughlin Parks Jr., professional at the nearby South Hills Country Club. Well-mannered, well-dressed, Parks had proved himself a competent golfer, though he fussed tediously over his putts. In other respects, he fulfilled more perfectly the picture of the ineffectual dark horse to whom Open galleries have grown accustomed. Aged 25, son of a Pittsburgh real-estate man, he took his first lesson from Gene Sarazen the year Sarazen won his first Open (1922). He captained the Pittsburgh University golf team, turned professional three years ago. He had never won a tournament when he entered the Open because it was close to home and he knew the course by heart.

In the first two days of the tournament, he played along soundly enough. After two rounds he had a safe 150, four strokes behind pace-setting Jimmy Thomson of Long Beach, Calif, who can drive a ball farther than anyone else in the world. Also ahead of Parks were Alvin Krueger of Beloit, Wis., another dark horse who, reporters had discovered when he scored the first day's low of 71, was a semiprofessional baseballer, and Gene Sarazen, one of the ablest of golfers anywhere. Still in striking distance behind him were players like Al Espinosa, Olin Dutra, the defending champion, Dutra's brother Mortie, Horton Smith, Denny Shute, Paul Runyan, Walter Hagen. . . . Medal play golf tournaments are usually won or lost in the third round. In last week's third round Parks got a 73 while Thomson was taking 77, Sarazen and Krueger 78's. This did not make Parks's lead quite so impressive as it might have been because Henry Picard, youngest of the tournament favorites, clicked off the lowest round of the tournament, a 70, and Ray Mangrum had a 72. Nonetheless the gallery felt that it set the stage for the expected collapse of an unexpected leader.

When Parks stepped out on the tee for his last round, the biggest crowd of the week was ready to go with him. It looked as if they would not have to go very far when he lost a stroke to par on the second hole, another on the third, another on the fourth. Mysteriously, Sam Parks steadied, reached the turn in 38 and started home with five pars in a row. He lost a stroke at the 15th, took three putts on the short 16th and then, again apparently on the brink of the anticipated collapse, got a neat par on the tricky 17th. At the home hole, his one-yard putt for a four stayed out but when he posted his 72-hole score--299--it was the lowest on the board by half a dozen strokes. That, the crowd felt, made the situation all the more dramatic. The player who would really win the tournament was evidently still out on the course.

There strange things were happening. Picard, out in 41, was clearly out of the running. Shute had shot his bolt with a 39. When Krueger started and finished a mediocre first nine with two ruinous sixes, it left only two golfers who could possibly hope to lower Parks's 299. One was Jimmy Thomson who had a good chance coming to the 16th tee. When Thomson took three putts on the 16th green and three more on the 17th, the chance was gone and the gallery realized suddenly that Parks was not the unknown golfer who annually supplies the crowd with excitement and himself with grounds for life-long regret by failing to win the tournament by an eyelash. On the contrary Parks was the U. S. Open Champion unless, by some miracle, Walter Hagen, the only man with a chance to tie him, could play the last six holes two under par. Six strokes behind Parks at the 15th tee, Hagen was five behind at the 16th, four behind at the 18th, still three behind when he holed out on the 18th green. Reporters found young Parks in the locker-room doing his level best, with the aid of a highball, to make himself believe what had just happened. Asked for a comment, he paused, sucked slowly at his glass, finally found courage for something that was meant to be a joke: ''I'll write your headline for you: Total Unknown Comes Through."

P: In the gallery were Dizzy Dean, Babe Didrikson, Bobby Jones who signed his name for autograph hunters more often than any of the contestants. Said Jones: "I'm a trifle sick of watching golf tournaments."

P: Designed by onetime (1910) Amateur Champion William Fownes and Emil Loeffler, scene of the Amateur Championship which Jones won in 1925, the Open which Tommy Armour won in 1927, Oakmont is 6,981 yd. long, famed for its icy greens, its deep traps, raked in furrows to make explosion shots the only feasible way of getting out. Longest hole on the course is the 12th--621 yd. On his second round at this hole Thomson's spoon shot was hole-high in a bunker. His recovery left him one inch from the cup. P: Strangest entrants in the tournament were the six Japanese professionals who have been making an exhibition tour of the U. S. by auto-trailer. Five of them failed to qualify for the last two rounds. Kanekichi Nakamura, who succeeded, finished 58th, described the fast Oakmont greens: "At home we hit ball on green. Here you bunt."

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