Carnoustie & Cotton

St. Andrews is the holy home of golf, but 30 miles up the coast, where the wind blows just as hard over a rolling sea of dunes, heather and beach grass, lies the longest, toughest championship course in Scotland, 7,200-yd. Carnoustie. Thither from their triumph over Great Britain's Ryder Cup team (TIME, July 12) last week went the ablest U. S. Ryder Cup squad in years, vowing to wrest from the British their Open championship, exclusively U. S. property from 1924 to 1934.

In fine weather Carnoustie and the nearby Burnside course, over which the qualifying rounds were played, are no harder going than any seaside course with tight fairways and pit-pocked greens. Horton Smith of Missouri, whom a slump had kept out of the Ryder Cup play, stroked out two smooth 695 to win the medal.

Gene Sarazen got 141 and three other U. S. players equaled par with 142, which none of the Britons could do. Alf Padgham, defending champion, shot a 78 and a 74. With the weather bonny the next day, Padgham and Reginald Whitcombe turned in 723 for the first 18 holes of championship play, but easy-going Ed Dudley of Philadelphia passed them with a 70, followed by Denny Shute, twice U. S. professional champion, with a 73. In the second round, with only a light easterly breeze, the competition grew keener. For Great Britain, Reginald Whitcombe scored a 70 for a total of 142, his older brother Charles Whitcombe posted 144, and Henry Cotton got 146. Still Ed Dudley's 144, Denny Shute's 146 and Walter Hagen's 148 promised that some keen British play would be necessary to guard the Open title in the last 36 holes.

The last day dawned dark and dripping, with the wind whipping higher every hour, the kind of weather in which U. S. professionals like to play bridge or write their memoirs. Carnoustie was now at its most devilish, the greens so waterlogged they had to be swept off with long canes, the footing so treacherous that a man could scarcely swing. One by one the U. S. professionals bogged down miserably. Dudley hooked consistently, fell back with a 78 in the morning round. Hagen was stuck with 80, Shute with 76. Only young Byron Nelson and Charles Lacey, British by birth, controlled their pitching and putting, carding respectively 71 and 70. By mid-day Reginald Whitcombe, at home in the torrent, thought his two-stroke lead safe. No longer threatened by the U. S. pack, he only feared his brother and Henry Cotton as he drove off for the final 18 holes.

Tense and drenched, Cotton had birdied the 18th hole with a tremendous putt in the morning round, for a 73. At least 2,000 galleryites set out with him after lunch, though the storm had reached its worst. Reginald Whitcombe was out in 39, they heard. Nursing every shot, Cotton reached the turn in 35, to learn that Whitcombe had straggled in with 76 for a total of 292. That left Cotton just 38 strokes to tie. His gallery trebled as, spurning waterproof clothes lest they bind his swing, the lithe, hawk-faced Cotton shot the first five holes of the final nine in four deliberate 45 and a 3, misputting only on the 18th for a 5. Needing only two more 45 and a 5 to win, he made the next two holes in 3 and 4, cautiously took 5 on the last, to finish with a par 71, topping Whitcombe by two strokes. He had won his second British Open championship when Lacey stormed in shortly afterward with a 72, to finish third.

Long renowned as the most calculating professional in the game, Henry Cotton first won the Open in 1934. At Sandwich then he shot the first round in 67 to tie Walter Hagen's record for the Open. On the following round he shot a 65, seven under par, the maddest pace ever set in national championship golf. He refused to play on the Ryder Cup team in 1931 because rules forbade him to barnstorm the U. S. independently after the matches. In 1933 he was ineligible because he was a nonresident, employed at the Waterloo Club at Brussels. Last winter when he returned to England to become professional at the Ashridge Club near Berkhamsted, he became eligible for this year's Ryder Cup play.

Henry Cotton has the clothes and polish of a Mayfair blade, the build and complexion of a matador. Most serious of British professionals, he is nervous and temperamental. He offends associates by his indifference to P. G. A. edicts and his frank money-making zeal. On the course he is apt to tear up his card when his game slips, explode over camera clicks and yelping dogs. Slightly stoop-shouldered, he flouts form by bending his left arm at the start of his stroke. Otherwise, as last week's victory suggested, his style is as studied as his temper is touchy. Self-made son of an English schoolmaster, he has practiced hours before a mirror. During important tournaments he often has a masseur treat him, retires resolutely at 9 p. m. He carries a record bag of clubs: 22.

Three days after Carnoustie, Champion Cotton met U. S. Professional Champion Denny Shute at Walton Heath, Surrey, for a $2,500 prize and "the world's championship" in 72 holes of match play. For two rounds Shute almost held his own, finishing the 36th hole 2 down, 72-72 v. 71-70. Then his wood game cracked while Cotton plodded grimly, steadily on, carding a brilliant 69 for the third round and spinning along at 2 under par when he finished the match, 6 and 5 at the 67th hole. Cotton got $2,000, Shute $500.

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