Golfers' Golfer

One of the few truly representative national competitions in U. S. athletics is the National Amateur Golf championship. This year, in its 28 sectional qualifying tournaments, 831 silver-spoon and rusty-putter golfers in all corners of the U. S. strove for the 171 places in last week's entry list at Chicago's North Shore Country Club. The National itself is one of the toughest grinds going--two qualifying rounds of medal play to cut the field to 64, four rounds of 18-hole match play to determine the semifinalists, then 36-hole semifinal and final matches. Bobby Jones, who won it five times, used to call the National Amateur a nightmare. One flubbed iron, one balky putt, and the ruling champion often finds himself among the spectators.

Last week, after the second 18-hole round, on the sidelines were the great Johnny Goodman, who has also won the National Open (1933), Willie Turnesa, 1938 Amateur champion, many other top-flights. Still in stride, however, among the 16 survivors, were: 1) Poughkeepsie's Ray Billows, golf's handsome, glamorous, 25-year-old Cinderella Man, who got a toehold on golf fame in 1935 by driving to swank Winged Foot on the Sound in a $7 jalopy to win the New York State title; and 2) 26-year-old, icy-veined Marvin ("Bud") Ward, of Spokane, a golfers' golfer. Three years ago nobody had ever heard of him. Two years ago he lost to Johnny Goodman, one down, in the National Amateur semifinals, made the 1938 Walker Cup team on the strength of that. The U. S. lost the Walker Cup, but it was not Bud's fault. He won his match, against English Champion Frank Pennink, by the unheard-of margin of 12 up. This spring he lambasted most of the pros in the business in the National Open, got upset when one of his iron shots cold-cocked a spectator, missed the big triple tie for first place by one stroke. Before last week's play started, 15 of 17 New York aspirants thought he would win. So did Bobby Jones.

Sure enough, the finalists were Billows and Ward. For his 92 holes of match play that far, Billows was nine under par. Ward had-played 103 holes, was 12 under. In the semifinal, Ward had shot three birdies and an eagle right in a row. Against this, Chicago's Art Doering got three pars and a birdie, could not win a hole.

In the final, Ward took the first nine one up, was four up at the end of the first 18. Billows had him even only once, on the eighth. In the afternoon round, Ward blazed through the first nine to become seven up. On the 13th, with five holes to play, he was still seven up and national champion. Ward hits super-lengthy drives, on-in-two brassies, crisp irons, but the answer to last week's feat lay in his putter. In the 66 holes he had to play in the last two rounds, he one-putted 29 greens, three-putted only once.

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