Deadeye Dick

Twittering around the first tee of suburban New York's Winged Foot Golf Club last week were flocks of women in high-heeled pumps. They did not recognize Francis Ouimet, Chick Evans, Johnny Goodman or five other onetime champions who teed off in the 44th annual U. S. Amateur golf tournament. They powdered their noses while Defending Champion Bud Ward, generally considered the best amateur in the U. S., split the fairway with his drive. The golfer they had gone to see was Crooner Bing Crosby, whose habitual air of mild surprise never fitted him better than when he found himself among 150 topnotchers who had qualified for the national championship.

Crooner Crosby may have drawn the largest gallery (it included Joe Louis). But he did not play the best golf. "Those cups looked smaller than shrunken thimbles," he moaned, as he posted 160 (83-77) for the opening 36-hole medal round, five strokes too many to qualify him for the match play that determines the champion. Left to uphold the honor of the crooners' guild was Richard D. ("Dick") Chapman, 29-year-old New York and Pinehurst socialite, whose nightclub warbling has been more lark than livelihood. Playboy Chapman turned in the best medal score--140 (71-69), second lowest in Amateur history.

Though Winged Foot is Chapman's home course, few fans gave him much chance to survive six rounds of match play. In the past 35 years, only Bobby Jones had been able to win the championship after the jinx of winning the medal. But deadeye Dick Chapman, who has majored in golf most of his life, was determined to win the U. S. title this year. Three times he had reached the quarter-finals of the British Amateur, two years ago he reached the semi-finals of the U. S. Amateur.

Last week, with his estranged wife glaring at him from the fringe of the crowd, Chapman played the best golf of his career. With a dazzling display of shotmaking seldom seen among amateurs, he made his opponents look like duffers. In the final Chapman faced Warrington Bannerman McCullough Jr., another socialite who had been playing dream golf all week.

McCullough's performance had been even more extraordinary than Chapman's. Strictly a weekend golfer, he had chalked up the second best score in the medal round, then proceeded to eliminate three of the country's best amateurs: Willie Turnesa, 1938 champion; Johnny Fischer, 1936 champion; Ray Billows, twice runner-up in the last three years. Against Chapman, however, he lost his touch. In the most one-sided final since 1895, Dick Chapman shook Warrington Bannerman McCullough out of his trance, trounced him 11 & 9.

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