Scorcher

Opening day was so hot (104DEG) that three contestants stripped to the waist in the middle of the round. But hotter than the weather was blond, sun-bronzed Jimmy Clark, a 20-year-old aircraft worker from Long Beach, Calif. He shuffled around Spokane's hilly, pine-fringed Indian Canyon golf course in 64 strokes, seven under par. Next day he shot 71 for a qualifying total of 135.

A two-round score of 135 is one for the book in any golf tournament. But last week's scorcher made U.S. golfers sit up and take notice. For Jimmy Clark was playing in the National Public Links championship, reserved exclusively for golfers who have sharpened their shots on one of the 1,900 U.S. public links. And 135 was four strokes under the best qualifying card ever turned in by their country-club cousins in the U.S. Amateur.*

Medalist Clark set a new amateur golf record. Result: Jimmy got the jitters, was sent to the sidelines in the quarterfinals. In the 36-hole final, with the thermometer still hovering around 100DEG, chunky Bill Welch, a Houston toolmaker who studies law at night school, beat slim, bespectacled Jack Kerns, a Denver insurance clerk, on the 31st green.

* Public linksters may qualify for the U.S. Amateur, but no one belonging to a private club may vice versa.

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