Another Patty Berg?

The best women golfers in the U.S. include Helen Silleck Holleran (co-owner of the New York Yankee baseball empire), Sylva Annenberg Leichner (niece of Publisher Moe Annenberg) and Grace Amory (ex-stepsister of Turfman Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt). Last week in Brookline, Mass., these gold-spoon golfers and no other top-flight amateurs matched strokes for the Women's Golf Championship of the U.S.

In the medal round Miss Amory shot 76, low score of the day. But after the first round of match play, she was on the sidelines. So was Mrs. Holleran and Defending Champion Betty Jameson, generally considered the ablest of America's golfing sorority, who was put out by a bespectacled upstart named Janet Younker. Two or three rounds later they were joined by Mrs. Leichner, by six-time Champion Glenna Collett Vare, by twice runner-up Maureen Orcutt, by other pre-tournament favorites. By that time the gallery turned its toes toward Betty Hicks Newell, a pint-sized 20-year-old from Long Beach, Calif.

Betty Newell, a bride of four months, is scarcely taller than her driver, weighs 110 lb. in her golfing togs. She can sock a ball farther, they say, than hardy Betty Jameson or husky Patty Berg (now a pro). Two years ago, in her first try for the national championship, she reached the semifinals, lost to tournament-tough Betty Jameson.

Last week, little Betty Newell was tournament-tough. She had toured the southern-resort circuit last winter, turned in the best qualifying score in five successive tournaments. Fighting grimly with every swing, she not only came through to the final last week, but exhibited a near-perfect game in defeating Philadelphia's 22-year-old Helen Sigel, another comparative newcomer, 5 & 3, for the title.

The fans began to call her "another Patty Berg." Like Patty, Betty is a tomboy, was an outstanding softball player on the West Coast before taking up golf four years ago. On the side, she plays the bass viol, draws cartoons, writes sport features for her hometown newspaper, the Long Beach Press-Telegram.

Hardly had they handed her the big silver cup last week when go-getting Mrs. Newell told newshawks: "I am receptive to professional offers. My husband [a struggling Long Beach auditor] and I need a stake to start out married life."

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