Golf Comes Back

At Spokane last week a gallery of 10,000, the biggest crowd in the history of the Professional Golfers Association watched the biggest P.G.A. upset since Tom Creavy beat Denny Shute in 1931. Through six sub-par days, the favorite, blond, methodical Veteran Byron Nelson, fought his way to the finals. His opponent there was 29-year-old, balding Bob Hamilton of Evansville, Ind., playing his first major championship while awaiting Army induction.

Hamilton played with deliberation, not to say calculation. More than once he paced off 100 yards to the green, then came back, made a high, deadly approach shot. The crowd got impatient. But Nelson got the jitters. He missed three 2-ft. putts, lost the match and the $3,500 first prize, one down.

Such was the end of the first national P.G.A. tournament in two years, played despite the absence of 410 PGAers in the service (including Ben Hogan, Horton Smith, Vic Ghezzi, Jim Turnesa, Jim Demaret). And the last match was not the only interesting one. On hand were:

P: Harold ("Jug") McSpaden, Nelson's inseparable partner (they practice together, coach each other, and Nelson is godfather to McSpaden's son). Jug also lost to Hamilton--in the quarterfinals.

P: Good-humored Toney Penna, who tensed up on one hole and asked the gallery to start talking because "things are too darn quiet." The gallery whooped it up and Penna missed a 10 ft. putt. He then went on a practice green and canned 96 in succession.

P: Craig Wood, U.S. Open champion for the duration, who smoked his usual 20 to 25 cigarets per 18 holes and was an early casualty.

P: Newcomers George Schneiter, of Salt Lake City, and Charles Congdon, Tacoma aircraft plant inspector. They bowed to Hamilton and Nelson in the semifinals.

This lively P.G.A. revival dates back 18 months to what Fred Corcoran, round-faced P.G.A. tournament manager, calls his "noble experiment." Just after U.S. tournaments were theoretically given up for the duration, Corcoran went to Britain. He saw Britons crowding the ancient St. Andrews links the morning after an air raid, the game proceeding as usual along bomb-pocked fairways. He made up his mind to follow the British lead.

May Time. This week the P.G.A. players move on to Chicago. There, at his Tam O'Shanter town & country club, Showman George S. May will stage his fourth annual golf festival. His first three made him the Billy Rose of golf impresarios--last year's total attendance was a record 67,000. This year May hopes for 90,000. He is offering the biggest prizes yet, $42,587.50 in war bonds, with general admission at $.83 (plus tax) a head.

Standing loftily apart from the professional revival is the United States Golf Association, conservative sponsor of the U.S. Open, the U.S. Amateur. Chicago's May boasts that after the war he will destroy tournament golf U.S.G.A.-style, with its $3.30 admission prices and its stringent definition of amateurism. Meanwhile amateurs are already stirring on their own account: in the Midwest, club tournaments have increased 100% over 1943, in New England nearly 50%.

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