Good-Time Jimmy

When a gale blows up and the course is soggy with rain, the grim men who play big-time golf are apt to mutter: "It's a Demaret day." Like a mud-running race horse, Jimmy Demaret (pronounced demerit) always seems to do his best when conditions are worst.

This week, with 28 tournaments behind him and another winter circuit about to begin, Jimmy Demaret is, at present, 1947's most successful pro golfer. His 1947 earnings to date are $23,636, which gives him a slight lead over South Africa's Bobby Locke ($22,927) and fellow-Texan Ben Hogan ($22,310). For a brief vacation (he competes eleven months out of twelve), the veteran pro headed home to Houston to shoot deer and ducks.

Beautiful Green. When Jimmy used to caddy, he was offended by the sloppy way golfers dressed. Says he: "I think there is no more beautiful place in the world than a green golf course . . . and I want to dress for it." He has a gypsy's taste in colors. He has his sport clothes made to order--in electric blue, bottle green, canary yellow and vermilion--by a Fifth

Avenue tailor. Most of all he likes to wear outlandish hats. His current favorite: a Swiss yodeler's hat. Says Jimmy: "It keeps people talking." Unlike most of today's early-to-bed pros, in the evenings Demaret usually heads for the nearest night club--to hobnob with a bandleader and sing a song with the band. Like golf's great showman of the 1920s, Walter Hagen, he never lets golf interfere with fun.

Ex-caddy Demaret tips his caddies as much as $150 for a tournament (the usual pro's tip: $5 a round). In match play, Demaret usually does badly. After Ben Hogan drubbed him 10 and 9 last year in the P.G.A. Championship semifinals, newsmen asked what was the turning point of the match. Replied Jimmy dryly: "When Hogan showed up." But Jimmy has won the prized Masters' Tournament twice.

Just Hit It. Unlike Hagen, Demaret helps out his opponent with cries of "Great shot." The Haig was a deliberate time-waster, rattling his foe by taking great pains in lining up easy shots. Hagen confessed once: "What's the use of fooling around with shots you don't think you can make. . . . But when you get an easy one, study it, measure it, give it the business. Then when you make it; just as you knew you could all the time . . . everybody cheers."

Demaret casually steps up and hits the ball. He insists, like most golfers, that the game is the most trying of all sports ("It is the only sport where the ball is still. There is so much time for contemplation of every move you're going to make that the nerves wear thin"). But his nerves seldom show.

At an age (35) most touring pro golfers have begun to head downhill, easygoing Jimmy Demaret will be the man to beat on the winter circuit.

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