The Giant Killer

The unknowns who turn up at the National Amateur golf tournament often run short of clean clothes if they unexpectedly survive the opening rounds. In Bethlehem, Pa. last week, sandy-haired Billy Maxwell, 22, captain of the North Texas State College golf team, had brought along "three pairs of pants and not much else." Still in the running after the third day's play, Joe Gagliardi, a 39-year-old lawyer who has never won the championship at his own Winged Foot Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y., sent home for more shirts, his wife & five children. At week's end, after outshooting all the big guns in the field, Maxwell and Gagliardi faced each other in the finals.

Behind Gagliardi lay Defending Champion Sam Urzetta, 1949 Champion Charley Coe, and National Junior Champ Tommy Jacobs, at 16 the youngest golfer ever to reach the men's semifinals. Walker Cupper Frank Stranahan and 1951 British Amateur Titleholder Dick Chapman had already fallen in earlier rounds. Young Billy Maxwell blasted his way into the last round by knocking off 250-lb. Pittsburgh Realtor Jack Benson.

For the final 36-hole round over the Saucon Valley Country Club course, a gallery of 5,000 turned out to watch the giant killers fight it out. Playing with the handicap of three painfully abscessed teeth, cool Joe Gagliardi took a one-up lead over Billy by the end of the first nine, lost it on the next hole. Then, on the 203-yard 14th hole, Billy uncorked a shot that broke Gagliardi's heart, if not his spirit. With his opponent only 7 ft. from the pin on his drive, Maxwell wedged his ball from a trap toward the cup, 40 ft. away. It dribbled in for a birdie 2. Gagliardi missed his seven-footer, went one down, trailed Billy all the way home. After he calmly halved the 33rd hole to win, 4 and 3, the new champion (and youngest since 1924 when Bobby Jones, also 22, won the Amateur) tugged at his old white cap and said: "I must be dreaming."

Then Billy Maxwell accepted his big silver cup from Steelmaker Eugene G. Grace, chairman of the club's tournament committee. After the presentation Billy packed his two extra pairs of pants and prepared to head home to Texas, where he will go back to college next week as a business administration junior. Still a little bemused by his unexpected success, he grinned: "I didn't expect to get nowhere. I just came up to see and play a little golf."

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