And Still Champ

"Take it easy on an old man, Harvie," pleaded the challenger with a tired smile. Charles Kocsis, 43, Detroit tool distributor, had all but five holes of the final round of the U.S. Amateur golf championship behind him, but he had a slew of other amateur scrambles dating back to 1930 behind him too, and he was bushed. He got no more sympathy than he expected from Defending Champion Harvie Ward Jr., 30. "I can see your lips moving," said Ward, "but I've turned off my hearing aid."

Out in front by then, just as he figured to be, handsome Harvie Ward well knew that any round of any amateur championship took all the concentration he could master. Day after day of match play always turns a tournament into a mess of upsets. At Lake Forest's Knollwood Country Club last week, even the weather pitched in to ruffle the field. Scores soared on damp, blustery winds. Co-Favorite Ken Venturi, Ward's San Francisco running mate, the man who almost won the Masters, disappeared in the third round. Californian Bob Roos, the ungainly golfer who beat Venturi, lasted only one more round. Hot-handed Sunday golfers blazed for a day or two and faded. The last of them, Des Moines's cigar-chomping Meat Salesman Sargio Fontanini, kept opponents off balance by losing his lit stogie in the rough, but Purdue's basketball co-captain, Joe Campbell, caught him in the quarterfinals.

Most of Knollwood's regular caddies had gone back to school. The strong-backed swabbies from the Great Lakes Naval Training Station who filled in were polite but helpless. They had been taught to say "Sir," but they seldom knew which club to haul from the bag. Harvie Ward was bothered least of all by this lack of practiced help. All he really needed was a putter.

An automobile salesman by profession, Ward (along with Ken Venturi) just happens to work for a Lincoln-Mercury dealer named Eddie Lowery, who just happens to be a U.S. Golfing Association official. Harvie can afford to spend most of his waking hours on the golf course. In his deft hands the reshafted putter that was his very first golf club has become the hottest in the world.

Last week that putter cooled off a little early in the final round. Then, as Kocsis faded, Harvie's game got better and better. Coming home on the back nine, he fired sub-par golf, overpowered the weary challenger to win 5 and 4. In the long history of the U.S. Amateur, only six other men have won the title twice in succession. Harvie Ward is the first man to turn the trick since Lawson Little last won in 1935. And since he has no intention of turning pro, he is a prime favorite to win again in 1957.

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