Low-Pressure Champ

Lieut. Hillman Robbins Jr., 25, is a ground-bound Air Force desk jockey who suffers variously from low blood pressure, an allergy to early-morning reveille and an exasperating habit of lunging at his tee shots and turning his head on putts. A crack amateur golfer, Robbins gains a kind of circular compensation from his failings on the course: fouled-up shots beef up his blood pressure, his energy expands and his game improves accordingly.

On the rock-hard fairways of the Country Club course at Brookline, Mass. last week, Robbins spent his first seven matches in the U.S. Amateur championships nerving himself up to proper pitch. He sprayed his drives, flubbed his putts. Somehow, he managed to hang on. All around him, as they almost always do in the amateur championships, amateur hot-shots stumbled and fell. Billy Joe Patton, the hard-hitting Carolina lumber dealer was cut down in the second round; last year's runner-up, Charles Kocsis, was bumped in the fifth; Willie Turnesa, winner in 1938 and 1948, lost a 24-hole marathon to an unknown Florida insurance underwriter named Jack Penrose. Just as he began to get his game under control, Robbins found himself in the finals, matched with his Walker Cup teammate, Dr. Frank ("Bud") Taylor, 40, a Pomona, Calif. dentist.

An Army veteran who put in a little time just before the Normandy invasion patching up the teeth of General Dwight Eisenhower, Lieut. Colonel Taylor had been turning in better scores than Lieut. Robbins all through the tournament. He seemed to have the hilly course all figured out. But in the final round, it was the course that was his roughest opponent. A week of wearing golf on the hills of the Country Club turned out to be too much for a man who does most of his weekday walking around a dentist's chair. Slowly, Bud faltered. His drives shortened; his irons were lazy and weak. Said he sadly: "I got so tired, I was playing with a 'So what?' swing."

Air Force Man Robbins got better and better. Confident, his blood pressure under control, he practiced his putting during the lunchtime intermission with the old Cash-in club that was "loaned" to him nine years ago by a public-links pro back home in Memphis. Dentist Taylor managed to keep in contention until the 24th hole, then he began to come apart. Racking up pars and birdies with ease, Lieut. Hillman Robbins won himself the U.S. Amateur championship, 5-and-4. Said he: "I don't reckon I'll ever give that putter back now."

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