Unmatched Quartet

Most professional golfers cannot take the tension of watching their competitors hole out in the final stages of a big tournament. They sweat it out in the clubhouse locker room. But as husky Joyce Ziske clumped confidently onto the 18th green at the Worcester, Mass. Country Club last week needing only a 5-ft. putt to tie the U.S. Women's Open, a nervous, long-legged blonde moved to the edge of the crowd and prayed silently: "Miss it! Please miss it!"

Coolly, Joyce addressed the ball, tapped it toward the cup--and saw it run wide. A quick grin burst across the blonde's broad face. "Oh, boy," she sighed, "that was agony!" By the slim margin of a single stroke--the dinky putt that Joyce Ziske missed--beaming, Carolina-born Betsy Rawls, 32, had won her fourth U.S. Women's Open, adding 1960 to her victories in 1951, 1953 and 1957. No woman golfer, not even the incomparable Babe Didrikson Zaharias,* had done that before.

The victory, worth $1,800 was sweet for Betsy. An erratic player who, at her scrambling best, is the most exciting female golfer in the world, she was last year's leading money winner (with a record $26,760) on the women's tour, has been a topflight pro ever since she graduated with Phi Beta Kappa honors from the University of Texas in 1950. Taut and moody on the golf course, Betsy lugs a portable phonograph with her on the tour, relaxes between rounds with Wagnerian opera. This season, Betsy had been in a frustrating slump, had won only two major tournaments prior to the Open, and had watched her earnings drop to $9,421.

In the Open, though, she was superb.

In sixth place after two days and trailing by seven strokes at the start of the grueling, 36-hole final round, Betsy played the hilly, 6,137-yd course as if she owned it. Betsy curled in long, difficult putts--one of 60 ft.--with grooved accuracy, gained six strokes on the leaders in the first six holes, and finished the morning 18 with a 4-under-par 68, tying the tournament record. She wilted a bit in the afternoon sun and slipped to a 75. It was just enough to win when 25-year-old Joyce Ziske's challenge failed on the final hole. Champion Rawls's 72-hole total: a 4-over-par 292 strokes--the exact score Old Pro Betsy, three days before, had predicted would win.

* Mrs. Zaharias' record: 1948, 1950 and 1954.

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