After the Avalanche

"It's like jumping off the top of a building," Ken Venturi said recently, surveying the shreds of his tattered career. "There are no steps on the way down."

Once he was the hottest player in golf. Arnie Palmer was just a promising young pro when Venturi, a 24-year-old amateur, shot a final-round 80 and lost the 1956 Masters by a single stroke. Jack Nicklaus was a chubby-cheeked Ohio State freshman when Ken was winning four tournaments in 1958 and hearing himself hailed as "the new Ben Hogan." In his first four years as a pro, Venturi won $141,276. Critics raved about the silky smoothness of his swing. "Ken stands up to the ball," said one, "as if he, the club, the ball and the golf course were all part of a beautiful piece of sculpture."

Bizarre Ailments. It is always impossible to single out the snowflake that starts an avalanche. Maybe, for Venturi, it was the last day of the 1960 Masters, when he was half-carried away from the 18th hole, measured for a green winner's blazer, and plunked down in front of a TV set--to watch Palmer birdie the last two holes and win. Things certainly went from bad to worse after that. He was plagued by a series of bizarre physical ailments: a pinched nerve that paralyzed half his chest, a stubborn virus infection, a hand injury, an automobile accident. In the next four years Venturi won only one minor tournament, and his official earnings last year amounted to exactly $3,848.33. There was a brief flurry of interest when he finished third in the Thunderbird Classic in early June. But last week, when it came time for the U.S. Open at the Congressional Country Club in Washington, D.C., nobody gave Venturi a chance.

The Congressional is the longest and toughest course any Open has ever been played on--7,053 yds., with greens so irregular that one golfer accused Architect Robert Trent Jones of burying dinosaurs under the undulating turf. The 9th hole is all of 599 yds. long, and its green is separated from the fairway by a deep, grass-choked ravine. "That," said one pro, "is where elephants go to die." In short, the Congressional is a brutal course, even for Palmer, Nicklaus, or Tony Lema, who had just won two tournaments in a row. But when Palmer fired the only sub-par round of the first day, a two-under 68, one sportswriter boldly announced that "Arnold Palmer has 198 holes to go on the Grand Slam of golf."

Plodding Along. Palmer did not do badly the next day, either: a one-under-par 69. But that was only good for second place, a stroke off the pace set by a curly-haired Californian named Tommy Jacobs, 29. Only twice all afternoon did Jacobs stray from the fairway; only twice did he fail to reach a green in par figures; and he did not miss a single putt under 12 ft. Jacobs' six-under-par 64 tied for the lowest score ever recorded in a U.S. Open. In all the excitement, who was going to notice Ken Venturi, plodding along in fourth place, six strokes behind?

Nine holes later, everybody was. Washington weather is never much to brag about, but for the 36-hole final round, it was atrocious. The temperature reached 97, and the humidity could drown a man. Nicklaus shot a 77, Palmer and Lema blew to 75s. But Venturi, in some astonishing way, suddenly became that sculpture again.

On the first hole, his 10-ft. try for a birdie hung tantalizingly on the lip of the cup for a full minute--and then dropped in. "When that happened, I said to myself, 'Well, well! If that's the way things are going, I might as well make the most of it.' " Venturi birdied the 4th, 5th, 8th, and 9th holes, turned the front nine in 30 strokes--and found himself deadlocked with Jacobs for the lead. But on the 17th he missed an 18-in. putt for a par; on the 18th, he messed up his drive and had to settle for another bogey. Then he almost collapsed from heat exhaustion. Leading by two strokes, Tommy Jacobs ate a plate of beef stroganoff. Doctors packed Venturi off to bed.

Cap in Hand. That's it, the experts figured. Venturi came out for the final 18, splayfooted and staggering. Yet by some weird magic his swing held together. Relentlessly he stuck the pars on the board. Trying for another of his wonderful rallies, Arnie Palmer sank all the way to fifth place. Tommy Jacobs needed five strokes to negotiate the par-three, 195-yd. 2nd hole.

Finally it was the 18th hole, and there was Ken Venturi, cap in hand, tottering up the middle of the fairway with a four-stroke lead and a big smile, soaking up the applause. His ball was in the sand trap 110 ft. from the pin. Casually he knocked it onto the green; coolly he ran in the 15-ft. putt--for a 72-hole total of 278, second lowest winning score in U.S. Open history. Then he sat down behind a tree and sighed: "You know, I was going to give up this game eight months ago?"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.