Brinkmanship

It was the merest formality, the coup de grace, and then everyone could adjourn to the clubhouse for the popping of the corks. There stood "Champagne Tony" Lema at last week's Cleveland Open, 15 under par, with just a one-foot putt between him and $20,000--and everybody knows that golf pros do not miss one-foot putts. But there was a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip. Ever so casually, Tony stepped up to the ball. Ever so casually, he pushed it right around the hole.

That put Tony in a sudden-death playoff with Arnold Palmer, a beer man. Sudden death is hardly the word. Suicide is a better term: out of 19 playoffs in his career, Palmer has won twelve. But Tony is a brinkman too; it makes the bubbly taste all the better. On the first hole, a 398-yard par-four, he watched Palmer smack his drive over a creek all the way to the base of the elevated green. Briefly, Lema fingered the "safe" club--a No. 4 iron. Then he reached for a driver too. "I might as well go out in style," he sighed.

He almost did: the ball was headed straight for the water when it clipped a footbridge and kicked across. A No. 9 iron put Tony on, 15 feet from the pin --and when Arnie left his wedge short of the green, Lema suddenly had another chance to win. This time he took a deep breath and stroked the ball neatly into the center of the cup. Birdie, hole and match for Lema's third victory in four weeks. His 1964 winnings now totaled $60,561, only $1,090 behind King Palmer himself.

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