Golf: Tough Way to Make 100 Grand

On the 18th green at Louisiana’s Oakbourne Country Club, Gay Brewer marked his ball and turned to Jack Nicklaus. “What’s it worth to you,” he asked, “if I miss this putt?” Nicklaus solemnly reached into his pocket, pulled out a money clip crammed with bills, and held it out to Brewer. Brewer chuckled impishly, lined up his putt—a straight-in 15-footer—and missed. It was a fitting climax to pro golf’s 1964 season, a wacky eleven months in which a reformed rake named Tony Lema won four tournaments in six incredible weeks; in which Old (35) Master Arnold Palmer won his fourth Masters and still lost the money-winning title to burly Wunderkind Nicklaus, 24—by the margin of Brewer’s bungled putt and $81.13 in cash.

Nicklaus did not win the Cajun Classic; Louisiana’s Miller Barber did.

Jack and Arnie were having their own contest: there was Palmer, in the clubhouse, with fourth money ($1,500) already in the bag. That meant that Nicklaus had to finish better than third —and, by the skinny-skin-skin, he did.

The missed putt cost Brewer second place, dropped him into a tie with Nicklaus worth $1,900 to both players.

Which brought the official P.G.A. totals for 41 tournaments to $113,284.50 for Nicklaus, $113,203.37 for Palmer.—Yet for Nicklaus, playing his third season as a pro, 1964 was full of disappointments. True, he won four tournaments. But he failed to win a major championship, though he finished second three times—to Palmer in the Masters, to Lema in the British Ooen to Nichols in the P.G.A. In the U.S.

Open, he wound up with a dismal tie for 23rd. He thus did not qualify for the four-man World Series of Golf, an unofficial “exhibition” that used to be his private preserve: two years running, he had tak’en home the winner’s purse of $50,000—biggest check in golf. His money came mostly in dribs and drabs, ranging from a low of $475 in the U.S. Open to $24,042 for winning Pennsylvania’s Whitemarsh Open. Added up, it came to a pretty penny—but it was a tough way to make 100 grand.

The next three: Billy Casper, $90,65308-Tony Lema, $74,130.37; Bobby Nichols! $74,012.26.