Golf: Welcome to the Club

There are football All-Americas, basketball All-Americas, baseball All-Americas, hockey All-Americas, soccer All-Americas, lacrosse All-Americas, little All-Americas, high school All-Americas, silver All-Americas, sometime All-Americas and all-time All-Americas. Who needs another All-America team? Golfers, apparently.

At least that was what Golf magazine thought. Last week, after polling 400 sportswriters, it came up with a 1964 All-America Golf Team. It was a little tricky, because golf—man v. himself—is hardly a team sport. But that was solved by rooting through the golfer’s bag and picking players for their proficiency with specific clubs. Jack Nicklaus thereby became Driver of the Year—a masterpiece of circumlocution, considering that he was good enough with all the clubs to win $1 13,284 this year.

Arnie Palmer was picked for the long irons, Bobby Nichols for the middle irons, Ken Venturi for the short irons, Billy Casper for putting. The palm for fairway woods went to South Africa’s Gary Player—which is a little like naming Australia’s Roy Emerson to an All-America tennis team because he won the Davis Cup. Tony Lema took the pitching-wedge award, although he left his wedge in the bag and did most of his pitching with a No. 7 iron when he won the British Open.

Julius Boros got the sort of backhanded compliment that caddies give big tippers: he was picked as the best man out of traps with a sand wedge. “If I hadn’t practiced,” said Boros modestly, “I couldn’t possibly have won. There are many fine wedge players in the game, and none of them got there the easy way.”

Now that the ice has been cracked, the possibilities are endless. They could, for instance, give Phil Rodgers the Tannenbaum Award for trying to play his ball out of a spruce tree, taking a quadruple-bogey 8 in the process, and blowing the 1962 U.S. Open. Arnie Palmer ought to be a cinch for a Master Mariner’s badge after the six strokes he took in the surf and rocks off Pebble Beach, Calif., last January. And how about a Diamond in the Rough for Bobby Nichols, who drove into the rough on nine out of 18 holes at this year’s P.G.A. Championship, hit a tree and three traps, still scored a 69 for the round, and won the tournament? One thing, though, about Golfs team: it is the richest All-America around. The poorest man on the squad is Julius Boros, and he merely made $28,232 this year.