At Oakmont

With the fortitude of men who have sown for other men’s reaping the greens-gang of Oakmont Country Club (Pittsburgh) last week laid away mower, mattock and weeding knife. Their work was ready for its demolition. “One of the most difficult golf courses in the world” lay clipped, combed and manicured for the qualifying salvos the National Amateur Championship.

To keep that intricate bit of landscape at its pinnacle of horticultural impeccability right up to the great moment, it only remained lor the head keeper to waft his sickle at a few imaginary shoots of twitch grass, for the chairman of the greens committee to make efficient little dents with his heel in the sleek turf of the first tee, and for a few bag-shirted “guineas” to roam through the dusk, disconsolate but faithful in their contemplation of water-lilies that sprang up from slippery rubber stalks on the more pallid putting greens.

Lounging about the tool-house, like their near relations who sweep circus rings between acts, the Oakmont gangsters watched early arrivals take trial gouges here and there in the 6,860-yard course. An early comer was George Von Elm of Los Angeles, runner-up last year at the Merion Cricket Club (Philadelphia) to Champion Bobby Jones. Deliberation writ upon his countenance and grim revenge, Von Elm played four rounds, including a 72 with a 7 in it, then took Mrs. Von Elm over to Manhattan where he bided his hour.

The gangsters idly wondered how Von Elm had liked the way they had drawn some of the already-retiring tees still further back. How had he liked the look of that shaggy carry to the sixth green, or that oblique yawn in the eighth fairway that it took 450 tons of sand to fill? Had he often made a more perilous march than down the 601-yard twelfth, where they had smoothed the deep bunkers to dissemble innocence and the far pin retreated like a mirage?

Not many of the gangsters could place Von Elm. Until last year his activities in the East had been infrequent and unobtrusive. But Robert Tyre Jones Jr. they remembered well indeed, the chubby Buster Brown of 17 from Atlanta, Ga., who qualified so brilliantly in the amateur championship of 1919 at Oakmont and blazed through his matches to the very final. Two former champions had sickened at that fell onslaught, tall Bob Gardner of Chicago and seasoned Walter Fownes of the home club, and only with difficulty did ponderous Dave Herron at last fix a damper on the ardent cherub, who swore and flung his clubs when a crashing drive soared astray or a tricky pitch was topped.

Jones’ spectacular play began with his adolescence. He and his young companion, Perry Adair, were astonishing the senior members of Druid Hills (Atlanta) where they both wore short trousers even to parties. Jones was but 14 when he led a field of the country’s ablest for half a qualifying round at the Merion Cricket Club (Philadelphia). The beating he gave Gardner at Oakmont three years later was payment for a budnipping that occurred in the third round of that Merion affair. Francis Ouimet administered the budnipping at the Engineers’ Club (Roslyn, L. I.) in 1920, Willie Hunter at St. Louis in 1921, Jess Sweetser at Brookline, Mass., in 1922 (harshest ever, 8 and 7), and Max Marston at Flossmoor (Chicago) in 1923. So far as his match play went, it appeared that Jones was a psychopathic case.

The succession of budnippings Jones experienced in his long battle for the amateur title were in all cases effected by brilliant rounds: at Oakmont, Herron played 4 under 4’s for 33 holes; at Engineers, Ouimet was in brilliant form; at St. Louis, Willie Hunter’s last round was a 70; at Brookline, Jesse Sweetser broke the course record with a 68; at Flossmoor Marston cracked out a 70. Jones’ opponents invariably say that the steady perfection of his style has a stimulating effect on their own play. By his own excellence, then, he inspires the spurts of golf that beat him. In medal play, of course, his nearest competitor is likely to be off at another part of the course, hearing of Jones’ performance instead of seeing him make them—a very different thing.

But the boy’s medal play continued to dazzle from 1920 onward. He made these scores:

299 in the 1920 British Open at Inverness (won by Ted Ray, 295).

303 in the 1921 U. S. Open at Columbia, Washington, D.C., (won by Jim Barnes, 289).

289 in the 1922 Open at Skokie, Glencoe, 111., (won by Gene Sarazen, 288).

296 in the 1923 U. S. Open at Inwood, L.I., (won by Jones in a play-off against Bobby Cruickshank, with a notable iron-shot recovery from rough at the 18th hole).

300 in the 1924 U. S. Open at Oakland Hills, (won by Cyril Walker, 286).

291 in the 1925 U. S. Open at Worcester, Mass., (won by Willie MacFarlane, 291, after a 36-hole play-off which stood undecided until Jones missed a 10-ft. putt on the last green).

Jones’ 18-hole average for the last six U.S. Open championships is 74 1/2 strokes. His nearest competitor, Walter Hagen, averages 74 7/8.

People wondered what it was that undid so perfect a golfing machine when it was called upon for a hole-by-hole performance instead of a steady 72-hole tour. Its style seemed to be there all the time: the compact, vertical swing, the powerful scissors-action of the wrists, the rhythmic out-sweep of the follow-through. In qualifying rounds there were never such long, arrowy liners from the tee. Jones’ iron-shots were a portent: witness Inwood. To the firm work of his putting cleek, a cut putt or a wide were rare exceptions.

Last year when he finally swung to his big match-play victory on the scene of his national debut, the explanation crept out of hiding. Piling hole upon hole against his opponents, Jones told some one he was playing against no man, but stood at grips with the invisible antagonist of his medal conquests, Par. As men learn to come at truth by images, Jones had learned to let his matches take care of themselves, what time he hewed out rounds to set beside perfection. Simply an idea, but like any idea, effective when it was fully conceived.

Aware that this change had come over their young friend, also that he was married, a parent, and in the banking business with Perry Adair’s father’s firm in Atlanta, the good greens-gangsters awaited with eagerness his return to Oakmont. His divots would they gladly pat into place, and the divots of many another, that his defense of his title might be impeded by no fault in their husbandry. The fault in their husbandry. The talk that they heard ran sometimes on other young men, besides the perennial headliners, who might give him unexpectedly stern treatment: stocky Fred Lamprecht, perhaps, the intercollegiate champion; or Lauren Upson from the Pacific Coast, another rising collegian; Don Garrick, the Canadian junior, who also boxes, and his countryman, C. Ross Summerville, who bounced Max Marston from the 1924 Canadian Amateur.