Sport: Pebble Beach

Fame is a thing California loves and understands. It was with joyous fanfare that the state welcomed Robert Tyre Jones Jr., world’s most famed golfer, to the National Amateur Championship at Pebble Beach. It was that multiple champion’s first Pacific Coast appearance. Eager thousands watched him shoot 67 in a practice round, 70 and 75 in the qualifying rounds, which tied for first place. Thus far Fame played to form. Then it flubbed miserably.

Chill, ominous fogs gathered over Pebble Beach, obscuring the fame of California’s golden climate. Then up stepped young John Goodman of Omaha, the boy who rides to tournaments in freight cars and plays good golf when he gets there. (He won the Trans-Mississippi in 1927.) At this year’s Open he qualified with the leaders, later putted disastrously to early elimination. Before Champion Jones’s breakfast had properly settled, young John Goodman had won three holes. Jones caught him at the 12th, lost him again at the 14th, left the tournament i down. “I’m proud,” said young John Goodman, “but I’m sorry.” Some people thought it was a “good thing for the game.” Others thought an 18-hole match was unfair, especially when young John Goodman lost his next match, 2 and 1, to unknown 18-year-old William Lawson Little Jr.

With the sudden eclipse of Jones, the galleries dwindled. Chandler Egan of Medford, Ore., designer of the Pebble Beach course, National Amateur Champion in 1904 and 1905, drew a few spectators as he eliminated two formidable contenders, the West’s George Von Elm and the East’s Jess Sweetser. But hardly anyone watched homely, courteous Francis Ouimet, National Champion in 1913 and 1914, beat Lawson Little. Only the stancher spirits and the prolix newspapermen witnessed the semi-finals in which Dr. Oscar F. Willing, deliberate dentist of Portland, Ore., downed courageous Oldster Egan, and Harrison (“Jimmy”) Johnston kindly but firmly eliminated Francis Ouimet.

“Jimmy” Johnston has been entering the Amateur for several years, always starting well, seldom going far. In private life he is a St. Paul, Minn., broker with a big-brown-eyed wife named Betty and two children. Having gotten by Ouimet, who put him out at St. Louis in 1921, he proceeded against Dentist Willing with his square jaw set. Dr. Willing was 1 up at lunchtime. Then, aged 33, on the 33rd green, “Jimmy” Johnston won the 33rd U. S. Amateur Championship, 4 and 3. California, though it had expected a Jones final, was pleased with Champion Johnston, who politely acknowledged his good fortune.

Tournament notes:

¶ After his elimination Bobby Jones, no sulker, stayed at Pebble Beach to referee the match between Johnston and George Voight.

¶ Cyril Tolley, ponderous British ama teur champion, caused natives to gape by resting on a shooting-stick between trudges around the course.

¶ Lord Charles Hope of England at one point thrilled with his play as well as his title. After hooking four tee shots over a cliff to the Pacific’s edge, he found his first ball playable, looped it up the cliff, holed a birdie.

¶ Herbert Fleishhacker, San Francisco scion, mammoth Stanford footballer, was a marshal, strode about the course in a bright yellow hat.

¶ A divot cut by Bobby Jones disappearedmysteriously. Sleuthing officials found it in the hands of a lady enthusiast who had retrieved it for a souvenir.