Sport: Patty’s Day

Seven years ago when Dr. Robert B. Lawson, physical director of the University of North Carolina, was asked to stir up a little golf interest among his pupils to stave off mortgage foreclosure on a local country club, he admitted frankly that he “didn’t know which end of a stymie to take hold of.” His 23-year-old daughter, Estelle (Phi Beta Kappa), knew less. Together they read a book on golf, bought four clubs apiece (brassie, No. 2 iron, mashie and putter) as recommended by the main street sporting-goods store. A few months later they not only had all the students golf-conscious but Daughter Lawson—a caddy carrying her four clubs in his hand like sticks of kindling wood— survived two qualifying rounds of the women’s Southern golf championship.

That same year, in Minneapolis, a golf-zealous grain broker named Herman Berg forbade his frecklefaced 13-year-old daughter Patty to play any more football (she was halfback on a boys’ team) gave her four of his old golf clubs; taught her many a trick of the game before she outgrew her middy blouses.

Last week Dr. Lawson’s daughter (now married to an accountant named Julius Page) and Broker Berg’s daughter (now freshman at the University of Minnesota) were co-favorites to win the U. S. women’s golf championship, played at the Westmoreland Country Club, outside Chicago. Each had reached the top of the golf ladder with extraordinary leaps.

Estelle Lawson Page, after breaking all the course records in the Carolinas (she has made five holes-in-one) and winning most of the major Southern tournaments, made national headlines last year when she won the medal honors in the U. S. women’s championship for the second year in a row, and then went on to upset golf’s famed medal jinx by winning the tournament. Patty Berg made national headlines two years earlier when, as a 17-year-old unknown, she reached the final of the U. S. women’s championship in her first try, and then gave her opponent, famed Glenna Collett Vare, a few anxious moments before yielding the title, 3 & 2. Last year Patty Berg came through to the U. S. final again, but was trounced by Mrs. Page, 7 & 6.

At Westmoreland last week, in spite of the presence of six-time-Winner Glenna Collett Vare, onetime British Champion Diana Fishwick Critchley and six of Britain’s top-ranking lady golfers who came to the U. S. for the biennial Curtis Cup matches fortnight ago, phlegmatic Estelle Lawson Page and temperamental Patty Berg reached the final for the second year in a row—some-thing that had never happened before in a national golf championship.

But this year it was Patty’s day. While Mrs. Page, green-shy after taking three putts on the very first hole, flubbed around the greens, Patty, wearing trousers, played as though she had her ball mesmerized. In the afternoon round, with her mother nervously watching from the fringe of the crowd, she got seven one-putt greens in 13 holes, avenged last year’s defeat on the 31st green, 6 & 5.

As bonny Mrs. Page ran over to the new champion and plopped a kiss on her cheek, the gallery of 3,000 yelled themselves hoarse for the temperamental little redhead, the darling of all golf galleries, who had just climaxed one of the best seasons any woman golfer has ever had—her tenth victory in 13 tournaments. But the new champion would rather be an All-America football star.