Golf: The Children’s Hour

Jack Nicklaus, a round-cheeked youth of 23, must wait until he is 27 before he can join that hallowed body of experts, the Professional Golfers’ Association. But no matter. Last week in Dallas, the winner of the 1962 Open and the 1963 Masters trounced his peers for the P.G.A. championship, thus joining a more exclusive club—the fourth golfer to win all three top U.S. tournaments.*

In the Desert. “Why don’t they just hold this tournament in the Sahara Desert?” groused one pro, when the temperature on the 7,046-yd. Dallas Athletic Club course soared to 110°. Three golfers quit midway through the second round because of heat exhaustion. Arnold Palmer shot a first-round 74, and moaned that he could not putt on the club’s “awful” greens. Australia’s Bruce Crampton complained bitterly about the noise of Palmer’s gallery, “standing around chewing sandwiches.” South Africa’s tense Gary Player, the defending P.G.A. champion, never got within seven strokes of the leaders; but when he missed a third-round putt, Player turned on a photographer who had been in his line of vision. “This might cost me the tournament,” he growled. “Haven’t you got any feelings for anyone?”

If the heat bothered 205-lb. “Baby Beef,” he failed to show it. In the dry Dallas air, Nicklaus’ drives almost soared out of sight; the day before the tournament started, he won a driving contest and set a P.G.A. record by booming a ball 341 yds. off the tee. He blasted boldly out of the dry, soft traps, handled the wiry Bermuda rough with ease. But in the end it was Nicklaus’ putting that won for him. Trailing Australia’s Crampton by three strokes with 18 holes to play, Nicklaus ran in an 18-ft. putt for an eagle on the first hole; he sank a 12-footer for a birdie on the eighth hole, and rammed home a 30-ft. putt on the 15th. That gave him another birdie, a one-stroke lead—and the tournament.

Off to Rest. Pocketing a $13,000 check that ran his season’s earnings to $75,140—second only to Arnold Palmer’s record $85,955—Nicklaus suggested that the tour’s top golfers should knock off for two months each year to rest: “When you play twelve months, the game is no longer a pleasure; it’s a nerve-racking grind.” He then ambled off to set his sights on the next big payday: the $50,000 top prize in the World Series of Golf this September, a tournament that pits the winners of the Masters, U.S. and British Opens and the P.G.A. against one another. Because Nicklaus has won two of them, the fourth spot will be decided by a play-off between two other non-P.G.A. mem bers, Jacky Cupit, 25, and Phil Rodgers, 25—and creaky old Arnie Palmer, 33.

* The others: Gene Sarazen, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson.