Sport: At Olympia Fields

About five years ago the weasel-eyed gamblers who interest themselves in boxing, baseball, racing, first turned attention to golf. Last week in the lobbies of the Chicago hotels where the players were staying, and out at the Olympia Fields course the bookmakers were giving odds: Bobby Jones 3 to i to win the National Open championship for the third time; Walter Hagen, 5 to 1; John Farrell, 8 to 1; last year’s champion Tommy Armour, 8 to 1; Archie Compston, 10 to 1. All the other players, except Sarazen, were at long odds, for no single golfer taken against the field, against the difficulties of the course, of competition and the tension of his own nerves, has much chance to win the National Open.

Only once in ten years an unknown player finishes in front. Few had heard of Sarazen when he won; no one had heard of Hagen when he came to fame in 1914. Practically unknown were the two golfers who on the first day at Olympia Fields led all the rest. Henry Guici was one, a tiny player, dark-haired, quick-tempered. Frank Ball tied Guici with a 70. No one knew anything about him except that he was a cousin of John Ball, famed Britisher. Either Guici or Ball might win, of course, but the bookmakers didn’t think so. And the bookmakers were right, for on the second day Guici and Ball dropped back and the favorites moved in to their expected places: Jones at the top, Hagen near the top and playing brilliantly.

Many things had happened in those early rounds. Tommy Armour was out of it; Boomer and Compston, the Englishmen, were out of it, far down the list; MacFarlane was barely in the running. Maurice McCarthy, young amateur, paired with Hagen, was taking eights and tens; Chick Evans, once champion, scored a 90. Al Watrous, wild as a hawk, hit a spectator in the stomach with a pitch shot; Sarazen went to pieces; a man named Leach had come up to stand second to Jones and Walter Hagen after a first round of 40 played the last nine in 36 in the rain.

It seemed then that the tournament had turned into a private match between Jones and Hagen. People who had hoped Farrell would do something were disappointed. They pointed out that Farrell, always sensitive, had been made self-conscious by being elected the best dressed* professional golfer for the second year in succession. They said that he had been unlucky in being paired with Jones, who was followed by such a big gallery that Farrell was forced at times to beg the marshals to clear a lane for him to swing his club in. When the third round began, Farrell was seven strokes behind.

And here once more an unknown golfer became dangerous. Farrell had finished a sensational round that left him in a tie with Jones at 294 and beat Hagen who had 296, when news came to the clubhouse that one Roland Hancock, 200-pound 22-year-old son of a Wilmington, N. C., professional, had gone out in 33 and was rounding the turn ahead of everybody. Hancock took a five at the tenth, then played par golf until at the seventeenth green he saw the crowd billowing over the turf to meet him and escort him back the new champion. With ten thousand people milling around him he sliced his teeshot into some heavy loam behind a tree, caught the rough with his pitch, put his third over the green, took a six. On the eighteenth he had another six.

Farrell and Jones were left with 36 more holes to play to settle the tie. Both showed the strain of the three days’ play in their faces but not in their games. Jones, plump and thoughtful, his cowlick slicing over his eyebrow, stalked after his ball in silence while Farrell, lean and dark, walked with a gloomy air beside him. As beautiful, as effective as ever was Jones’s effortless, mechanically perfect game; his drives were as long as ever, his putts as straight and his score—144—identical with that which had put him ahead in the second round. To Jones, winning would have been an honor and satisfaction. To Farrell it meant an honor and satisfaction and a lot of money. Farrell’s score was 143.

* This brought him a prize of $1,500. The prize for winning the open is $500, a gold medal and a cup.