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Show CHERRY HILL FIGHT LOOMS "WIDE OPEN" DENVER, Jnr.-: (U.Ri The 42nd Annual Nitional Open Golf Championship shaped up today as one of the widest open fights in history as some 170 players short-priced favorites among the pros, and rank outsiders, both professional pro-fessional ani amateur tested" their shots in a final tour of Cherry Hills' exacting layout. Not for a decade has there been such a wide divergence of expert opinion as to the type of game that should win the national and so the naming of favorites became little less than a lottery. There was that school of golfing golf-ing throught which maintained that the sluggers like slamming Sammy Snead and that hard-hitting Scotsman from Shawnee, Pa Jimmy Thomson, are the ones for whom the course was designed. Others held that the brainy straight shooters like Paul Run-yan Run-yan and Harry Cooper were the ones to watch. Ralph Guldahl, the husky defending de-fending champion who put up a record 281 in winning last year, was the 6-1 betting favorite as the boys went out for the final practices. prac-tices. Sam Snead, who opened next in line at 8-1, dropped into 7-1 in the early morning quotations, and heavy play on this money-winning West Virginian, wire in from outlying precincts, indicated that he might be the choice by lunch time. Two of the old-timers, somewhat some-what overlooked in the early contemplation con-templation of the open, and who have the sort of game suited to Cherry Hills' exacting holes, were Gene Sarazen and Bobby Cruick-shank. |