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Show Released b Western Newspaper Union. OEORGE Ade once wrote "High east Kinds always prevail In ! the locker rooms." ! Those east winds are still blow-! blow-! lng as gustily as ever, carrying the h i same old arguments. argu-ments. One of them How would the golfers golf-ers of 20 years ago Mac Smith, Wal-ter Wal-ter Hagen, J I m Barnes, Jock Hutchison, Hut-chison, Johnny Far-rell, Far-rell, Gene Sarazen, Tommy Armour, Harry Cooper, Bobby Bob-by Cruickshank, Willie MacFarlane Byron Nelson and others score If they were play-; play-; lng tournament golf today? ! The record books will show you ! Ihat 20 years ago a goiter could win almost any tournament by thootlng par golf. The United States i Open at Oakland Hills in 1924 was I won by Cyril Walker with socres of j 74-74-74-75 297. Bobby Jones fin- Ished second with a total of 74-73- 15-78 300. When the United States Open was I igain held at Oakland Hills, in 1937, 10 golfers finished under Walker's winning score of 1924. Four others tied it and Ralph Guldahl won the Utle with 284 strokes. Modern Golf The Masters tournament of 1941 lighlighted the near perfection ol )f modern golf. At the halfway mark if 36 holes Ben Hogan was eight trokes behind Byron Nelson. In ths )ld days a man that far off the pace settled for "also-ran money." 3ut not diminutive Ben. He burned ip the stretch with phenomenal golf :o wind up in a tie with Nelson at '.80 eight strokes better than par. The two men went Into the play-iff, play-iff, one of the greatest nerve shat-lerera shat-lerera in sport. Usually athletes in tlay-offs are expected to crack a lit, to yield to the overwhelming iressure. They tighten np. But Ncl-ton Ncl-ton and Hogan reversed the usual 'orm. They played the toughest course In the United States In beau-iful beau-iful totals. Hogan scored a two-mdcr-par 70. Nelson fired a 69 to vin the title. This doesn't mean that Hogan and STelson were necessarily superior ,o the golfers of a score of yeart ago. Today's scores were impossible 10 years ago. The modern golfer aenefits from the many improvements improve-ments that help produce low scores, rhese advantages include steel-shafted steel-shafted clubs, a longer ball, the iynamiter and infinitely better fair-aays fair-aays and greens. The dynamiter or blaster saves die average professional players a few strokes on nearly every round. Good golfers have lost their fear of traps. They lay the ball near the pin from almost any kind of a trapped lie. One Difference The old timers putted on hard, unwatered greens. Their speed was no more constant than New England Eng-land weather. Fairways, after a dry spell, were baked to a hard, rough surface. Today's golfer plays on well-watered, soft greens. Fairways are well kept and smooth. The rough Is controlled. Many of the men who made golf popular in this country would sneer jt the suggestion that Jones, Hagen, Sarazen, Mac Smith and the others could not have scored as low as the modern mod-ern players. They honestly believe that rot more than two or three of today's players would have had the ghost of a rhatirp in national competition 20 years Gene Sarazen ago. Golf, they feel, has been simplified to such an extent ex-tent Urat it isn't the test of skill it once was. We straddle the fence on the entire en-tire question. It is our belief that the best of the old timers if they were at the peak of their form today would be as good as the bet of the modern players. And we also believe that the present-day top-notchers top-notchers would have been topnotch-ers topnotch-ers 20 years ago. Golf is more than a matter of clubs, balls and course condition. Two of the qualities most necessary to reach the top are determination and concentration. These were the possessions of many old-timers. -The individual still counts most. Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Jug Mc-Spaden Mc-Spaden are the same kind of players play-ers as Hagen, Jones and Sarazen. SPORTS SHORTS C, Zack Wheat, one of the all-time greats of baseball, is running a resort re-sort in western Missouri. C. Two 16-year-old boys are members mem-bers of the 1944 Illinois football squad. C Bob Seeds, former Chicago White Sox outfielder, now is player-manager at Little Rock. C. Herb Coleman, Notre Dame's regular center last year, has been discharged from the navv and is back in school. |