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Show GOLF By A. W. 0. The golf championship was won and I6st by a margin of two holes. Yet the writer does" not believe this settled the question of superiority between the two players who strove for the honor. To those, who saw that game, I presume there will always be speculation as to the ultimate result, re-sult, had Frank McGurrln not messed his tee shot for the 35th hole and plumped the ball into the high grass on the far side of the ditch. Just what effect this disastrous shot at the crucial point of the game had on Mac's play for the last hole cannot be told. It did not affect his drive, nor the following brassey shot, for In full shots racked nerves will not bite so deep into steadiness. steadi-ness. But I will always believe it did show in Mac's third shot, a short midiron approach for the cup, and in the ensuing putt, his last chance to save the championship. In that long, hard fight he had saved or won five or six holes by absolutely perfect approaches from distances of from 20 to 40 yards. Yet on the home hole, when he was one down as the result of that awful aw-ful shot for the 35th hole, and when his opponent oppo-nent had laid his ball within five yards of the cup on this third shot, McGurrin's approach was eight yards off direction from a distance of not more than 35 yards, and his putt was considerably consider-ably past the hole, although it all but rimmed the cup. No man on earth can outgame Frank McGur-rin. McGur-rin. I know that from scores of hard-fought matches. But neither do I believe there is a human being who can stand up under such a fight as that was, with the advantage slightly in his favor nearly all the way until close to the end, only to see a well-calculated shot go wrong when to have it go wrong all but meant the prize for which he was striving, and then not show the effects of it. Three times McGurrin's iron shot for that 85th hole had been considerably past the cup. Twice he had won it by beautiful approaches. But this time, with the game all square, and his opponent's ball within 8 yards of the cup and a certain 3 in sight, McGurrln tried to spare his tee shot a bit, to get inside his opponent's distance dis-tance if possible, with a chance for a 2 for the hole. It was legitimate, it was good golf. But spared shots are always perilous. This one went wrong, and with it went the championship. Yet that same stroke in golf, but with another club, really won that game. And the play was on the third hole. Ordinarily an iron shot, the strong wind made a brassey necessary, as both players discovered on driving for the hole the first time. Three times after that McGurrin took a full brassey shot, and his full swing sliced the ball well off the green on each occasion. His opponent, oppo-nent, using a three-quarter swing with the hands well down the shaft, with a hard stroke, but with a short follow-through ending with a jerk, put his ball three times in succession on the little bunch of smooth turf around the cup, not much larger than a table. There was some luck in this, of course, but the ball each time went straight and true as a bullet. That shot won the third hole three times. Taking it all in all, the luck of that long game broke fairly even. Two bad drives, on the 5th and 6th holes, both in the same round, cost the winner those holes, and a sliced brassey shot for the 7th hole the first time around cost that hole also, as the ball went into a ditch each time. Also McGurrln. laid four perfect stymies. One of these was negotiated by taking a chance with an experimental "jump" putt The others either halved or won the holes for McGurrirr. But on the other hand, Mac had hard luck with his long putts Two of them actually jumped the cup, two others rimmed it. It is said the winner's game was more brilliant bril-liant than the loser's. Now, I don't want to put my linger in my mouth, and hang my head, and try to look coy and modest, but where does the truth of that statement-come in? There wf a number of spectacular shots, it is true, notably two 225-yard driver shots over the ditch guarding the seventh green. But one of them followed an atrocious flub with a brassey, the other came after af-ter a short shot out of the rough. You can't win a championship game by playing safe. That ball just had to be on the seventh green on the next shot or the hole was lost, that's all thero was to it. And if the winner took chances and got away with them, and McGurrln didn't take chances, it wasn't because the latter lacked nerve. It was because he kept out of trouble and the winner didn't. |