At Merion

"Let's go over to the next hole. I want to see him play some strokes. He only takes two strokes on this hole," said a young woman standing in the big gallery around the short third (par 3) waiting for Jones to come up. The National Amateur Championship at Merion, near Philadelphia, was still in its early rounds, but the great galleries around Robert Tyre Jones Jr. every minute shared that uniform wish--to see him hit the ball. To see him win the fourth and final event of his tremendous campaign to take all four major championships of the world in one year--or to be on hand if some freak of luck, or the sudden spurt of an inferior opponent put him out--these were minor considerations. They did not expect to see him play his best golf, for great golf develops only under pressure, and there is no amateur in the world who stands a chance with Jones six days in seven. But he was there among them in person, the greatest one-man sport-show on earth giving his farewell performance at the end of his greatest season, and the crowds that billowed after him, kept in check by U. S. Marines, marshals in red berets, constables wearing pistols, were happy to catch a glimpse of him over somebody's shoulder in the clear September weather.

His principal and almost only opponent was the Merion course. "A man can get along all right [at Merion] if the white faces don't get him," said Chick Evans, onetime titleholder. He meant the big bunkers, filled with chalk-white sand that makes them stand out pale and threatening beside the smooth greens, across the well-watered fairways. Not a particularly long course, with only two holes where a tournament player needs wood for his second shot, Merion is notable for its formidable par fours, its exacting threes, and for an old quarry that sprawls like an ungainly footprint through three fairways at its north end. Of the 168 entrants, the most important victim of the quarry and the white faces was Harrison Johnston, defending champion. He had a first round of 83. Other good men qualified but slipped out early--Francis Ouimet. T. Philip Perkins, Dr. 0. F. Willing, Johnny Goodman, George Voight. Only one man broke par in the first qualifying round. It was Jones. His two-round total of 142. which won the medal, has been equalled twice in tournament competition. It has never been beaten.

As usual, the U. S. G. A. had seeded the draw with great care. Jones's first and second round opponents were two Canadian players, C. Ross Somerville and F. C. Hoblitzel, and he beat each of them 5 & 4. Meanwhile, blond, wiry George Von Elm, and stocky, curly-haired Maurice McCarthy played the best match of the tournament--a match that went ten extra holes before McCarthy won it with a pitch that stopped a few inches from the cup. Von Elm came within one ball-revolution of sinking his 15-ft. putt for a half. McCarthy had played 49 holes when the day was over--19 with Watts Gunn in the first round, two in the play-off for the last five qualifying places besides his 28 with Von Elm. Next day Jess Sweetser beat him and Jones faced Sweetser and his first real match.

When Sweetser won the championship in 1922 he beat Jones 8 & 7 in the semifinal. In the eight years since then many things have happened to Sweetser of Siwanoy. He won the British Amateur and was ill for two years afterward. His business began to take so much of his time that now he plays only on Saturday and Sunday. Jones started brilliantly, but there did come a moment when the tide turned. Sweetser put on pressure, moved up from four to one down. After the tenth hole, however, Jones's game began to click again with automatic perfection. His winning score was 9 & 8.

Bespectacled Gene Homans, North & South Amateur champion, had played beautifully to beat a schoolboy from California named Charles Seaver on the last green after being five down in the morning. Before 18,000 spectators Homans was inevitably trounced in the finals by the mechanical, almost lackadaisical perfection of Jones's game. The final score was 8 & 7.

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