At Buffalo

Where Helen Lucy ("Billie") Hicks grew up, at Hewlett, L.I., there are many golf courses but she preferred basketball, baseball, broadjumping, tennis until her father, vice president of the Long Island City Savings Bank, who had been ordered to play golf by his physician, gave her a set of clubs so she could play with him. In 1927, when she was 16, she played in her first major tournaments. The next year she won a match against Marion Hollins, who was national champion in 1921; won a driving contest with six tee shots between 220 and 240 yd. The year after that she played National Champion Glenna Collett for the first time, in the semi-finals of the Florida East Coast Championship, won her match, 2 & 1. Since then it has been clear that Billie Hicks would one day be Women's Golf Champion of the U.S. She outdrives any woman opponent and most men. Two years ago she won the first 72-hole medal tournament for women, at Flossmoor, Ill. by 14 strokes. Now 20, Billie Hicks has a freckled nose, fat cheeks, hirsute forearms, chubby legs, a mop of dark hair, a broad Irish grin. She likes to read (John Galsworthy, Louis Bromfield), likes better to race about in her father's big sedan or the smaller car he gave her two years ago. A month ago someone asked her who she thought would win the championship this year. "I think I'll win myself," said Helen Hicks. Replied chunky Gene Sarazen, U. S. Open Champion in 1922, who had just given her a lesson: "No doubt you will." Actually, there was a great deal of doubt. In the field at The Country Club of Buffalo, N. Y. last week there were Mrs. Glenna Collett Vare, defending champion; square-jawed Maureen Orcutt who patterns her game on Mrs. Vare's and on whose game Helen Hicks has tried to pattern hers; and Virginia ("Gino") Van Wie of Chicago, who has never won the championship but has twice been runner-up. In addition to these four, the best women golfers in the U. S. for the last year or two, there was a tall English girl with fair hair and a bashful smile, She was Enid Wilson whose father had given her a trip to the U. S. as a reward for winning the British Women's Championship and who carried with her a gold sovereign to give to the first player who beat her.

Helen Hicks played Enid Wilson in the semifinals. In the second round, after being one down at the 16th, she had barely managed to beat Marion Hollins with a perfect iron shot at the 17th and another on the 19th. Her match against Enid Wilson was close but not quite so exciting. Helen Hicks got the sovereign on the 17th green, played out the bye hole for a 79--two under women's par.

Next day she played Glenna Collett Vare who had tied for the medal with three other women and beaten Miss Van Wie after Miss Van Wie had beaten Maureen Orcutt. It was the sixth time Mrs. Vare had played in the final; she had won it five times before but this time Helen Hicks, gay, wearing a blue beret, grinning until crinkles appeared beside her freckled nose, was 2 up at the 9th, 3 up at the 13th. Glenna Collett Vare, serious, preoccupied, wearing a pale pink sweater, was i up at the 18th. In the afternoon, a high wind made the course harder. Both finalists were erratic and the match was still even at the 14th. Helen Hicks won the hole, with a fine iron shot that gave her 4 to Mrs. Vare's 5; won the 15th by hitting the pin with her chip shot and sinking a 6-ft. putt. Two down at the 17th Mrs. Vare had a chance when Billie Hicks hooked her drive into the poplar trees that line the fairway. Instead of snapping it up she sent her second shot into a bunker, said "Oh, Lord!" as she climbed out and then missed the 5-ft. putt that would have kept the match alive. Helen Hicks shook hands soberly, politely. Then she shouted, "Whee!" and gave her opponent an enthusiastic embrace. Later, having recovered her composure, she said it was "an honor to play with Glenna."

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