At St. Anne's

For one appalling moment last week, William Lawson Little Jr. stood on the golf course at St. Anne's-on-the-Sea and watched his opponent in the final of the British Amateur Championship putt on the last green. If the ball went into the cup, it meant that their match was all even. If it stayed out, it meant that Little had done what only one golfer, Harold Hilton in 1900 and 1901, had done in this century: won the British Amateur two years in a row. In those protracted seconds while the ball was rolling smoothly toward the cup, there would have been ample time for Little to review in his own mind all the events that had led up to this most nerve-racking crisis in his short career.

Son of a U.S. Army doctor, he had learned golf on a course laid out on the site of a Chinese graveyard near Tientsin where his father was stationed eleven years ago. He began to play seriously when his father returned to the U. S. In 1927, he took to entering major tournaments and in 1929, at 18, accomplished his first noteworthy feat by beating Johnny Goodman who had just beaten Bobby Jones, in the U.S. Amateur. Last year he won the British Amateur at Prestwick, after the most one-sided final in the tournament's history when, against a frightened Troon carpenter named Wallace, he played 23 holes without losing one. When three months later he won the U.S. Amateur as well, it made Little easily the outstanding amateur golfer in the world. Built like a halfback. 5 ft., 11 in. and 175 lb., Little is famed for his prodigiously long drives. This winter, in his last year at Stanford, he left at the end of the second term, took a few lessons from one-eyed Tommy Armour, turned in the lowest amateur score in the Augusta Masters' Tournament and asked his father for permission to go to England. Said Colonel Little: "You can go--if you will win."

The British Amateur is the riskiest tournament in the world because until the 36-hole final all the matches are 18 holes, which means that luck rather than superior skill is likely to decide the outcome. At St. Anne's last week, Little had more good luck than bad. In the first round, playing shaky golf, he nosed out an opponent who was even shakier, one up. In the next rounds, while he was playing better, most of the British golfers conceded the best chance of beating him, like Jack McLean, Cyril Tolley and Leslie Garnett, were being eliminated from the tournament. Before the semi-finals he gave his expatriate U.S. opponent, Robert Sweeny, a few hints on putting, then beat him three and two, thus becoming a 1-to-3 favorite to win the tournament.

The odds were a mistake. The stocky, 38-year-old Birmingham dentist who was his opponent in the final won the championship in 1927. An awkward stylist who plays his shots like a dub trying to cure a slice, with his left foot far in front of him, William Tweddell was able enough last week to finish the morning round only three down. In the afternoon Little kept him waiting at the tee and then out of embarrassment at this faux pas began to play sloppy golf. The doctor started creeping up and at the 30th hole, the match was even. On the 34th Little was two up again, but Dr. Tweddell won the 35th. On the 36th. Little sliced his drive, made a magnificent 100-yd. iron recovery and putted his third shot to the lip of the cup. This left Dr. Tweddell, on in two but 25 feet from the pin, one more chance to keep the match alive.

A crowd of 10,000, convinced that Little is as great a golfer as Jones, whose portrait hangs in the St. Anne's clubhouse, watched the ball rolling, more and more slowly now, straight toward the cup. Instead of going in, it slipped irrevocably past. Dr. Tweddell walked across the green, tapped Little's ball to concede the match and grinned as he shook hands.

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