After Jones

(See Front Cover) There are 6,000 golf courses in the U. S., 2,000 in the British Empire, only 1,000 in the rest of the world. Because two-thirds of the world's golf is played on U. S. soil, it is not surprising that U. S. golfers have the reputation of being the world's best.

It was not always so. At the turn of the Century, when the first rule of U. S. golf was to purchase a $40 scarlet coat with brass buttons, golf was the pastime of the "400." Its players were not only kidded on the vaudeville stage, but scorned by the more experienced, less gaudy British. In 1913, however, when an obscure 20-year-old Bostonian named Francis Ouimet beat Britain's famed barnstorming professionals, Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, for the U. S. Open championship, Great Britain began to raise her eyebrows. And in 1922, after an amazing crop of young golfers had sprouted up all over the U. S., Great Britain agreed to play for a cup, put up by St. Louis Stockbroker George H. Walker.* to determine whether U. S. or British golfers played better golf.

Last week most of the 2,000.000 U. S. amateur golfers, 90% of whom cannot break 90 consistently, were reading with vicarious thrills the news of the nine Americans chosen to represent them in the tenth series of Walker Cup matches. /-still the No. 1 international event, played this week at famed St. Andrews on the Scottish coast. All golf enthusiasts are well aware that the nearest Great Britain has ever come to putting a dent in the Walker Cup was in 1932 at Brookline, when Briton Leonard Crawley hooked an iron shot to the spot where the big silver trophy was on display, knocked it off its pedestal. This year, however, Britons were talking about the "ascendancy of British amateur golf," were hoping for their first victory in ten tries.

British Hope. What had given them newborn hope was the discovery of an 18-year-old Irish schoolboy, James Bruen, who skyrocketed into the realm of British stars four weeks ago, during the Walker Cup trials, when he equaled famed Bobby Jones's amateur record of 68 for the championship course at St. Andrews. His total for four rounds (68, 71, 71, 72) was three strokes better than the score Bobby Jones registered to win the 1927 British Open on that course--a total good enough to have won any championship ever played at ancient St. Andrews. Hailed as the greatest discovery since Jones, Jim Bruen, who weighs 200 Ib. and can make an eagle 3 look simple on a 530-yd. hole, was promptly named on the British Walker Cup team the day before his 18th birthday--along with five Englishmen, two Scots.

The U. S. side was as formidable as ever. Captained by that same Francis Ouimet who had put U. S. golf on the front pages 25 years ago, it was the strongest and youngest team the U. S. had ever selected. The Americans, too, thought they had the best amateur golfer since Bobby Jones: 28-year-old Johnny Goodman of Omaha, U. S. Amateur champion, the best shotmaker and most consistent scorer of 1937, who had never lost a Walker Cup match (1934 or 1936). Other members of the team, chosen on the basis of performances during the past two years, were: Ray Billows of Poughkeepsie (runner-up to Goodman in last year's Amateur), Johnny Fischer of Cincinnati (Amateur champion in 1936), Freddy Haas of New Orleans (U. S. intercollegiate champion), Charley Kocsis of Detroit, Reynolds Smith of Dallas, Marvin Ward of Olympia, and Charley Yates of Atlanta. Some had played on Scottish links before and some had not. But all nine, including non-playing Captain Ouimet. tuned up for the international matches by competing--along with 200 others from all over the world--in the 52nd annual British Amateur championship, played last week on the Seaside links at Troon.

On their little blackboards placed outside the boundaries of the course, British bookmakers chalked their odds. Favorite at 8-to-1 was Johnny Goodman who had impressed Londoners as well as canny natives on the Ayrshire coast during his practice rounds since landing in the British Isles the week before. Others fancied were: Defending Champion Robert Sweeny, American-born Londoner who is famed for the elegance of his Ascots as well as the elegance of his swing; Scot Hector Thomson who won the title in 1936 and holds the course record at Troon; John Stevenson, a local sensation who knew every clump of gorse on the course. Boy Bruen had passed up the Amateur to save his energy for the Walker Cup matches.

Habit. Most Britons, however, were ready to concede victory to any member of the U. S. team because of the team's disturbing habit of taking home the British Amateur trophy almost every time it has come to Great Britain. Jess Sweetser did it in 1926, Bobby Jones in 1930, Lawson Little in 1934. With this unpleasant precedent in mind, a British sportswriter said he hoped the sight of the black & white shoes and the southern drawls of the U. S. players would not send the British scores zooming into the 80s as they had done three times before.

The British Amateur is the riskiest tournament in the world because, until the final 36, all matches are at 18 holes--which means that luck rather than skill has a large part in determining the winner. For U. S. players the chief hazards always are the wind (invariably a cross one), a course studded with thick gorse and tricky sand traps, greens that require a pitch-&-run shot rather than the backspin approach most U. S. golfers play. More serious than these natural hazards last week was the luck of the draw which placed the unseeded U. S. Walker Cuppers in the same bracket, necessitated their killing one another 0:1 in the early rounds.

First to go out were Johnny Fischer and Ray Billows, defeated by Charley Yates and Johnny Goodman respectively on the second day. "Well, Johnny, it's better to be lucky than good," drawled Atlanta's Yates, the team's clown, after he had ousted Fischer by laying him a dead stymie on the 19th green. In the third round, Captain Ouimet was nosed out on the last hole by hard-hitting Cecil Ewing, one of Ireland's best. On the fourth day, a lashing gale and pounding rain swept even sturdy Johnny Goodman off his balance and out of the tournament, beaten by his teammate Charley Kocsis--who was in turn defeated by the homebred Stevenson later in the day. Lone U. S. survivor of the storm was Charley Yates. Playing the most extraordinary golf of the tournament, nonchalant and grinning Yates, who chattered with the galleries between his shots and played the pitch-&-run like a native, proceeded to eliminate: 1) two-time Champion Cyril Tolley in the quarter-finals (during which he made the most sensational shot of the week, an eagle 2 on the 372-yd. second hole), 2) onetime Champion Hector Thomson in the semifinals, and 3) seasoned Cecil Ewing in the final.

To Champion Yates, a 24-year-old Atlanta bank clerk whose best previous accomplishment had been a Western Amateur victory in 1935, went the distinction of being the fourth U. S.-born-&-bred golfer to win the British Amateur** and the first to beat its peculiar hazards in his first competitive experience on a British course. He attributed his amazing victory to a suit of red flannel underwear his friend and fellow townsman, Bobby Jones, had given him to keep out the Scottish gales. Scottish spectators thought they had seen the greatest golfer since Bobby Jones.

Omaha Kid-One of the first to congratulate Champion Yates was his roommate, Johnny Goodman. Although he had hoped to add the British Amateur to his collection of cups, Johnny Goodman was not hopeless. Bobby Jones, too, had been eliminated before the semi-finals in the 1926 British Amateur which his Walker Cup teammate Jess Sweetser finally won. In fact, Bobby Jones failed three times before finally winning it in 1930, the year he made his famed "Grand Slam" (British Amateur, British Open, U. S. Amateur, U. S. Open). Goodman could still try for the British Open next month to prove that he is currently the U. S. golfing king of swing./-/-

Born in Omaha's meat-packing district, of Lithuanian immigrant parents, John George Goodman was practically unknown when he calmly drove up to the Pebble Beach course in 1929 and qualified for the U. S. Amateur. The following day the 19-year-old Omaha Kid made the front pages when he eliminated Bobby Jones in the first round of match play. But in his home town Johnny Goodman had long been front-page news, was as much a part of Omaha as its stockyards. He first appeared in the news in 1916 when, at the age of six, he got diphtheria. Omaha health officers, going to the Goodman home, found Johnny sleeping with three other children in one bed, four more Goodman children in another bed in the same room. Mother Goodman, accustomed to peasant ways, refused to send Johnny to an isolation hospital or keep him from the other children. The health authorities, unable to find a law to compel Mother Goodman to do what she did not want to do with her brood, placarded the house and went away. Johnny got well. None of the other children got diphtheria.

When he was 11, Johnny started to caddy at the Omaha Field Club, contributed his earnings of 50-c- a day toward the support of the ten Goodman children after their mother died and their happy-go-lucky father wandered off to try his luck in Wyoming. A likable little towhead, Johnny soon found himself the pet of the club members, was encouraged to practice with their sticks on the back part of the links. The first time he played nine full holes of the club course he shot a 37, one over par. That was in the 1923 caddies' tournament, which he won. The first time he played the full 18 holes he took 76. By this time the club bigwigs realized that a golfing prodigy was carrying their bags, raised $700 to keep him in high school, got him a part-time job in a printing shop, found a home for him.

In 1927, the year he graduated from high school with the top scholastic prize (a $200 scholarship for "citizenship"), he climaxed a series of local golfing honors by beating a Kansas City millionaire in the final of the Trans-Mississippi championship. Then the Omaha Kid became the hero of Omaha. There were banquets and parades and, by popular subscription, a fund of $1,565 was raised to send him to the University of Nebraska. Two years later he won the Nebraska State championship, went on to Pebble Beach and national fame.

Since that milestone in his life, Johnny Goodman has proved that he was no flash in the pan. He was third best amateur in the 1929 U. S. Open, second-best in 1930, best in 1932 and again last year. In 1933 he finally won the Open against a field of top-notch professionals. In the U. S. Amateur, he was runner-up in 1932, a semifinalist in 1935 and 1936. Last year he finally won the Amateur to become the first golfer since Jones to win both the Open and Amateur. He has broken 64 records and won 60 tournaments in his career. In one department Goodman has a better record than Jones: he has made six holes-in-one in his lifetime, while Jones has made only two.

Now 28, Johnny Goodman sells insurance, earns about $4,000 a year, is the most celebrated member of the Omaha Field Club where he started as a caddy. Although he is an honorary member of half the organizations of Omaha, he still lives in a furnished room, still spends much of his spare time playing pinochle with his pals in the meat-packing district (where several of his seven brothers, like their father before them, work as meat packers), still goes around with the same girl he went with in 1929--a pretty stenographer, Josephine Kersigo, who makes novenas before his major tournaments. Catholic Johnny Goodman's most constant golfing companion is Father John Palubicki, pastor of his church.

Still his mother's son, Johnny Goodman refuses to be lionized, particularly by the Omaha bourbons in whose company he feels uncomfortable lest he make a faux pas such as saying "amachure" instead of "amateur." Amateur or amachure, he is the best his sport has produced in the U. S. in a decade.

*St. Louis Banker Dwight Filley Davis put up the Davis tennis cup.

/-Played biennially since 1924 in alternate countries by picked teams of amateurs. Ryder Cup matches were inaugurated in 1927, played biennially between U. S. and British professionals.

**Walter J. Travis was the first U. S. Golfer to take the British Amateur (1904), but he was Australian born.

/-/-Johnny Goodman is no kin to hot music's king of swing, Benny Goodman.

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