Invitation to Trouble

Somebody in Britain had made skeptical sounds about low U.S. golf scores (like Byron Nelson's phenomenal 68.3 average last year). The scores were phony, said this Briton, because they were made on easy courses, with the ball teed up on the fairway. No U.S. golfer could say him nay,*but somebody in Britain had to pay for saying it.

Britain's Dick Burton was invited to the U.S. to see whether British golfers could do any better. Burton, a lanky, genial, blue-eyed pro, started explaining as soon as he arrived in the U.S. Said he: "I wish to deny the stories credited to me. . . ."

Although he had won the last British Open championship (in 1939), he cheerfully assured his hosts that there were at least two better golfers in Britain than he. Just 54 hours after getting off the ship, 38-year-old Dick Burton teed off at Boston's Charles River Country Club in a 36-hole match against Byron Nelson, the big wheel of U.S. golf.

The weather was familiar to Britain's Burton: raw, grey and windy. But that didn't make up for five golfless years in the R.A.F. ground force. When his tee shots were straight and true, his putter was erratic. At the end of 18 holes he was six down. Scores: Nelson 71, Burton 77.

Next day, the pair moved to Mamaroneck, N.Y., and dovetailed the second half of their match into the Goodall round-robin tourney. By the twelfth green, Burton was out. In the round-robin, he quickly became isth in a field of 15. But he got to see some sub-70 performances by U.S. golfers--with no teeing up on the fairways. The lowest: Jug McSpaden's seven-under-par 65.

* During the war, when courses were in poor shape, most tournaments permitted golfers to improve bad fairway lies.

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