Mangrum Cum Laude

In the U.S. Open, the steadiest wrists in golfdom get to shaking. The biggest and most elusive prize in golf has a cash value of only $1,500 to the winner (peanuts in pro competition), but the prestige easily adds up to another $50,000 in endorsements and exhibitions.

In various stages of flightiness, 172 of the nation's best golfers teed off last week on Cleveland's Canterbury Club course, in the first Open since 1941. The old hands had brought along some liquid companionship for locker-room nerves. The new school of war-born par-smashers caught the taut feeling too, though most of them did not smoke, much less drink. The standard cure was Bromo-Seltzer; in advanced stages phenobarbital.

At the end of the regulation 72 holes, three early finishers sweated it out in the locker-room, tied up at 284. One was Byron Nelson, who would have won had he not been robbed by the rule book (it cost him a stroke when his caddy accidentally kicked his ball). His toughest competitor all winter, Ben Hogan, the little man with the deadly grin, had also looked like a winner, storming up the fairway to the last two holes. Then his putter went cold; he missed a two-footer on the last green. That finished him.

Next day the three survivors--Nelson, Vic Ghezzi and Lloyd Mangrum--played a tight-lipped extra 18-holes, and ended up still tied. They teed off again and it was still touch & go. On the 103rd hole, willowy, wiry ex-G.I. Lloyd Mangrum, 31, of Los Angeles, who had been wounded in the Battle of the Bulge, got hot, began shooting birdies. Not even a thunderstorm just before the finish could cool him. The 108-hole totals: Mangrum 428; Nelson and Ghezzi 429.

If Lloyd Mangrum, who had never won a major tournament, loses every time he plays until next June, he will still be the U.S. golf champion.

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