Upset at Rochester

A few hours after the 210 top amateur golfers s"et out to decide who would be U.S. champion for 1949, the tournament came to a water-logged stop. Rain beat down on Rochester's Oak Hill course. When play was resumed, it was too dark for Ted Bishop, the 1946 champion, to complete his first-round match--and he bowed early next morning to a Denver schoolteacher named John Kraft.

It was that kind of tournament, with high winds and rain confounding the form charts. Bull-shouldered Bob ("Skee") Riegel, the 1947 champ, upset Toledo's golfing virtuoso and tourney favorite, Frank Stranahan, before getting belted unceremoniously out-of action himself. Willie Turnesa, youngest of golf's seven famed Turnesa brothers and defending amateur champion, got his in the semifinals.

On the last day, as amazed as anybody at their success, two dark horses met as finalists. Rufus King and Charlie Coe had grown up nine miles from each other across the Texas-Oklahoma line, but were playing golf together for the first time.

Golfer King, 33, who put out Turnesa, owns a 2,300-acre cattle and dairy ranch near Wichita Falls, Tex., is a deacon in the Baptist church, and describes himself as a "weekend" golfer. He flew his private plane to Rochester expecting to watch more golf than he played. Long before the finals, he was taking bismuth tablets to quiet the butterflies in his stomach. He had never been so close to a major golf title in his life, although he had accomplished the almost incredible feat of winning the Grand American trapshooting championship at the age of 14.

Charlie Coe, the tournament's thin man (6 ft. 1 in., 135 lbs.), is an insurance broker from Ardmore, Okla. A more ardent golfer than King (he has twice won the Trans-Mississippi crown), 25-year-old Finalist Coe was the favorite as he squared off on the first tee. Both amateurs promptly began playing like amateurs. Coe, normally as cool as a barrel of ice water and deadly with a putter, three-putted the first green. Then he settled down and it was King's turn to blow up.

After the first 18 holes, Coe was five-up.

On the 26th, he took a birdie (on a conceded 7-ft. putt), to become U.S. Amateur golf champion, eleven-and-ten, the greatest winner's margin since the first National Amateur in 1895.

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