Cheating the Wind

The Royal Birkdale golf course, hard by Liverpool Bay, is a 6,844-yd. string of narrow fairways that twist like green ribbons over the landscape. Under good conditions it is not much of a challenge. Last week, as 108 qualifiers vied for the 101st British Open, conditions were nightmarish. Fierce winds and rain lashed the course for the first two days, washed out play on the third. Workmen bailed water from the course with buckets, blotted the sopping greens with blankets.

"If necessary," said Arnold Palmer, 31, the 5-2 favorite to win the ancient, prestige-laden Open after losing it by a stroke in 1960, "I'm prepared to go around in a rowboat." That was not necessary--but the weather nearly cost Palmer the title. On the 510-yd. 16th hole in the second round, the blustery wind nudged the ball as he was about to swing, cost him a penalty stroke for hitting a moving ball. That left him a stroke behind diminutive, 5-ft. 5-in. Welshman Dai Rees and South African Harold Henning, with 143.

In the 36-hole final day, Palmer turned on the steam. He opened the third round with a flutter of birdies, carded a 69. Henning fell five strokes back, last year's champ, Australian Kel Nagle, six. Palmer's greatest challenge came from Rees, a plucky, 48-year-old veteran who has futilely pursued the Open title for a quarter of a century. But Rees slipped a stroke behind with a 71 in the third round, could only match Palmer's final round of 72 to lose 285 to 284.

"My ambition," Palmer likes to say, "is to win them all." Next week, having added the British Open to his well-studded crown of golf titles (and its $3,920 prize to his unofficial 1961 winnings of more than $64,000), he heads for Chicago to take aim at the one big jewel still missing: the Professional Golfers Association championship.

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