Kangaroo Ball at Kooyonga

Up here they may play baseball with a rabbit ball, but Down Under they must play golf with a kangaroo ball. Or so it seemed last week, as South Africa's Gary Player and the U.S.'s Jack Nicklaus made a shambles of Adelaide's Kooyonga Golf Course in the Australian Open.

Kooyonga has fairways that are broad and flat, well-watered greens that allow approach shots to bite and hold, and a par of 73 over a respectable 6,578 yds. That doesn't make it all that easy; most of the 52 golfers in last week's tournament were pressed to stay close to regulation figures. Not Gary Player. Gary started the tournament by sinking a 10-ft. putt for an eagle on the par-five, 493-yd. first hole. Five birdies, a par and two more birdies gave him a fantastic 28-- nine under par--for the front nine. The back nine was prac tically a debacle by comparison; Player had to settle for an 18-hole score of 62, Biting his lip, Player sighed, "I thought I'd break 60."

In the second round, Player soared to a 71; he even missed the ball completely on one shot. "That's not so unusual," he shrugged. "I had three air shots last year." Then Gary went back out and fired his second 62 of the tournament, added a last-round 69 for a 72-hole total of 264--28 under par.

That gave Player a six-stroke victory over Nicklaus, whose ten-under 63 in the second round and 22-under for the match were surely no blots on his copy book. Naturally, both had kind words for Kooyonga. "Very fair," said Jack. Said Gary: "I have never seen a course in better condition."

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