Eight-Inch Cups

Golfers, perpetually exasperated at themselves, are never satisfied with their equipment. Four years ago they all took up steel shafts. Three years ago they squabbled about sand-wedges. Two years ago they were troubled by the balloon ball. Three weeks ago a new subject for contention arose when Gene Sarazen, British and U. S. Open champion, ill of influenza in a Santa Monica hospital, took it upon himself to suggest that the cups on putting greens be enlarged from 4 1/4 in. to 8 in. Reason: "A crack player and one just average are playing. The average player puts his ball on the green, say, 20 or 25 feet from the cup. The expert is closer, say, 12 to 15 feet. But each will take two putts and halve the hole. If the cups were bigger, the average player still would take his two putts . . . but the expert . . . would knock his in every time. There would be the thrill. . . . The payoff in golf is to get that second shot close to the cup."

By last week, the notion of enlarging the cup had reached the status of an experiment, seemed a potential crusade. At Pinehurst, N. C. a group of golfers which included William C. Fownes Jr., onetime (1910) amateur champion and onetime (1926-27) president of the U. S. Golf Association, had tried 8-in. cups on a sand green. They thought it made putting too easy. The Pinehurst golfers then tried a 6-in. cup, planned a tournament to see if the members liked it. Eight-inch cups were installed at the Cavalier Country Club, Virginia Beach; Riviera Golf Course, Miami; Palmaceia Course, near Tampa, Fla. Here the second annual Gasparilla 72-hole medal play for a guaranteed net $1,300 purse will be held next week in which experts who like the idea of the new cup will have a chance to try it. One entrant will be Wild Bill Mehlhorn, famed professional who last year gave up golf to teach bridge because his bad putting prevented him from winning prizes.

By last week most golf authorities had been heard from on the subject of the new cups. Leo Diegel, Al Espinosa, John Dawson, John De Forest, playing in West Coast tournaments, liked the idea. U. S. G. A. officials thought Sarazen might have suggested it to keep his name in print.

Most indignant comment came from England, where all U. S. golf innovations are disgusting to golfers who abide by the regulations of the staid St. Andrews club. Said Sandy Herd: "Farcical!" Charles Whitcombe: "Absurd!" James Braid: "The walls would crumble!" Harry Vardon: "The very idea makes me angry!"

Quietest but most crushing squelch came from the greatest golfer of them all. In Hollywood, whither he went to make some movies after the gala opening of his Augusta National Course (TIME, Jan. 23), Robert Tyre Jones II said with the finality of an old poker player discussing wild deuces: "It might make an interesting game, but it would not be golf."

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