At Chestnut Hill

"I think I can do it again, but it's going to be very difficult. The field is to be exceptionally strong because of the presence of the British Curtis Cup team. . . . Any one of a number of girls can succeed if they happen to be on top of their game. . . . Maureen may have the stuff this time. . . . None of us can quite match Glenna. . . ."

There were two moments at Chestnut Hill. Pa., last week when it looked as though Virginia Van Wie's forebodings about the U. S. Women's Golf Championship were likely to be fulfilled. One came in the third round when she was 2 down, with 3 to play, against a Massachusetts girl named Rosamond Vahey. She won the next two holes and the match on the 19th. The other came when she was 3 down to Dorothy Traung, a 20-year-old San Franciscan, on the tenth hole in the final. By this time, Defending Champion Van Wie had defeated "Glenna" (Glenna Collett Vare), who had had her second baby in two years three months before the tournament started. "Maureen" (squarejawed Maureen Orcutt of Englewood, N. J.) had been beaten in the third round, and all but one member of the British Curtis Cup team had been put out the first day of match play. Playing skillfully against an opponent who, almost unknown before the tournament started, now seemed very likely to take the third major U. S. golf title of the year back to California, Miss Van Wie evened the match at the end of the morning round. On the 35th, Miss Traung just missed a long putt, stepped forward to congratulate her opponent for doing what only three other women have been able to do in 38 years: win the U. S. championship three times in a row.

Virginia Van Wie started to play golf at 11, to help cure an injury to her back incurred playing football with a team of small boys. Coached by D. E. Miner, golf professional at De Land, Fla., where the Van Wies spend their winters, she entered her first tournament at 16, beat Glenna Collett in the Florida East Coast Championship the next year. With Glenna, Maureen and Helen Hicks, whom she beat in the final of the National last year, Virginia ("Gino") Van Wie, now 25, was a member of the group of four women golfers who shared almost all the major prizes of the game until Mrs. Vare went into semi-retirement two years ago, and Helen Hicks became a professional. Slimmest of the four, with brown bobbed hair, brown eyes, she pronounces her last name to rhyme with "tee." lives in Chicago, prefers basketball to golf.

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