Masters at Augusta

Standing on the fifth fairway of the Augusta (Ga.) National Golf Course, playing his last round in the Augusta Masters' Tournament, Golfer Gene Sarazen last week made the greatest shot of his career. Hit with a spoon, from a difficult downhill lie, his ball flew smoothly to a green 220 yd. away. It rolled slowly toward the hole. It dropped in.

A "double eagle" (i. e., 2 on a par 5 hole) is as rare in golf as a hole-in-one. The chances against Sarazen making such a shot at any time would have been 100,000-to-one. The chances against such a stroke of fortune coming at a crucial moment would be even greater. Sarazen's double eagle came at just such a moment. Before he made it he needed to play the last four holes three strokes under par to tie Craig Wood, who had apparently already won the tournament by posting in the clubhouse a four-round score of 282. After he made it, Sarazen needed only to play the last three holes perfectly to get a tie. Followed by a crowd which jabbered as if it had just seen a miracle, he did so.

Said Craig Wood: "What can you do to beat a guy like that?" Next day, after a 36-hole playoff, the question still remained unanswered. Completely calm after an experience which, by precedent, should have unnerved him, strutting around the course like a stocky, brown-faced gnome, swarthy little Sarazen won the tournament as he had promised friends he would do, 144 to Wood's 149.

P: In the same tournament, which is now the only one he enters, played over the course he helped design, Robert Tyre Jones Jr. is a perennial hero and popular host. Followed by galleries as closely as when he was undisputedly the greatest golfer in the world, Jones last week made it clear that his hold on the public has nothing to do with his putting touch by finishing with 297, in a triple tie for 25th.

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