Masters at Augusta

When the Augusta (Ga.) Masters' Invitation Golf Tournament started last week, excitement revolved around two onetime amateur champions: Bobby Jones, who won all four of the world's major golf championships in 1930; and Lawson Little, who won both the U. S. and British Amateur Championships in 1934 and 1935. The Masters' Tournament is played over a course Jones helped design, at a club he helps promote. For the last two years, newspaper reporters have excused his poor performance by explaining that he took his "duties as a host too seriously." This year Jones indicated that he had started being serious about his golf once more by breaking the course record with a 64 in practice. He became a 6-to-1 favorite to win.

Lawson Little created his sensation last week by announcing that he had decided to forfeit his amateur standing in order to make an income of some $10,000 a year out of golf by an exhibition tour, appearances in cinema. Now 25, Little left Stanford last autumn without completing his senior year. Two months ago he married 1 8-year-old Dorothy Hurd of Chicago. His reason for last week's move: "You can't support a wife on gold medals."

When the tournament ended, Jones and Little were out of the picture, and two seasoned money-playing professionals from Chicago had taken their place. On the first day, in a cold wind that stiffened contestants' fingers, "Light Horse" Harry Cooper posted a 70, the day's only sub-par score. A 69 for his second round left him five strokes ahead of the field. His third round was a creditable 71, but by this time, tall, willowy Horton Smith, who won the first Augusta Masters' Tournament in 1934, was on his heels, only three strokes behind.

A tournament regularly jinxed by bad weather, the Masters' this year was almost washed away. Rain delayed the start one day. More rain postponed the last two rounds for another day. When the field finally went out for the last 18 holes, they met the tail end of a tornado, played under black skies that frightened spectators off the course. Cooper, worried by the strain of waiting, faltered with a 76. He went into the clubhouse to worry for one hour more while Smith was finishing with a brilliant 72 that gave him a four-round score of 285, and hit, second Masters' Championship.

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