Low, Long & Little

Lowest score on record for 72 holes of tournament golf is 262 by Percy Alliss of England, but this was made in the 1935 Italian Open over a diminutive course at San Remo which, only 5,200 yd. long, is 20% below U. S. championship standard. Lowest 7 2-hole score ever made in competition over a full length course has for the last eight years been famed Bill Mehlhorn's 271 in the 1929 El Paso Open. Last week Mehlhorn's astounding record, which all the best professionals in the world have since failed to equal was convincingly shattered by an unknown, 22-year-old Battle Creek playground supervisor named Melvin ("Chick") Harbert. On the Arbor Hills Country Club course at Jackson, Mich. Golfer Harbert won the Michigan Open Championship with a four-round total of 268, 18 strokes better than his nearest competitor and 20 better than par.

Low scoring at golf depends as much on the course as on the player. Arbor Hills is a 6,700-yd. course with five par 5 holes. Golfer Harbert's 268 (31-32-32-32-33-34-36-38) might have been better if reporters had not mistakenly told him while he was playing his last round that Mehlhorn's record was 266. Twenty-three strokes under par when he got his 24th birdie of the tournament at the 5th hole. Golfer Harbert weakened under the pressure of trying to break the record, took three over par on the last 13 holes.

Son of a Battle Creek golf professional who started to teach him the game when he was 3, Golfer Harbert is an amateur who uses a baseball grip and had never until last week bettered the 67 he made in the Michigan Open three years ago. Said he: "After I started with three birdies in a row in mv first round, I knew I was on my game and I just kept going. . . . On the final round, I was so tired I could hardly lift my clubs."

P: With Walter Hagen and Jock Hutchison, British-born James ("Long Jim") Barnes was the most famed U. S. golfer of the early post-War era. He won the Professional Golfers Association Championship twice (1916 and 1919), the U. S. Open in 1921, the British Open in 1925, retired from tournament golf because he was bored by it in 1932. Last week at Huntington, N. Y., when the -Long Island Open Championship was played over his home Crescent Club course, Long Jim Barnes, 51, decided it was his duty as host to compete. He chose the smallest available caddy, picked a clover leaf to chew while playing, as has always been his habit, and set out.

Said Long Jim Barnes after winning the event, 295 to 302 for brash young Jimmy Hines: "From here on, I'm going to leave the tournaments to the young fellows."

P: When burly Lawson Little turned professional after winning the U. S. and British Amateur Championships two years in a row (1934 and 1935), experts wondered how well he would fare against crack professionals. Except for winning the Canadian Open last September and the San Francisco Open last January, Little has not fared particularly well. Last week in the Shawnee (Pa.) Open, which drew the ablest entrants of the week's three major tournaments, he recouped his prestige by a last-round 68 for a 284 which won him the $700 first prize--by one stroke over famed Jimmy Thomson (Shawnee's professional) and Leo Mallory, three over Harry Cooper whose effort to catch up ended with an incredible 29 for the last nine holes.

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