Grapefruit Opener

Professional Golfer Gene Sarazen, one-time British and twice U. S. Open Champion, recently said: "Any man is crazy to take up golf as a profession. . . ." Professional golfers receive no salary for their competitive performances, are rewarded only when they outplay 100 to 500 opponents and finish in the money. When a professional wins the National Open championship, No. 1 U. S. golf event, he receives only $1,000 cash--about the same amount a second-rate prize fighter gets as a preliminary attraction to a world-cham-pionship fight--plus advertising which has no fixed cash value.

Nevertheless, some 300 of the country's best golfers last week prepared to spend the winter trudging around the "grapefruit circuit," a coast-to-coast series of tournaments sponsored by southern hotels, newspapers and chambers of commerce.

They will pay their own traveling expenses, hotel bills and caddies, with no guarantee of being a dollar richer--in kudos or in cash--when they return.

For the opening tournament at White Sulphur Springs, W. Va. only 80 competitors turned up--possibly because White Sulphur is the home course of Sam Snead, sensational 25-year-old pro who in his second year of big-time golf has been a bugaboo to his confreres. Up to last week he had earned the astounding sum of $17,572 in tournament competition this year--$10,000 more than second-running Johnny Revolta and $2,000 more than the all-time record set by Horton Smith in 1929.

If Snead's colleagues feared that he might be doubly dangerous on his home course, they were exactly right. Except for a momentary lapse when he bungled a piddling putt, he gave his hillbilly neighbors something to chaw over. He took a two-under-par 68 on each of the first two rounds, a 69 on the third and then, after trailing Ky Laffoon by one stroke at the 63rd hole, the pride of White Sulphur Dreezed through the final nine in a whirlwind 32 for a seven-under-par total of 273 --and first prize of $700.

Chattering over their "Sam Snead sundaes" in the village drugstore, natives figured that the youngest of the Snead boys had earned $18,272 this year, was anything but crazy to have taken up golf as a profession.

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