Ladies at the Beach

Pebble Beach, the golf course laid out along Carmel Bay on California's windswept Monterey Peninsula, has tricky traps, yawning water hazards and yapping sea lions which have plagued the world's best golfers. There last week 164 golferines gathered for the 44th U. S. Women's Amateur. To make the course less formidable, four of its holes had been shortened--paring 113 yards off the dog-tiring, 6,661-yd. course.

California is proud of Pebble Beach. But it is not proud of the fact that a Californian has never won the Women's golf championship. Californians converged on Pebble Beach last week determined to get the crown from curlyheaded Texan Betty Jameson. Of the 164 entrants, 80 were Californians (including Dancer Ruby Keeler).

California's best bet was 19-year-old Betty Hicks of Long Beach, a stick-at-it-ive little upstart who had reached the semi-finals of last year's National, had twice drubbed Champion Jameson in Florida tournaments last winter. Another favorite daughter was willowy, 21-year-old Clara Callender, who had played the Pebble Beach course since she was knee-high, was State champion at 17, recently set a new Pebble Beach record (74) for women.

The opening day's medal round was all California's. The three hot-shots who broke 80 were all natives: San Francisco's buxom Dorothy Traung, Burlingame's Bunny Fergus Russ, Long Beach's Betty Hicks. Though these front runners faltered in the early rounds of match play, five Californians were still there among the eight quarter-finalists; and two of them among the four semifinalists.

That was as far as California got. South Carolina's bespectacled Jane Cothran, playing in her sixth National, put out Mrs. James Ferrie of Pasadena, State titleholder. Champion Betty Jameson blasted the hopes of young Clara Callender.

Sturdy, stolid Betty Jameson had never before played at Pebble Beach. But not even the sea lions put her off. In the final, before a gallery of over 1,000 that included wistful onetime Champion Patty Berg (now a professional), she ended the match on the 31st green, 6 & 5, for her second U. S. championship in a row.

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