King Cotton

Bobby Jones scornfully called it a cow pasture the first time he played it; the second time, when his score was better, he called it the greatest course in the world. St. Andrews golf course, perhaps the world's toughest, curls like a giant fishhook along the east Scottish coast, its fairways pocked by traps deep as bomb craters. Roads and railroads run in & around it, and on the famed 17th hole the players have to drive over an enormous coal shed. Last week, in the British Open golf championship, the local boys, who knew the course, the wind and the weather, had a lot in their favor.

Britain's hopes were pinned on her aging showman Henry Cotton, now 39. He rolled up to the Royal & Ancient clubhouse as haughty and pigeon-toed as ever, in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce, dressed in a salmon-pink sweater and blowsy grey trousers. As usual, he did not smile, ignored his opponents, spoke only to his plump, wealthy Argentine wife who followed him around as his official marker. He commanded the largest gallery, and treated the crowd to a three-under-par 70. Then he was whisked back to swank Rosack's Marine Hotel for a massage.

He had few friends among the 263 competitors who stayed in cheaper hotels down the road, but everybody admired his arrogant showmanship. He had done more than any other man to raise the low social position of the English golf pro, who is expected to tip his hat to club members and cannot eat in club dining rooms. Cotton customarily strides into St. Andrews by the front door, tips his hat to nobody. Lessons from him, at London's Mid-Surrey Club and at Monte Carlo on the French Riviera, cost a de luxe two guineas an hour. The great Cotton wanted to win his third British Open more for personal prestige than for the paltry $600 prize.

The Winds. It looked as if he might. In the second round he pitched dead on the pin with perfect aim, sank 30-ft. putts, took the lead with another sub-par 70. But on the third day the winds came. Cotton had counted on St. Andrews' unpredictable gales to confound the four visiting Americans. But Cotton's own game was confounded too. The winds troubled Sammy Snead, the Virginia hillbilly with a reliable swing and an unreliable temperament; his powerful drives were swooped up by gusts and landed in the rough. When somebody told him the same thing was happening to everybody else, unpredictable Sammy Snead finally settled down to steady, safe playing. It won him his first British Open with a 290, four strokes better than his fellow American Johnny Bulla and South Africa's Bobby Locke. It was only the second major championship that Snead had won in 10 years of topflight, big-money playing (his first: the 1942 P.G.A. in Atlantic City).

Said Cotton, who finished fourth, "We just can't get enough to eat over here for a tournament like the Open. . . ." The British, who consider him the greatest golfer ever, will still pay him another $100,000 this year for lessons, exhibitions and testimonials.

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