Cotton Finish

For three years, British athletes had gone from bad to worse. They just could not win. Even their race horses got beaten by interlopers from France. Last week, when 275 golfers teed off in the cherished British Open, few Britons had much hope. Their best bet was acid Henry Cotton, now an old veteran of 41. It had been 14 long years since he had cracked a ten-year U.S. monopoly by winning his first British Open.

Henry Cotton is the highest paid and best dressed pro in Britain. At last year's British Open, he parked his big black Rolls-Royce beside the 18th green at Hoylake, so that he could drive away triumphantly when his day's work was done (he finished sixth). No such liberties were permitted last week at Muirfield, which Scots regard as hallowed ground. In the qualifying round he shot two 69s, to lead the field. The skeptics considered it a fluke. Some crack golfers had struggled in behind him. From the U.S. had come 13 talented men, including former Open Champion Lawson Little and Claude Harmon (winner of the recent Masters' Tournament).

When the real shooting began, Cotton kept close to the leaders with a 71. Next day he was presented to King George VI at the first tee (the first time a reigning monarch had ever witnessed a British golf championship). With his King watching, Cotton smacked a prodigious drive down the fairway. He birdied that first hole. Then he proceeded to tear Muirfield apart--green by green and fairway by fairway. His best round: a blistering 66, a record for the course in a British Open.

As he stepped out for the final 36 holes, his tanned face furrowed, a spectator murmured: "He looks like the wrath of God." Knowing how he hates distractions, Cotton's plump, wealthy wife (daughter of an Argentine cattle baron) followed him at a safe distance. He had a four-stroke lead to protect.

On the last hole of the tourney, he flubbed a shot from a bunker--just like a Sunday duffer. But on the next try, the ball hopped out like a trained rabbit, five feet from the pin. He canned the putt for a score of 284, enough to win his third British Open and the cheers of 10,000 spectators. The first prize was worth only $600 in cash, but a hundred times that in prestige. As a shot in the arm for British sport lovers, the value of his victory was beyond reckoning.

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