Hot Hands

Anything can happen in the U.S. Amateur Golf Championship. Sunday-afternoon specialists pop up to knock off a favorite; in-and-outers develop hot hands and scramble the odds. Even the invincible Robert Tyre Jones burned up the fairways for eight years before he finally brought home the national title 31 years ago. So the gallery at Richmond's James River course last week expected its share of surprises. It got a great deal more.

Rude Shock. Billy Joe Patton, the jovial lumberman from North Carolina who came close to winning the 1954 Masters, fell in the first round. He had Charles Coe, the 1949 winner, for company. Last year's Runner-Up Bob Sweeney lasted little longer. Handsome Harvie Ward, 29, the San Francisco car salesman who is onetime British amateur and U.S. intercollegiate champion, Walker Cup player and low amateur in this year's Masters and National Open, gave even himself a rude shock by barely squeaking through his first match. Easily a favorite in the pre-tournament selections, Ward had to sink a 25-ft. putt on a 19-hole playoff to beat Michigan's Ray Palmer and stay in the running.

Then Billy Booe, a Bridgeport, Conn. businessman (corsets and brassieres) who made a name for himself (1946-48) kicking field goals and points after touchdown in the Yale Bowl, pushed with surprising persistence into the semifinals. Booe himself had not expected to last so long. "I didn't bring enough clothes with me," he complained. "I expected to be on my way home Tuesday."

Improving steadily after his first-round scare, Ward came up against Booe in the semifinals and took his measure. In the finals, against Bill Hyndman, 39, a Pennsylvania insurance executive who won the Philadelphia Amateur 20 years ago, Ward could do no wrong.

Blistered Feet. Son of a Tarboro, N.C. druggist, Ward started to play seriously at 13, when he found a rusting, hickory-shafted putter in an abandoned locker. In 1949, as a University of North Carolina undergraduate, he won the intercollegiate championship; in 1952 he beat Toledo's Frank Stranahan for the British amateur championship. Always he used the same old putter, had it reshafted three times.

In the final at Richmond, not only his putter but all of his clubs were hot. His drives carried true; his iron shots were invariably dead on the pin. His putting was steady and deadly. He was eight up at the end of the first 18.

Hyndman, soft from long hours back of a desk, tramped the fairways with badly blistered feet. He was playing his same steady game, but it was not enough. To make matters worse, Ward was getting the breaks. On the sixth, he overshot the green, saw his ball bounce off a movie sound truck and fall safe. After an "approximate" 66 on the first round (he did not actually hole out at several greens), he breezed into the home stretch. Hyndman hung on, won his only hole of the day (with a 75-ft. putt), then halved five in a row to stay alive. Starting the back nine, he was nine down. Both men shot a par four. Harvie Ward, after one of the most spectacular performances in National Amateur history, was nine up with eight to go. After eight attempts he was finally the U.S. champion.

Unlike most of his predecessors, he is expected to defend his title next year. Said Ward, as he received the winner's trophy: "I will never turn pro."

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