CHARLES BEATS LITTLER 37th Hole Win In World Match-Play

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32117, 13 October 1969, Page 24

CHARLES BEATS LITTLER 37th Hole Win In World Match-Play

(N.Z.P.A..Reuter— Copyright) WENTWORTH (Surrey). The New Zealander, R. J. Charles, yesterday won a thrilling final of the Piccadilly world match*play golf tournament, beating the American, G. Littler, at the thirty-seventh hole.

Charles took the $12,000 first prize with a magnificent eagle three at the first extra hole after they had been all square at the end of the second round.

Earlier, the tall New Zealander had twice given away winning positions as Littler fought back from three holes down in the morning’s round and from two holes down with six to play in the afternoon.

Littler won $7580 for finishing second. Charles’s putting was the decisive factor in his victory, sinking a string of longdistance putts that Littler could not match. The left-hander holed from 35ft for a birdie three at the twenty-sixth, from 30ft at the next for another birdie three, and capped the performance at the twenty-eighth with a 45-footer for his third successive birdie.

Littler fought back to square the match with a birdie three at the thirtyfourth and the next two holes

were halved. Even so, Charles had to produce two brilliant shots to win the match. The 33-year-old New Zealander hooked his second into the rough 85 yards short of the green on the thirty-sixth hole. But with Littler on in two, the poker-faced Charles hit a wedge to within nine yards of the pin and rolled in the 27-footer to snatch the vital half.

Then he stroked a fouriron second shot at the thirtyseventh to within three feet of the pin and completed the formalities by running in the putt for an eagle three to take the match. A shaken Littler said afterwards: "Bob is the greatest putter in the world, including Billy Casper and anyone else you care to mention. “He must have sunk more footage as putts than in any other day in the history of golf. As for the putt on the thirty-sixth, I was sure he couldn’t keep holing them from that distance. But he did.”

Charles’s victory was sweet revenge for his one-hole defeat by the South African, G. Player in last year’s final. After the match, Littler was immediately taken by a waiting helicopter to London Airport so that he could fly to San Diego where his mother-in-law died on Friday night In their semi-finals on Friday, Littler broke Player’s domination of the championship when he beat him 4 and 3, and Charles, although suffering from a stomach upset, annihilated another American, T. Aaron, holder of the Canadian open title, by 9 and 7. When the game came to an end on the twenty-ninth green, Charles had the incredible score of 14 under par—one less than Littler. The New Zealander always had the game under control from the moment he won the second and third holes to be 2 up on Aaron. He covered the first nine in a scintillating five under par, but Aaron proved to be a dogged fighter. He halved 11 holes from the seventh and when he won the eighteenth was only one behind. Then Charles crushed him by winning eight of the first 11 holes in the second round to claim victory. For the second time he achieved the first nine holes in 31, and Aaron, not surprisingly, did not win a hole. Littler, a former United States open champion, and a Ryder Cup player, gave a

dazzling display against Player, and the match developed into a battle of the birdies. Player, the holder, attempting to win the title for a record fourth time in five years, said afterwards: “Noone likes to lose but honestly I can say I cannot feel bad having lost to such great golf. I have never played as well as this and lost*’ Littler had 10 birdies in the last 13 holes of the first round and could then only gain a two-hole lead with a nine-under 65 for the 6997yard course. He collected no fewer than nine threes from the fifth to the sixteenth inclusive.