COLOURFUL GOLF

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 264, 5 August 1939, Page 17

COLOURFUL GOLF

Scenes At American Open ENVIRONS LIKE A CIRCUS The environs of the Spring Mill golf course, Philadelphia, where Byron Nelson won tihe American open championship, looked like a gigantic circus.

Eleven tents ((besides clubhouse and locker-roou»), for Press, caddies, runners, patrols, marshals, and refreshments sprawled round the clubhouse. Half a dozen parking stations accommodated 2500 cars.

More than 150 men policed the roads and grounds.

Fifty-live plain-clothes detectives mingled with the crowds.

Telephone wires alrelclied to every hole on the course.

Twenty-live runners dashed backward and forward to key stations with news. Crews of rope men and policemen kept the crowds back from railways and greens.

Sign bearers accompanied the players, proclaiming on high their doings and misdoings in glaring numerals. An ambulance with siren was on duty at all times. Its siren only blared ouce, just when the play was ending, when, in the second play-off at the eighteenth hole, a full wooden shot by Craig Wood hit a spectator on the head, inflicting a wound that required several stitches. Cease Play Signal. Another siren was all ready, should a thunderstorm rage on to the course, to screech "cease play” until it had passed. It did pour with rain for a while during the event, but the siren was not used ■because there was no lightning! Two huge scoreboards told the crowds the position. One at the eighteenth hole was a massive affair, with roof, balcony and lights. Thousands of spectators tihronged the course, and paid thousands of dollars to do so. Ten shillings bought two badges, admitting the bearer to a few sections of the course.

Twelve badges were necessary to entitle the bearer to go anywhere and everywhere on the course. Officials kept strict watch to keep the badge wearers iu their right places. “Hot dogs” cost 9d. One wit in the Press, telling of the public's protest, said: “Of course, they were all pedigreed specimens.” Plain cheese sandwiches cost 1/-. It is no wonder the tournament was a financial success from every angle. The only ones who did not make money were the .135 actors on the course, who missed gaining a place among the 30 prizewinners.

The Press covered the mighty pageant from every angle.

The Fashion Plates.

Social women writers described the players’ dress. Here’s one example “.Dapper Paul Runyan come out attired in a horizontally-striped vivid sweater on top of robin’s blue pants, and stopped dead with amazement as he reached the tee—his opponent, was clad identically.” Of Norman von Nida one wrote :—“Living up to the reputation set by men of the British Empire, N. von Nida, of Australia. was conservatively attired in a white shirt and tan trousers, with an almost invisible stripe.” Wives of the players eauie in for then share of the limelight. The smallest wife and the tallest wife wore featured. The youngsters, too. Five-year-old Buddy Guldalil’s tight with another youngster on the course, how much he ate for lunch, and how he had no particular preference for food, except a lot, gained prominence in the Press.

Such is America’s greatest golfing tournament.