U.S. NATIONAL CHAMPION

Northern Advocate, 22 July 1933, Page 2

U.S. NATIONAL CHAMPION

RUNNER UP’S GRIM FIGHT. . V .* • *_ ‘ $ MISSES FOUR-FOOT PUTT. Only a missed four-foot putt by Ralph Guldahl, not yet 22, professional of St. Louis, prevented his tying with John Goodman, an Omaha amateur, for the American National Golf Open Championship with 287 strokes at the North Shore Club. Goodman is the fifth amateur to win the national open, the others being Walter Travis, Francis Ouimet, Chick Evans, and, of course, Bobby Jones. Goodman’s rounds were 75, 06, 70, and 70. Par is 72.

“With a poise beyond his years, the grit it takes to make a champion, and a putter charged with the magic of Bobby Jones’s famed Calamity Jane, Goodman Avrested from a field of the country’s greatest professionals the crown they have held since Jones retired in 1930,’’ chants the Chicago “Tribune Chronicle.” “He came home one stroke in front of Guldahl, Avho made one of the greatest finishes in the history of the open, but failed to tie by the margin of fifty inches of bent grass on the 18th green, Avhere he missed a four-foot putt. With 25,000 dollars dependent on it, Craig Wood, a member of the Ryder Cup team, finished third with 290, followed by Hagen and Armour with 292, and Dutra 294.

After his 66 in the third round (32-34) the gallery followed Goodman but the pressure of being in the lead for two days commenced to tell on Goodman in the final. He took 39 for the first nine holes, while nearly every other competitor of front rank was pulling up strokes on him. Guldahl had done the first half in 35. Goodman began to find his bearings going home, however, and came through with four consecutive pars. His second shot on the fourteenth' found a trap, and he took two putts to get down in 5. A six-foot putt for a birdie on the 511 yard fifteenth avenged that. He found another trap at the seventeenth, a 423-yard hole, and came out of it with a 5. He reached the home green in two strokes, the ball dropping down eleven feet to the right of the pin. He got down in two for a par 4. Guldahl was fighting a stubborn battle to catch Goodman, He knocked dowm par after par, and dropped a birdie at the twelfth. Coming to the eighteenth green, with galleries fore and aft of him, the St. Louis boy found his ball in the trap at the right of the green. He made a fine explosion shot to within four feet of the pin. Then he missed his putt and the chance to tie. Goodman at noon had 251, six strokes ahead' of the nearest competitor, Guldahl. So little known was Guldahl to the local gallery that only a handful of spectators followed him and Tom Carney in the afternoon round, but when Guldahl was only 2 strokes behind after the first nine of the last round, it became evident that it "was a close thing. At-the sixteenth tee he was under par, and three more pars would give him the tie, but that four-foot putt went past the hole.