A GREAT FIGHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 102, 21 July 1927, Page 9

A GREAT FIGHT

SOME HAGEN EPISODES Several Hagen stories are going the rounds. It is told how Hagen sent his caddie 120 yards ahead at one hole to take the pin out, how he posed for the camera men during one championship while he was on the putting green, saying, “Shoot away folks, I’m goin’ to hole this putt for you”—and he did. But perhaps the English champion, George Gadd, tells the most thrilling Hagen episode. It occurred in the British “open,” which was\ won by Havers. Gadd says: ' “As usual, the critical stage of thechampionship came in the fourth round. Havers was finished before Hagen, and had just played the 11th hole when he learnt Havers’s final score. A hurried calculation told the American that he had to do the last seven holes in 27 to tie. “The fight which Hagen made for the figures was one of the finest I can ever hope to see, and I shall always think, glad as I was and still am that Havers won, that Hagen had very bad luck. “I can still remember every shot he made. At the 12th he hit the hole with a beautiful run-up from just off the green, at the next his putt swung off the edge of the hole; at the 15tli his chip hit the hole, and his putt from three yards back hit it again; he hit the hole again at the 16th with a runup; he put a pitch two inches from the hole at the 17th; and at the 18th he nearly holed out from a bunker. “In those seven holes he hit the hole four times, and yet the ball did not drop once. “This display by Hagen opened up a new prospect, with a proper conception of the importance of the chip shot. “Hagen proved that a stroke is never lost in the short game. Chips counted to him as no more than long putts. It was not only possible to lay the ball dead, but actually to hole it.”