Evening star., 1935-08-16
V0|GT, M'KENz|E
LAST TO THREATEN
Number Appear to Possess
Assets, but Fall Down
at Testing Time.
BY WALTER r.. McCALLUM.

BY WALTER r.. McCALLUM.
IT'S getting just about time one of
our local prides gathered his golf
game together and swung enough
L clubs to put Washington on the
map as a city where good linkSmen
are developed.
It used to be so, eight or nine years
back when Roland Mackenzie and
George Voigt carried the colors of
the Capital into the forefront of the
amateur championship. But the sorry
truth is that not since the day Chick
Evans thundered a 25-foot putt across
the thirty-seventh green at Mini
khada to lick Roland in the semi
final of the amateur title tilt of that
year has any one with Washington
tag on him done anything in the
tournament.
George Voigt won the qualifying
medal at Brae Burn in 1928 and went
to the semi-final of the 1929 cham
pionship but by that time George
was a New Yorker and not Wash
ingtonian. Since those days not a
single Capital golfer has done any
thing worthy of more than passing
notice in the big tournament.
Many Good Players.
WE HAVE a flock of good golfers
here, men good enough to 60
far in any championship, Billy Dett-
weller, Roger Peacock, Volney Bur-
nett, Harry Pitts, Miller Stevinson,
MnrfiY hFnTarfIayr 7 oNri Vndar TdIio
Bean and Parker Nolan, all of these
are good enough to give any man a
rub when ION their stick" But they
haven't been able to get to first base
in the big affair.
Year after year a few of them have
qualified and year after year they
vanish early. And yet they are as
good shotmakers as any of the kid
sensations who come up to the tour
nament each year and proceed to
blast out enduring inches for them
selves in the game; kids like Bobby
jacobson of Deal, who whipped John
Goodman last year, or Bobby Jones of
Detroit, who licked Francis Ouimet.
The big test will come next week,
when all our better aspiring amateurs
will gather at Indian Spring for the
36-hole sectional qualification tests
Tuesday. Once by that bogey of medal
play and safely in the championship
We may find that men like Peacock
Pitt. Burnett, Yoder and Dettweiller
can 60 we'll in the match play rounds.
even though they haven't proven it,
Peacock never has qualified for
match play in an amateur champion
ship. Neither have Pitt, Yoder nor
Burnett But they have proved in
other tournaments that they can go
fast and far and play any course in
respectable figures. And the quality
of top-ranking golf in this sector is
certainly as good as it Is in any other
part of the land
Caldwell Topnotcher.
ERNIE Caldwell was within an
inch of licking Ross Somerville
the defending champ, in 1888, and
would have licked him had a long
putt not popped out Of the cup. Billy
Howell went to the semi-final in 1881
And there are golfers just as good
and probably better than Caldwell
and Howell hanging around in Wash
ington.
Why don't they go anywhere? Your
answer is as good as mine. A guy like
Peacock or Dettweiller, seasoned in
tournament play, should go far in any
championship. Perhaps one or both
of them will this year. The big hurdle
will be the sectional rounds at Indian
Spring. where Washington should
grab about five places next Tuesday.