Evening star., 1938-06-25

OF silver tney pass out 10 amateur golfer
other golfer in Baltimore and not such
toothed Baltimorean who won the.
mid-Atlantic crown back in 1882,
dressed Otto down with regularity and
golfers Of our neighboring town used
to say: Isn't it too bad that Otto
never will be as good as his brother
Walter? He has everything but the
winning spirit" &.
So what? So Otto, in single cam
paign of one week. has won three
medal rounds in pretty good tourna-
ments, has grabbed the most i'm
portant sectional title of all in this
territory, has shot. under the strenu-
GUS and testing conditions of medal
play, three straight rounds under 10,
and today is a marked man and the
standout performer in the Maryland
amateur championship at Rodgers
Forge, hard by the picturesque little
real estate developement on the Tow
son road which Is all cluttered up with
advertisements and is due to be lit
tered with Otto's figuratively dead op-
ponents before they end the title
tourney tomorrow. And Walter, the
brother for whom they claimed such
great things, is an assistant pro, with
future as drab as q January land
scape unless he can capture some Of
the competitive spirit and scoring
skill that Is Ottos.
Is Phlegmatic Golfer.
What manner of man is this who
has. within a few days. done these
things which set him apart among the
golfers Of this sector? Otto Greiner
Is one of family of four boys, born
in Baltimore l8 years ago. That fic-
ton about Otto being 20 is fiction.
He won't be l9 until next month
A tall lad. shade over feet in
height, with the inevitable big hands
that seem to mark good golfers, Otto
is as phlegmatic as any of his Ger
man forebears. Unruff1ed by a bad
shot he ploughs along. striving for
par and letting the brides come where
they may. You can't upset him."
said Bill Wagner, one of Baltimore's
better amateurs. HE takes on
an easy hole and goes along wait
ing for birdie. He usually gets it.
too. I can't imagine him ever letting
anything which happens in this game
get on his nerves-if he has any"
1t sounds like the George
V0igt Of 1926. And they used to
call George the "Dutchman."
How good is Greiner? Well, this
kid whom Washingtonians scarcely
have seen, won the medal and the
tournament in the recent mid-Atlan-
tic jamboree at Pennington. Day be-
fore yesterday he shot rounds of SO
and 81 to win the Maryland junior
championship with record-shatter-
ing total of 1856. And yesterday, in
the most-convincing way of all, he
set himself up as the mark for all
Maryland golfers by winning the quail
flying round with a 68 in the State
championship at Rodgers Forge.
Sure it was over his home
course. But the par still Is 10,
and it's tough enough. The
way he did 1t is the pay-off.
Spencer Overton, the pessimistic-
looking guy from Rolling Road, had
turned in fiat 10, an hour before.
Greiner had turned the first nine in
80 and had taken at the easy tenth
hole. q par 4 affair So he turned on
the heat to come home in 35, but the
last hole told the story. This
eighteenth at Rodgers Forge isn't so
much when you look at it, but they
had stuck the pin about IS feet from
the edge of yawning trap. Otto
needed a 1 to win with a SO. From
the position of his tee shot. far at the
left of the fairway. he didn't have
much green to shoot at. A would
drop him into a tie, and 6 would
cost him the medal He could have
missed that tiny green and wound
up in trap. But he took a niblick
and hit that ball so fine a shot that
it almost holed out, leaving him a
26-inch putt for the birdie, which he
holed. That's the kind of competitor
Greiner Is.
Caldwell Likes Him.
"Oh, yes. I licked him at Five
Farms" said Caldwell. But don't
think I'll do 1t again. I was plenty
lucky, and right now that boy is play
ing better golf than any amateur I've
seen in years." You are going to hear
a lot of this lanky law student from
Baltimore. He has what it takes to
win golf matches and tournaments.
Some one may lick him in that tourna-
ment which started yesterday, but the
gent who does it will commit a lot Of
golf-and will see a lot of it shot at
him. Nor will the fellow who plays
him get much conversation. Greiner
is pleasant enough, but he's like q
clam on the golf course Which Is as
it should be for good golfers.
It's hard enough to c0ncen-
trate on hitting the ball.
Three Washingtonians were in the
first flight today. Buddy sharkey, the
chubby-faced boy who holds the In