Evening star., 1939-02-02
Stymie Adds 10 Kicks
As Pros Moan for
Medal Struggle
Change Would Take Away
Much From Viewpoint
Of Spectators
BY WALTER McCALLUM.

ny VAL1En NCOALLUM.
II guess this is my last one. ]
don't intend ever to play in another
Professional Golfers Association
championship" No hint Of sour
grapes or disgust at having been
licked in the first round caused
Witty Cox to make this statement
at Shawnee last year after he had
shot level par for Is holes and had
been dubbed out of the pro match
play championship by John Re-
volta.
It don't like this match play bust
ness and the money hardly is worth
spending SO much time for. And
there are plenty of the other boys
who feel as I feel. Have you no
ticed that Mac Smith never plays
in the P. G. A. championships
Those rumblings from Frisco
where the touring pros began speak
Ing their minds right out in meeting
about match play golf, have crys-
talized the feeling that has existed
for years among the top-ranking
paid players of the land. Frankly,
they don't like match play for dough
and some of them don't hesitate to
tell the world about it. And equally
frankly the P. G. A. championship
never has quite gone over.
The P. G. A. championship prob
ably is the finest tournament in
the world to watch, from the spec
tator viewpoint. You could search
the annals of golf and find few
matches in any championship that
had in them the dramatic situa-
tions of the Guldahl-Metz match in
the 1888 championship, where
curley-haired Ralph so far lost his
temper as to drive Dicks ball off
the green; the big putt that Sam
Snead holed on the 35th green to
whip scrappy Jimmy Hines, or the
Goliath-like rapier thrusts of di-
minutive Paul Runyan in the final
as he decisively outplayed Snead,
the bombardier of golf.
The whole thing, the P. G. A.
championship itself, is the finest
show in golf. The boys take the
wraps off and shoot the works as
they never do in medal play
tourney.
Yet the P. G. A. championship
never quite has made the grade.
1t doesn't rate anywhere near the
Importance of the national open in
the public mind and probably the
gate at Shawnee didn't come near
the gate at Denver, where the 1888
open was played. Nor are the
financial rewards as important to
the winners as a $4,000 tourney
should be. Runyan got check for
$1,000 for winning the P. G. A.
title last year. Had he won the
Miami open, for eXample-a $4,000
affair-his check would have been
around $2,500.
The P. G. A. money split goes to a
lot of fellows in the form of trans
portation and moderately small re-
turns for getting along in the match
play rounds. But that isn't as i'm
portant as the fact that the pros
don't like match play golf.
They hate the stymie, for ex-
ample, which probably is the main
reason Guldahl lost his temper.
He was stymied twice in the last
five holes. They play for consist
ency Of shotmaking rather than
brilliance, and their games are
geared to the unerring and less
spectacular processes of medal play
rather than the take chance bril-
lance of match play.
Bob Jones would have vowed
them in the P. G. A. title tourney
if he ever played in his best days.
He was the most consistent per-
former golf had 10 years ago. But
nowadays, with far more bril-
liant crop of pros around, with bet
ter scoring in every tournament,
the pros are clamoring to have
their own, tournament given back