Evening star., 1941-01-26
Great Players Mere
Front Men for Guy
Who Bears Load
Grant Rice's Diplomacy
Will Be Put to Test
By FeIIow-Judges
BY WALTER McCALLUM.

BY WALTER McCALLUM.
Golf is going to have hall of
fame" something like the baseball
boys have sponsored at Coopers-
town, N. Y. where gent named
Doubleday is supposed to have
evolved the chrysalis of the present
national pastime.
Granny Rice, who has been
around the sports writing game
for quite a stretch of years, heads
up committee to choose the names
that will go in COLTS lasting archives.
The others on the committee, all
with more than 80 years of service
writing yarns of how Joe Mashie
dumped the Oshkosh open by muff-
ing a 4-foot putt, are Kerr Petrie,
a Scotsman: o. B. Keeler, the sing
ing editorial writer of Atlanta, who
told the world about Bobby Jones
long before Bobby was more than
a pea in the soup of the top mid
iron maulers, and Linde Fowler, the
mustachioed Boston strong boy,
who has debased the golf writing
profession by making a million
more or leSs-in the market and
retiring from active work.
There's going to be some inner
politics played in that committee,
and Granny, who ought to be
diplomat instead of a mere sports
writer, Is going to be in the middle.
We can hear Petrie nobly Defend
ing in his best Carnoustie dialect
the theory that kid from the
caddie pens of Westchester, N. Y,
named Gene Sarazen, is the great
est champion of them all, and that
a blond named Jess Sweetser, who
won the American and British
amateur championships, also was
a SHOEMAKER of some ability.
Ouimet Is Linde's Idol.
We can hear Linde Fowler, draw
Ing up to his eminence of 5 feet 2
inches, declaim on the ability of
the one and only Francis Ouimet.
Golf, in Linde's view, revolves
around Francis, and with some
reason. For Francis, then just out
of the caddie ranks, was the first
amateur to blast the supremacy of
the British-born professional and
the first amateur to win the open
championship.
Then Keeler, with all the fire
and ardor of his Kansas City-born
Southern oratory, will swing into
action with a defense of Bobby
Jones, the than whom there is
no whomer' in golf All they need
Is a bespectacled gent named Joe
Davis, who used to sound off for
Chick Evans in the old Chicago
Trib, to make it complete.
I've been wondering who will rep
resent the greatest golfer of them
all on that committee. He isn't
Hagen or Sarazen or Jones or Oui-
met or Armour or Sweetser or any
one else you'll find in headlines.
For want of a better name his
monicker is John Q. Duffer. He
happens to be the man who picks
up the check for the perpetuation
of Americas greatest participant
sport. For golf is just that. There
are, roughly, 100000 golfers in this
country.
They spend more money, the De-
partment of Commerce saws, on
equipment and material for the
game than do participants in any
other sport. Football, baseball,
tennis and the other sports are
pikers on the money side as COM
pared to golf. And if you toss in
the cash outlay for the millions of
acres given over to the painful
process of getting a little white
ball in a little round hole the out
lay for golf will run far into the
billions.
Great Players Mere Front Men.
For this the Sarazens, the Oui-
NETS and the Hagens pay COM
paratively little. They are the
front men, the decoys, the shills for
old John @. Duffer, and If John
cannot do quite as well with a
ball and club as a caddie who
has handled these tools from boy
hood it isn't his fault. He still
pays the bills.
John G. should have a definite
spot in any golf hall of fame. 1t
shouldn't be any little niche away
OF in the corner, either. 1t should
be out there in front, where the
fires of oratory burn and the pho
tographers' flashlights play.
John should be posed as he usu-
ally is just after topping off a tee
shot, moan of anguish issuing
from his pan, or tossing a blithe-
some putter after blowing the one
that cost him a tWo-bit Nassau.
Probably out of the 100000 golf
ers in the United States less than
2 per cent break 80 with any de-
gree Of consistency. And probably
fewer than rs per cent break 100.
You can see in a game that runs
the gamut of all human suffering
and emotion how big a gent Mr..
Duffer is. His should be the chief
role. His should be the biggest
statue of them all. But does John
grab the headlines? Not by Jim
my Thomson tee shot. Johns role
Is to pay the bills. This he does
willingly and gladly. even if he
never breaks 100 and never hit
pitch shot like Armour
Granny Rice, the chairman of
the committee, used to be a good
golfer himself. His game has gone
now. He isn't the terror of the
Deepdale set any longer or the
Roslyn rampager. He knows all
the suffering that goes into a de-
cline in what used to be sound,
solid game of eolf. He should hold
out against the bleatings of Fowler,
Petrie and Keeler for the solid man
OF golf-John @. Duffer-for the
main spot in the links hall of fame.