MGA Establishes Central Murphy, Smallwood Win Top Handicapping Service Newspaper Writing Awards The Metropolitan Association is Jack Murphy of the San Diego Union establishing a centralized handicapping and Irwin Smallwood of the Greensboro service to electronically compute and re- (N.C.) Daily News were the principal win- vise the handicaps of golfers of its 198 ners of the seventh Brunswick-MacGregor member clubs in New York, New Jersey newspaper golf writing competitions, spon- and Connecticut. The service is being in- sored by the Golf Writers Association. troduced in time for use during the 1964 Murphy won first prize in the feature golf playing season. The MGA thus be- division with an article on the unscheduled comes the largest district golf association match between and a bee to introduce central control computing as that sat on his ball in the 1963 Phoenix a service to its member clubs. Open. Smallwood was singled out for his To provide the latest in electronic com- gripping news writing story of Jack Nick- puting methods, the MGA has made an laus' reaction to missing the cut in last agreement to sub-contract the work year's Open at Brookline. through Sports Data Corp. of New York. Second prize in the feature division During the past two years this company went to Bob Drum of the Pittsburgh Press has been providing electronic handicap while Ben Garlikov of the Dayton Daily computing for a number of clubs in the News won the second news reporting district. prize with his description of Nicklaus' Masters victory. Third place winners were Points Out Advantages Frank Reece, Dallas Morning News (fea- ture) and Murray Forsvall, Dallas Times In announcing the service to its mem- Herald (news writing). ber clubs, the MGA pointed out a number Prizes of $250, $150 and $100 were of advantages of centralized handicapping, awarded in each division. There was a among them: uniformity of handicapping record list of entries in the 1963 compe- in the district; elimination of human error titions — 158 in the feature division and in calculation; computation under one 81 in the news division. The contests method — the official USGA golf handi- were judged by Jay Jensen, head of the cap system. University of Illinois Journalism school, Handicap assignments and revisions for and his staff. the entire district will be made on the same day, seven times each playing sea- son. Clubs conducting member-guest tour- Casper Plays 80 Rounds in 70.58 naments will be able to verify guests' to Lead Vardon Cup Race handicaps through the MGA office which Although Bill Casper, Jr., had to sit on will maintain a master list of all handi- the sidelines for two months during 1963 caps computed and recorded to the last with an injured hand, he managed to get revision period. Club handicap commit- in enough rounds to qualify as the winner tees will be relieved of the slow, tedious of the . His 70.588 strokes and troublesome chore of keeping rec- per round for 80 rounds gave him a ords and computing manually. Computa- fractional lead over Arnold Palmer, Julius tions will be made overnight. Boros and , all of whom fin- Uniformity Established ished under 71. Casper also won the Var- don cup in 1960. With the move toward centralizing Here is how they finished in the Vardon handicap computations, the MGA is giv- Trophy competition: ing full effect to the USGA golf handicap Rounds Average system, which has as its basic elements, Bill Casper, Jr. 80 70.588 uniformity of course ratings — an evalu- Arnold Palmer 79 70.633 ation of the playing difficulty of a course 98 70.735 compared with other rated courses in the Tony Lema 103 70.893 area, which the MGA has followed dur- 123 71.244 ing the past three years — and a faith- 99 71.343 ful application of the USGA formula of Gardner Dickinson, Jr. 112 71.464 computing handicaps, under a uniform Art Wall, Jr. * 94 71.532 method, from complete and accurate scor- Bruce Crampton 149 71.570 ing records of all players. 104 71.712