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PEN PORTRAIT WILL CONNOLLY OF A SENIOR Sports Writer San Francisco Chronicle, • T was spring, like this, and young I Georgie Studinger decided to play hookey from Farragut Grammar School, in San Francisco. "My chum talked me into cutting classes that day. I didn't need much urg- ing," Stud recalls. "We strolled over the sand dunes and through the vegetable gardens of Ingleside. GEORGE STUDINGER "We saw a lot of people going into the San Francisco Club. We sneaked in was in the final three times subsequently, to see what all the fuss was about. That as recently as 1945. was the first round of golf I ever saw in This man doesn't look like the delinea- my life. tion of a golfer. He could pass for a "Know who the foursome was? Only middleweight pugilist. Stud is no beauty. , , John Black and He has the homely ruggedness of face com- . I started at the top and mon to so many likeable guys. worked down. That was in 1913. But Lake Merced people love him. They "Know who my chum was? Mel Smith, described him as "kindly, generous and now the pro at Santa Barbara's Valley thoughtful," and that's why they threw Club. He finally got out of the eighth him a day. grade at Farragut." Stud talks like a man from the Mission. Stud was recently lionized by the Lake Fresh off the sound track of Runyon's Merced Golf and Country Club at a lunch- "Guys and Dolls". eon and dinner. They kept him busy all "Why not?" he asks, "I was brought up day long. in the Mission. Lived at Twenty-sixth and What was the occasion? Nothing spe- Castro and later on Bartlett Street off Val- cial, except the Lake Merced people wanted encia. Fifty years ago next month, I to do something nice for one of the nation's climbed the Castro hill to Twenty-second best senior golfers. Stud is 56, and still a street and saw the city burning below me. formidable opponent. Last September, at I was six years old, but you don'~ forget Nashville, Tenn., he lost in the final of something like that." the USGA Senior Amateur Championship Studinger was born in North Beach, to J. Wood Platt, of Philadelphia. Broadway and Kearny. His father was a German immigrant who earned his keep as Not Country Club a baker. Stud remembers the American Bis- S.tud isn't country club, and neither is cuit Co., where he bought a gunny sack golf any more. He is the embodiment 'of of broken cookies for 25 cents. public links and "City" players. Back in He played his first formal eighteen holes 1928, when the San Francisco City tourna- in 1924, either at Ingleside or Lincoln, he ment was primitive, he won the title and .forgets which. "I shot in the low eighties the first time Reprinted by permission of San Francisco Chronicle, h ld 1 h S d San Francisco, Cal. out, but I s ou exp ain tat," tu wants USCA JOURNAL AND TURF MANACiEMENT: JUNE, 1956 19 it known. "I had been caddying on the Coast for such as and Walter USCA FILM LIBRARY Hagen. Mac Smith took me back to Oak­ Latest addition to USGA's Film Library land Hills, in Detroit, for the USGA Open is "Inside Golf House," a guided tour through the shrine of golf in America. Championship, and there I saw Bobby The viewer is given an opportunity to Jones. see the many interesting exhibits in "Golf Jones the Best House," USGA headquarters in New York, and to re-live golf triumphs of "Jones will do as the best in my book." the past with many of the game's im­ There was very little opportunity for mortals. Lindsey Nelson, Assistant Sports Director of the National Broadcasting kids to play golf when Studinger was a Company, is the narrator. The film is a truant from Farragut Grammar. 16 mm. black and white production with "In nineteen hundred and thirteen, there a running time of 28 minutes. were only two courses in this town—the Thus far, more than 460 bookings have Presidio and the San Francisco Club," Stud been made for USGA's motion picture, minds. "I wasn't interested in golf as a "The Rules of Golf—Etiquette." The film stresses the importance of etiquette by game. I wanted to earn a buck to bring portrayal of various violations of the code home to my mother. in the course of a family four-ball match. "The going rate was forty cents for appears in several scenes, and eighteen holes. I brought home as much as Robert T. Jones, Jr., makes the introduc­ tory statement. A 16 mm. Kodachrome sixty cents some days. This bought bread production, the film has a running time and milk." of 17^ minutes. The junior tournament for high school­ The distribution of both prints is ers and younger at Lake Merced in Easter handled by National Educational Films, week is the best thing that ever happened Inc., 165 West 46th Street, New York to golf, Studinger preaches. 36, N. Y., which produced the films in cooperation with the USGA. The rental "So what if the kids take over the course is $15 per film or $25 in combination at for one week of the year?" he asks. "Adults the same time, including the cost of ship­ can afford to lay off. They have fifty-one ping prints to the renter. weeks left. Are they parents or aren't they? Parents should make a sacrifice." teen hundred and twenty, and I was so In his day, Studinger observes, golf was well-heeled that I bought silk shirts and a for wealthy jokers in knickerbockers. No Buick with the top down." attention was given to 'teen-agers. Studinger is a graduate of the Yellow "Golf was learned the hard way by cad­ Cab system. He was a driver and later a dies, and they are a vanishing race," he supervisor of Yellow's service. says. "Nowadays, golfers use carts to cut "I was on the night shift," he says, "I down the expense of shooting a round, needed exercise, so I turned to walking the and the is virtually a dead duck. six thousand yards. Today, there must be "The best golfers are coming out of col­ a couple of hundred cabbies on local lege. I thought I was good. I once shot courses." sixty-six at Harding, sixty-three at Lincoln Stud is proud that he was in on the and my best at Lake Merced was sixty- beginning of public links golfing. He was seven. The younger generation disregards a member of the San Francisco team that . won the President Harding trophy at St. A Versatile Athlete Paul in 1931. Studinger is no one-sport man. He was The late Charlie Ferrera won the indi­ a nifty outfielder in the Mission. vidual title, and with him on the team "I could box a little," Stud admits, "I were Arthur Sato, a Japanese; Bob Oppen- won the one hundred sixty pound cham­ heim—and Studinger. pionship of the Union Works in World It was a relief for Stud to shed his War I. We worked seven days a week, from leather puttees, at that time the cab nineteen hundred and sixteen through nine­ driver's badge. 20 USGA JOURNAL AND TURF MANAGEMENT: JUNE, 1956