“I Play Hunches,” by Gene Sarazen

14 THE SRTURDAY EVENING POST .Rug ust JI, 19J,s - absontly to myself: "How about a rudder on the back of my niblick ?" The result was a special niblick with a rear one-quarter of an inch lower than-the frout edge of the blade. In other words, it is designed with a rudder like an airpl ane, and its effect was amazing. I don't fear the traps now. I even seek them, as I did on two holes of the 1D32 world's championship match with Francis Ouimet. I mean that I played for the traps while Ouimet played for the pin, and I won both holes, as I fully expected to. I knew, you see, that the pin s were not advantageously placed; that Ouimet's pitch shots wouldn't hold the green, but would roll over into the rough. And I knew tha,t I could chip nearer to the cup from the sand than he or anybody else could from the grass. Nobody knows it, but when I threw away .Ils T old to Davis J. Walsh the 1934 championship on the eleventh hole PBOTOG Il ~PBS T~KKN POll THI: SATU Il· D~Y KVI:NING POST AT T ill: M ~IlS H" I K LD COUNTIlYCLUB. M~ lI; S KPl gL.D . M~SSAC II U SKTTS. B Y JOSKPH I ~N l< KY STIUNMKTZ HE doctor was almost doggedl y chee rful about Golf writers have spoken of my calm and concen it all, but in spite of himself he shook his bead. tra tion in moments of stress. 'rhey seem to believe ITe had saved me. But for what? H e didn't that I feel no doubt of the issue, and really I don't know and, naturally, neitber did 1. The only tbing when I'm playing hunches. That's wbere I get my that seemed qui te clear about this unusual recovery well-publicized confidence, and why not? No hunch of mine was the verdict. has be trayed me yet, whether it came in shooting I was to get out in th e open air and stay th ere, the last four holes in three strokes under par to win because I had had empyema and, if you get over 10,000 at Agua Caliente or in becoming the only that, you sometimes spend the rest of your li fe cough professional ever to win the American and British ing discreetl y against a handkerchief-provided you championships the same year. Both performances always have one. represented very pronounced hunches. As I recall those days, I nearly always didn't. So did tbe holing of that 230-yard spoon shot for a That's what made this prescri ption seem so bit double eagle 2 that won me the ~ l as te rs ' champion terl y iro ni c. Open air, to some, means brisk cantering ship at Augusta last winter by wiping out Craig along the bridle path at 'White Sulphur Springs, win \\'ood's three-stroke lead with one swift, sure blow. ter on th e Hi vicra, sli mm er at Bar Harbor and , alto It was made possible by a hunch I bad had about a gether, living as the li zard li ves, forever fo ll owin g th e special club for playing downhill lies. The shot sun . couldn't have been made without it, just as my To tiS, the Sarai'.enR, Deell pying an Itali an-A mericn n more recent championships might have eluded me if cottago on thc homely si de of a New York su burb, J hadn't cured my extreme fear of traps with a hunch it mean t real sacri fi ee, perhaps pri vation. Sick O f' I got on a flying fi eld. The .Ruthor Starts a Drive With His Eyt! well, I had to work. \\'e were decent, industrious and on the Ball and the Gallery's Eye on Him a respected peopl e. But we were very poor. Playing for the Traps Instead of the Pin , The doctor understood . He kne w, in effect, that he was giving me th e choice of dy ing pre tty rapidly OR years I had been afflicted with that drea.d a t an o ffi ce desk or starving at length in the open, F malady of the links which, for lack of a better but that's something I would be the last to hold term , I call" trap phobia. I' It's a virulent plague that against him. strikes at the hearts of men and turns them to stone. lI is few brief word s sounded . at the time, li ke a 'rhey become deathly afraid of traps, so, in variably, requiem . Actuall y, they were a repl'ieve. they pi tch into them somewhat after the manner of Anyhow, instead of becomjng a consumptive, I tbe bird that doesn't like the cat, but is charmed became a professional golfer. down out of the tree by the fascination of its own fear. .11 Mac Without a Tartan Any how, nearl y every championship is decided in and out of traps, with th e result tha.t you either mas F. ALTII followed almost immediately, prestige ter your niblick before a title event or you might as H perhaps more guardedly, but by this time I feel well start back home and save the caddie fees. Per that I have earned some degree of both. Anyhow. my sonally, I wasn't able to save anything-neither fees complexion is neither tan nor ruddy, but something nor strokes nor reputation. on th€! pale side of cordovan, and those who know me I lived through some pretty desperate years that 011 the Unks or by newspaper photographs must con way. and then, suddenly , the answer came at a time cede that physically J'm as rugged as a railroad tie. I and place when I wasn't thillking about golf at all. suppose this sounds as though I should add, "And I It was a hunch . a renl hunch that made me a cham owe it all to empyema." pion all over again , and Hterally it came on the wings Btl tit wasn't so sim pIe as that. of in spiration. Simple? The complications were terrific. So was The scene is Roosevelt Field, Long Island, the year racial prejudice. I even had to change my name to ] 928; the principal characte r, a morose and deject.ed get a job. I called myself Gene MacSarazen, and young man named Sarazen who was beginning to dou btless the bones or my ancestors stirred fretfuUy identity himself. even to himself, as the man who in their shrouds. used to plfty golf. Looking back now, sixteen years later, I wonder Anyhow. I was idly watching the planes land and that I didn't tome up sooner with a good, bright take ofT, without, as I say. the faintest thought of hunch I could bri ng to bear on a situation like that. golf. And then, quite surprisingly, I was thinking of But I was only a somewhat bewildered boy of seven nothing else. teen and couldn't know that as time went on I was to I had noticed that as the pilot started to take off follow my hunches with a blind. unquestioning faith he lowered the rudder to get the plane in flying po StraIght as an .Rrrow. Wat c h i ng th t! that never for a. moment bargained with destiny. sition. And within a few moments I was murmuring Ball Fly Down the Fai rway for a S l rfl lt! THE SRTURDAY EVENING POST 15 at lVIerion, I did it largely because I pitched for a and k-new that I had cashed the greatest three-way them. So was another or my hunches, an extra-heavy tn1p and did n't make it. That seems incred ible. but, hunch a man ever had. practice club I had figured out arter being around a. after hooking into that d itch on the left and baving I wasn't even playing golf wh en the original in lot with Cene 'l\lllney some years before and notic to take a penalty stroke, I reali zed that a pitch to the spi ration came. I was on a fi shing t rip with Lester ing that he strengthened his hands by constantly g reen wouldn't hold from the position where I had Hice, the golf writerj in a small bayou town in lower squeezing a contraption he carried with him. dropped my penalty ball. T here was a tree half Louisiana during the winter of 1932, and we were T he heavy practice club could do even better stymieing me, a nd the safest course was to play for just sitting around, thinking about practically noth than that, however. It did more than just strengthen the trap at the righ t. I didn't make it-and lost a ing at all, when I picked up a paper, and there it was. the hands and wrists. By its very weight, it m ade championshi p I should have won. 1.' he Southem open championship was to be held good timjng a fonnaEty. lVl oreover, the spectators were chattering like a at New Orleans the following week. Not a very vital Anyhow, this was to be a hunch upon a hunch. I lot of magpies up above my head as I was chipping disc losure to some, perhaps, but, to me, it presented knew, for instance, that we Ameri cans needed at out of a bunker at t he final hole of the 1932 open a coincidence that smote right between the eyes.

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