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Craig Wood Wins Masters Title with 280
Record Crowd Sees Winner Card Last-Round 72 to Smash Runner-Up `Jinx'
By Tom Wall
Chronicle Sports Editor
Augusta, Ga., Monday, April 7, 1941 -- Courageous Craig Wood, the big blond belter from Mamaroneck, N.Y., drank from the cup of victory last night and in it were vivid reflections of a velvety course...thousands upon thousands of brilliantly-clad spectators who make up the ``Fashion Plate of American Golf''.....the indelible and undying applause that rides with the holder of the fashionable Augusta National championship.
These and more formed the reward for Wood's ``dream come true'' to the wild acclaim of a record-smashing crowd which saw the game's most famous ``jinx'' man crash through with a 72-hole 280 and first place in his first major championship.
``You people have been very kind to me,'' he said seconds after receiving the top prize ($1,500) from James M. Cox, former governor of Ohio and now publisher of the Atlanta Journal and a resident of Atlanta. ``You have given me a pat here and a pat there. I might even move to the South to live. Fact is, I might do anything now because this is the happiest moment of my life.''
Wood was the center of attraction in the coronation ceremonies after being called on to wage a gallant stretch drive to keep Lord Byron Nelson, the 1937 titlist and the runner-up yesterday, from easing in again this year. Nelson finished with 283.
And when they trudged out on the huge putting green for the last act in the greatest of all golf extravaganzas, Wood, Nelson and Sammy Byrd, the ex-major league baseball star who finished third with 285, heard....and acquiesced in....the declarations that the Masters is fast shaping up as the most coveted of all golf baubles.
``I can think of no finer place to be made the Shrine of American Golf,'' said former Ohio Governor James M. Cox, now an adopted Georgian, who also was quick to give flowery praise to the gallery as ``the best behaved'' he had ever seen. During the course of his remarks, in which he lavishly praised Augusta, its people...the city's visitors...and lastly though not leastly, the great Bobby Jones, whom the speaker referred to as ``that charming gentleman and ace competitor''...Governor Cox pledged, with the public's help, ``that this (the Augusta National) will become the Shrine of American Golf.''
The speaker had one sombre note for the occasion. It was his, ``Thank God Almighty, no bombs are falling here,'' an obvious reference to the wars which rage in Europe.
In performing what everyone agreed was by far the finest, most eloquently-conducted presentations in the eight years of the Masters, Governor Cox was presented by Colonel Robert Jones Sr., whose jolly good humor, for which he is widely famous, likewise contributed much to the occasion.
It had been planned for Francis Quimet, close personal friend of the Masters greatest player and the idol of American golf, to hand over the prize money but the Bostonian was unable to be present for the final round. However, he left behind a note for the Colonel in which he described the Augusta National as ``the finest (golf) course I have yet seen or expect to see.''
Fully 6,000 of what veteran gallery observers said was a throng of 12,000 souls grouped around the big putting green to witness the ceremonies. The cloudless day was all that tournament officials needed to bring on the biggest crowd in the history of the tournament.
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