News And Notes

A New King of The Lefties

Kirk Smith can't really claim to be the world's best lefthanded golfer—Phil Mickelson would surely object—but Smith was low southpaw during the 62nd National Association of Left-handed Golfers championship last week at Las Vegas's Paiute Resort. Smith, a 47-year-old dentist with a scratch handicap from Everett, Wash., beat the 1996 champion, Jim Wheatley of Geneva, Ill., with a birdie on the fourth hole of sudden death. The players had tied at nine-over-par 297 after four rounds.

While Smith and Wheatley were tearing up Paiute (Wheatley shot a tournament-low 69 in the second round), the event's 286 other players, including five women, grouped into 17 flights, had varying degrees of success. George Price, a 68-year-old mortician from San Francisco who claims to have learned a lot about golf from Dwight Eisenhower when he served as a young man under the general, played despite a broken finger on his left hand. "It's tough to play with one hand," said Price, who opened with a 113 and closed with a 92, despite a splint on his busted digit. "I would never have tried to play if it hadn't been a lefty tournament. I've made a lot of good friends at this event, and it's too much fun to let a broken finger stop me."

Travis Scott, the executive secretary of the Carolinas chapter of the association, was an accomplished righthanded player who took lessons lefthanded just so he could travel with friends to Monterrey, Calif., for the 1963 championship. "Lefties hit from the right side of the ball," insists Scott, who finished third in the senior second flight.

Merle Hogan, the oldest player in the field at 89, braved the 112� heat and 40-mph wind gusts to shoot rounds of 104, 105, 114 and 115. "I just plain ran out of gas," said Hogan, who celebrated his birthday on the day of the final round.

The most ambitious of the association's 5,000 members, including Smith, will travel to Launceston Country Club in the Australian state of Tasmania for the biennial World Lefthanded Golf Tournament in October 1998. Not only will they be hitting from the wrong side, but they'll be down under as well. "We're golf's true minority," says Scott.

Golf's Great Little Man Jumps Back into Action

In 1954 Bob Toski won four Tour events and was the leading money winner with what was then a record $65,820, but he was obsessed with another number. "I weighed 118 pounds," says the 5'8" Toski. "I was the lightest player in the history of the Tour. Remember Charles Atlas and the kid that used to get sand kicked in his face? The 118-pound weakling? Well, I didn't want people to think that was me, so I always said I weighed 127 pounds." After Toski's final win in '54, at the World Championship of Golf at Tarn O'Shanter in Niles, Ill., Lew Worsham and Clayton Heafner greeted Toski at the shower and marched him to a scale, thus ending the ruse.

Although Toski never won another Tour event, he will always be remembered as golf's great little man. Last week at Olympia Fields outside Chicago, Toski added another line to his r�sum�. At 70 years, nine months and eight days, he became the oldest player to compete in the U.S. Senior Open.

At 135 pounds Toski is still trim, and his technically superior swing has weathered the years beautifully. He shot a pair of 76s at Olympia Fields, missing the cut by a stroke. I Not bad for a guy who hadn't played in a Senior Open since 1987, hasn't played the Senior tour regularly for a decade and played only one Senior event all of last year. "Aw, I didn't come here just to play. I came to make the cut," Toski said after the second round.