Scorecard

Thus embroiled, the pros go to Forest Hills this week. All of them will play, including protagonists Trabert and Gonzalez. The prospects are delicious for a turbulent tournament. "At least it's safe to say," said Trabert, "that there is going to be a little feeling."

TOO MUCH LIABILITY
Most states have long been enforcing laws that nobody wants, and now Connecticut wants a law that nobody can enforce. Connecticut State Police have been pushing a bill, the first of its kind, requiring that auto racetracks carry complete liability insurance to cover everybody: racers, employees, spectators, management and agents. The police had in fact pushed it right through the legislature to Governor John Dempsey's desk for the signature that would have made it effective October 1, when State Police Major Carroll Shaw requested a halt. He had discovered that not one insurance company in the U.S. would write such a policy.

BREAK UP THE TROJANS?

It was news last week when Oklahoma State's golf team won the NCAA championship, news because: 1) Houston did not win; 2) Southern California did not win. Houston, of course, is the perennial golf champion—six team titles in seven years, five individual titles out of six. But no one from Houston even made the semifinals this year. In the finals, R. H. Sikes of Arkansas, who wears sideburns, beat John Lotz of San Jose State,. who wore faded Bermudas and a flapping shirttail and cleaned his ball by plopping it into his mouth.

Southern Cal, on the other hand, has simply started to win everything. The Trojans won four official NCAA titles this year—swimming, baseball, track (SI, June 24), and tennis—and were a unanimous, if unofficial, choice as national football champs. No other school ever won so many championships in one year, and no other school president should be prouder than Dr. Norman Topping, who rattled USC alumni by raising entrance requirements to giddy heights after he took, over five years ago. Dr. Topping insisted that USC would have "excellence in athletics" only if there was "excellence throughout the university." Excellence has come to USC, in toto and in spades.

FIRE THE HANDICAPPED
When the Tigers win three games in a row Detroit talks pennant, and when they lose three in a row the manager gets fired. Detroit has had 10 managers in 12 years in pursuing this outlandish course. The new man on the job is Chuck Dressen, who has been everybody's favorite sparkplug for years, and has himself been replaced as often as one (he has managed five clubs without brilliance). Why did Detroit fire Bob Scheffing? The usual reasons. Sluggers Colavito and Cash weren't slugging, and Pitchers Aguirre, Bunning and Mossi weren't pitching ( Frank Lary is in Knoxville, for crying out loud), and Jake Wood was running the bases like he was mystified by their sequence. Obviously, under those circumstances, Manager Scheffing couldn't believe the romance coming out of the front office ("Scheffing's job is absolutely safe"), because obviously, too, you can't fire Colavito, Cash or Bunning for being lousy. They have to play. So the Tigers not only fired Scheffing, they fired his coaching staff as well, and it was rumored all the way to Texas and back that the trainer and clubhouse boy would be next. "Too bad," said Houston Manager Harry Craft. "I heard the clubhouse boy was having a great year."