Stars Don't Reign, But Confusion Does

The 1964 professional golf tour has completed what is becoming known as its California shakedown cruise, and just when it ought to be getting up steam like a formful Queen Mary it continues behaving like the Walloping Window-Blind. Arnold Palmer is being penalized for hitting somebody else's golf ball, Jack Nicklaus is losing his own ball up a palm tree and calm Julius Boros is finishing a calm 20th or so. Such greats have been losers all year, and last week they stayed losers when Tommy Jacobs shot a seven-under-par 353 for 90 holes and then won a sudden-death playoff against—gasp—Jimmy Demaret to take the Palm Springs Golf Classic and emerge as the fifth different champion on the five-week-old winter tour. He thus joined Paul Harney ( Los Angeles Open), Art Wall ( San Diego), Tony Lema ( Bing Crosby) and Chi Chi Rodriguez ( San Francisco). He also prompted a question. Is this the pattern for 1964?

The answer is both yes and no. There is little doubt, for instance, that last year's heroes are simply smoothing out their games before earnestly starting their annual assault on the big titles. Boros, who will be 44 in March, traditionally waits until the warmth of spring before stirring his lethargic bones with any real purpose. Never in his 15-year career has he won a tournament before May. Nicklaus, following a seven-week layoff, has had a hard time trying to recall how he used to swing a golf club, but he is beginning to remember. "I think I'm now capable of winning a tournament," he said at Palm Springs.

And Arnold Palmer? Well, Arnold Palmer, like a million other Americans, is struggling to give up smoking. At this game the world's greatest golfer is no better than anyone else.

"I don't want to make a fuss about it," says Palmer, trying hard not to make a fuss about it, "but this nonsmoking thing has me all tightened up. It seems to be changing my whole system. I'm getting the yips in everything, but mostly on the putting green. I'll just have to stick it out until my system adjusts."

Palmer's father, Deacon Palmer, has long been after his son to stop smoking, but what triggered the latest withdrawal from tobacco was a sinus attack during the recent chilly, rainy week in San Francisco. Palmer had his sinuses drained, and the attending physician, Dr. William Taylor, made the usual suggestion.

"He told me to stop smoking," says Palmer. "I agreed to stop if he'd stop, too. He agreed and I said, 'O.K., you've got yourself a game.' "

There is one thing that bothers Palmer more than nonsmoking, however, and that is nonwinning. Last year he played in 20 tournaments and won seven, a rate of better than one in three. This year he has played in five, missing the cut at the Crosby, fumbling in untypical fashion an excellent chance to win at San Francisco and finishing a dismal 41st at Palm Springs. Palmer has tried to stop smoking before, and the experiment always ended the same way: one three-putt green too many and he was bumming cigarettes until someone could run and fetch him a fresh pack of his own. He has now stopped for 11 days, while three-putting 18 greens.

Despite their poor records so far. Palmer, Nicklaus and Boros will be in sharp contention soon—and so will Gary Player. He is still at home in South Africa, where his wife recently gave birth to a baby girl.

The confusion emerging from the West Coast is, like an obscure Zen poem or a barking dog, trying to tell us something. It certainly has in the past. In 1959 Art Wall won the Bing Crosby in January and launched a year in which he also took the Masters and was the leading money winner. In 1960 Palmer started the year that finally established him as the best player of his day by winning the Palm Springs Classic with closing rounds of 66 and 65. In 1961 Bob Goalby and Gary Player, by winning at Los Angeles and San Francisco, supplied a forecast of the conquests that would soon fall to them. In 1962 Phil Rodgers, who would have been pro golf's rookie of the year but for the simultaneous debut of Jack Nicklaus, won at Los Angeles, and last year Palmer and Nicklaus opened their $100,000-plus seasons with victories at Los Angeles and Palm Springs.

There is every reason to believe that this winter's sojourn in California is revealing, too. L.A. Open Champion Harney, who was born in Worcester, Mass. 34 years ago, has chosen to retire with his wife and four children to the ordered life of a country club job in northern California and will play in only half a dozen 1964 events. He is one of golf's longest hitters, however, and in spite of a curtailed schedule last summer still managed to tie Palmer before losing a playoff at the $100,000 Thunder bird Open. Then, a week later, he bogeyed the last hole to finish just one stroke back of Boros, Palmer and Jacky Cupit in the U.S. Open. He is capable of even more success this year.