Double, Double Toil And Trouble

The next morning was Sunday, when the low 70 pros and the low 40 pro-am teams played Pebble Beach. The weather had exhausted itself, so everyone was in friendly sunshine, and the course had exhausted itself, too. It was so torn up from Saturday that the pleased pros were permitted to improve their lies.

Rocky Thompson's glory lasted only until he came up with three straight bogeys. Meanwhile, ahead of him, Bruce Crampton was making birdies galore—four on the first six holes to take the lead. Thereafter no one came within two strokes of catching Crampton, and he breezed home with a three under-par 284. Immediately behind him were those familiar names: Lema—287; Nicklaus—288; Casper—288.

Ironically, it was Nicklaus who was partly responsible for Crampton's victory. On the day before the tournament began, Jack spent three quarters of an hour on the practice tee helping Crampton get rid of a hook that had been bothering him. "By Friday my swing started to feel a lot better. I began to get a little wind in my sails," Bruce said. "It was very gracious for a man of his caliber to spend so much time helping out a nobody like me," he added, showing perhaps an excess of humility.

The fact is that Crampton played three exceptional rounds of golf following a rather uninspired 75 at Cypress Point on Thursday. He had 67 on Friday, the 73 in the gale at Pebble on Saturday and his splendid closing round of 69 on Sunday, the best score of the day by anyone. "When I sank a 50-foot putt from just off the edge on the 16th green," he said later, "I began to feel it was one of those times when you are just destined to win." In a game as capricious as golf, a man soon learns to believe in destiny.