Scorecard

CHANGING TIMES

There has been a certain amount of buzzing and murmuring on golf courses around the country because Arnold Palmer, no longer Superman (has not won the Masters since 1964, has not won the U.S. Open since 1960, has never won the PGA), is obliged this year to go out and qualify for the Open in sectional play. But Palmer's plight may only be a sign of the times. At the $100,000 Greater New Orleans tournament last weekend, these prominent golfers did not even make the cut:

Jack Nicklaus
Dave Marr
Mason Rudolph
Dave Stockton
Charles Coody
Jay Hebert
Bert Yancey
Kel Nagle
Tom Weiskopf
Gay Brewer
Doug Sanders
Marty Fleckman

While these golfers did:

Jack Harden
Herb Hooper
Larry Hinson
Bobby Stanton
Hale Erwin
Bob Menne
Joel Goldstrand
Jack McGowan
Johnny Stevens
Howell Fraser
Bob Mitchell
George Boutell

Hinson, incidentally, went on to win the tournament.

PENALTY BOX

One of the livelier bits of news to come out of the 1968-69 hockey season was the great lottery rigging scandale in Montreal. Andre Dandurand, official timekeeper at Canadien games, was charged with having conspired to alter the official time of goals scored to aid the operation of an illegal lottery.

Lotteries based on the precise time that goals are scored are commonplace in Canada, and in metropolitan Montreal they are almost as popular as the numbers racket in the U.S., in which the winning number is based on, for instance, the betting handle at a particular racetrack. In the hockey lottery you buy a ticket with a certain number, say 18:18. If a goal is scored at that time, voil�, you win. But Dandurand and his associates were accused of rigging the deal.

Apparently, they would not sell numbers ending in certain digits; let us say that in the drawing you are involved with, they held out all numbers ending in five and zero. Now, a goal is scored, for example, when the clock that shows the time remaining in the 20-minute period reads 1:42. Take one minute and 42 seconds away from 20 minutes and you get 18:18. That's the official time of goal and that's your number, b�b�. Except that—according to police—Dandurand might be just a little slow stopping the clock—a couple of seconds will do. So the time remaining is now 1:40, and that figures out to 18:20, and that is the official time of goal and that's not your number. You don't win and nobody does, except the lottery operators.