The L.a. Open Dresses Up In Glen's Plaids

The amazing thing is that nobody thought of calling it the Laurel and Hardy- Los Angeles Open years ago, back in the 1930s, back when Bing Crosby invented golf. I would have been perfect. The first event of the tour each January, out in the Golden West. Why should all of the other tournaments have names like the Crosby, the Hope, the Andy Williams, the Danny Thomas and-once-the Sinatra, but never the one that starts it all off? Thoughtless is what it was. The L.A. Open deserved better, and happily it finally got it last week as another golf circuit got under way, with all sorts of celebrities and Bobby Greenwoods flowing by the rivers and movin' on the back roads of Glen Campbell's mind.

Actually the Glen Campbell-L.A. Open, as it was renamed just in time for 1971, offers pro golf a number of other creative possibilities. Celebrities of all kinds are probably tired of having nothing but their pet diseases to promote. Diseases are sometimes cured, but the golf tour never ends. In fact, it seemed like only about 45 minutes ago that the 1970 tour closed in the Bahamas, and suddenly here was a new year, another $7 million in prize money up for crooning or joke-telling, and everybody looking forward to the string of events named after comedians and singers. Hereafter, if they get them renamed in time, you can come to the Dick Cavett- PGA Championship, the Robert Redford-Masters, the John Lennon-British Open and the Open Championship of the U.S. Golf Association in cooperation with Phyllis Diller.

Well, it might be easy to poke fun at, but it is also good business. The L.A. Open out there at Rancho Park hadn't created so much excitement since the Colonel Sanders fried-chicken place moved in across Pico Boulevard. Waves of folks came out on Wednesday to see as glittering a pro-am as there ever was and then stayed on through the week for the tournament proper.

A couple of fellows who had never won big managed to have the heaviest influence on the tournament for the opening three days. First there was Bob E. Smith of Sacramento, who shot a 66 and tied Billy Casper and Tommy Shaw for the first-round lead. And then he shot a 69 to take the halfway lead all by himself. Smith led everyone to believe he knew a dark secret about the game, "I don't want to talk about it," he said. "It's something I found out last week, something about mental attitude."

That was on Friday. On Saturday he found out about something else he didn't want to talk about: a four-putt green and some double bogeys. That gave him a 75 and put him out of the whole thing, back where one normally finds a name like Bob E. Smith.

This paved the way for Bobby Greenwood, who comes from Cookeville, Tenn., reads the Bible and looks like a tall Dave Marr. He walked into the press room that afternoon and, having never been near one, couldn't think of anything to say except, "Hey! There's my wife over there!" Greenwood was asked what he would do in the final round, taking his three-stroke lead up against the Trevinos, Caspers, Lunns and Walls—the familiar contenders who were grouped closely behind him.

"Worry a lot," he said.

If he did, it didn't seem to bother him until the last few holes on Sunday. Then Casper and Bob Lunn charged past and into a sudden-death playoff that Lunn captured on the fourth extra hole, thus denying Casper an encore to his first-place finish of 1970.

But if the Smiths and Greenwoods were worrying a lot and the Caspers finally faltering, Glen Campbell was having a ball. He'd invited a bunch of celebrities to come out and pay golf in the pro-am either at Rancho Park or Brentwood. He must have asked nice. Somebody figured there were exactly 104 celebrities on hand, with golf clubs to swing and ballpoint pens for signing autographs.

The more cynical may have felt that a few of them weren't exactly celebrated, since nobody could recognize them. But there were plenty everybody knew. Bob Hope, for one. Hope played with Arnold Palmer, who was getting off to what has become a typical Palmer year. After he finished his pro-am round with Hope on Wednesday, a helicopter arrived to whisk the twosome down to San Clemente for dinner with the President. Then, in the first official round Thursday Palmer picked up a beer can beside his ball and got himself a two-stroke penalty.