Golf, Gambling & Auctioneers

Sam Snead was the final auction of the night. Although he was pestered by chronic putter trouble during practice, Sam still brought the night's highest opening bid ($15,000) and the night's highest price at $18,000. The $18,000 bidder was found to be too drunk to sign a check and Sam was sold again to a sober millionaire—Morris Kleinman, a partner of Wilbur Clark's in the Desert Inn—for $17,000. Hope was properly scornful of the drunk but delighted when he turned around to see that the first $200,000 Calcutta in history had been brought off.

Like jockeys, Vegas winners are customarily rewarded with 10% of their backers' profits. On Sunday afternoon handsome young Gene Littler dropped a $72,900 putt on the 18th for Frankie Laine and wound up with an 8-under-par 280 for first money of $10,000 plus whatever cut Laine decreed. Sam Snead, highest-priced golfer in the event, staggered to a tie for eleventh. Perhaps big Mike Souchak summed it all up right when he met a friend at the hotel cigar stand just after the auction: "Hey," he said, "I hear some crazy guy paid $15,000 for me in the Calcutta."

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