FOOTPRINTS ON THE FAIRWAY

James Murray

December 24, 1956

The air is chilly and dew sparkles on the fairways as a sparse but eager gallery tramps through the morning haze after one of the Los Angeles Open's early-starting threesomes. Later in the day the January sun will burn hot from a cloudless sky, and thousands of gaily dressed southern Californians will swarm the course to watch and applaud the always astonishing skill of the name stars: Middlecoff, Mangrum, Littler, Burke, et al. But that is later, and the early-morning fans content themselves by watching the lesser-knowns, on the theory that one of them may someday develop into another Ben Hogan or Sam Snead.