Claude's Vacation

All winter, 31-year-old Claude Harmon taught rich men how to play golf at Palm Beach's swank Seminole Club. Last week, he began to think about moving his wife and three kids up to Mamaroneck, N.Y. (where he has a summertime job as pro at Winged Foot). But first, Claude Harmon wanted to take a vacation. He went up to Augusta, Ga., to swap a few tall stories and play golf.

Claude had never won a major tournament in his life, and had no illusions about this one--the famed Masters'. The elite of golf was lined up against him. Baby-faced Byron Nelson, 36, who quit the big-time two years ago because "I found myself playing more golf at 3 o'clock in the morning than in the daytime," was back to try his hand. So was the great Bobby Jones, 46 (now an Atlanta lawyer), playing his one tournament of the year. And there were such other old masters as chunky Gene Sarazen and lean Horton Smith, the putting master who won the first Masters' 14 years ago and sank impossible putts on rain-sodden greens to win the third.

As Claude Harmon strode out to the first tee, he knew he lacked what the boys called "tournament toughness." But on the first round he fired a 70, just one stroke off the leader.

In Ditch & Roadway. Next day, he took the hard way around Augusta's wide fairways that are lined with lofty pines and handsome flowers. On the 15th hole, when his ball went in a ditch, Harmon shed shoes & socks and went into the water to play it. At the 17th (similar to the famous 14th at Scotland's St. Andrews), his drive hit a tree and caromed off into a roadway. But Claude recovered, made one over par on the hole. He got another 70. The early pacemaker, Lloyd Mangrum, had run afoul of Augusta's notorious greens, and dropped behind. Playing those greens was like putting down a marble staircase and trying to stop the ball on the tenth step. They were slick, big (sometimes calling for 100-ft. putts) and agonizingly full of dips, bumps and slopes. Even South Africa's Bobby Locke, regarded as today's best putter, moaned over them, and went astray. Ben Hogan blew up on the third round. But "tournament soft" Claude Harmon played on.

The Big Shot. As the last round began, Harmon had a two-stroke lead, and reacted to the pressure by turning taciturn. The only man with a good chance to catch him was husky, hard-luck Chick Harbert, famous for tremendous drives and poor finishes. But Harbert fell apart. Harmon, a little more on edge now, showed it by biting his lips and asking the crowd after a drive: "Where is it? Where is it? Did anyone see my ball?"

Harmon kept his lead for five holes. Then, on the short sixth, he smacked the ball toward the green and the crowd held its breath as the ball stopped a few inches from the pin. Claude tapped it in for a birdie. Afterward he said to a reporter: "I don't mind telling you I was extremely nervous until then. That did it. Something clicked. It was the big shot."

Harmon won his first big tournament, and $2,500 in cash, with a nine-under-par 279, five strokes ahead of anyone else.

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