Word: pros
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...game, Palmer is anything but stolid during a round: he mutters imprecations to himself, contorts his face, sometimes drops his club and wanders away in disgust at a botched shot. On the greens, bent into his knock-kneed stance, he tries to sink long putts when many pros would prudently try to lag up to the cup. Says Palmer: "I guess I putt past the pin more than most anybody. I always like to give it a chance. Never up, never in, you know." Says P.G.A. President Harold Sargent: "Palmer is about the boldest player on the circuit...
...great iron game who flourished at the end of World War II. After Nelson had tightened his swing, Venturi surprised the golfing world as an amateur of 24 by nearly winning the 1956 Masters (he blew up on the last day with an eight-over-par 80). Many pros think that Venturi's rigid, blueprint approach to golf is the main reason he has never won a major tournament. Admits Nelson: "Ken accepted what I told him as law, maybe to the point of overdoing it." But Venturi has begun to steady an erratic putter, is the chief threat...
Whether scrambling or playing perfect lies, Palmer starts with the great advantage of power. "The pros today play a home-run game," says Byron Nelson. With his strength off the tee, Palmer can often use his deadly four-iron for his second shot while his rivals are flailing away with their woods. In addition, says his friend Dow Finsterwald, this season "the best part of Palmer's game is his putting." Palmer's putting form is still a matter of argument between himself and his father. Arnold Palmer favors a wrist motion, the Deacon a pendulum-like arm stroke...
Under such pressure-packed working conditions, a few pros moodily suspect their fellows of improving their lies after marking their balls on the greens. But there is little of that sort of thing, and little of the kind of gamesmanship practiced in the 1920s by the great Walter Hagen, who used to deflate a field of opponents by grandly inquiring, "Well, who's going to be second?" Among the last of the sly oldtimers is E. J. ("Dutch") Harrison, 50. With a younger player watching, Harrison will occasionally choose the wrong iron for a shot, choke upon the grip, curb...
Motels & Laundromats. For the most part, the modern pros are a congenial lot. They share in their trade secrets, e.g., heating golf balls with pocket handwarmers fired by lighter fluid, because a warm ball has more bounce than a cold one. They share in the physical ailments of their profession: back trouble from the constant twisting of the spine (Finsterwald, Marty Furgol); a torn tendon along the third finger of the left hand that exposes a nerve, keeps a player from gripping his club firmly (Rosburg, Snead, Jack Burke Jr.). They share in their social life. Driving some...