Fore Play

Chi Chi Rodriguez is a small, compactly built man with an unsmiling face, copper colored from the suns of a thousand golf courses, and he doesn't believe in wasting time. Looking very trim and natty, a small-brimmed white Panama planted like a muffin on his brow, he addresses the ball, brings the club back behind his shoulder in one long, beautifully vicious sweep and whacks the ball on a low, rising line over the uphill fairway of the tenth hole at Indian Wells. Somebody whoops and a couple of hundred other fans crowding around the tee applaud appreciatively. Chi Chi turns to the crowd and says, "I was born poor and here I am, on my first hole, a rich man." The crowd laughs.

The time is 8:28 a.m. on a Wednesday morning in February; and from the first and tenth tees of four different golf courses in Palm Springs, California, many of the best pro golfers in the world are setting out in pursuit of $125,000 in prizes. Chi Chi Rodriguez, as usual, is leading the way. Other guys may outshoot him but nobody outhustles him and only Lee Trevino can talk in the same league with him. Chi Chi is a very funny man. Here in Palm Springs, during the five-day Bob Hope Desert Classic, one of the major tournaments on the winter tour, a sense of humor is vital.

From a spectator's viewpoint, the place to be at the start of this tournament is somewhere along the back nine at Indian Wells. This is because the pro-am teams scheduled to tee off after Rodriguez include Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Ray Floyd, Julius Boros, Dave Hill, George Archer, Doug Sanders and Billy Casper. And playing with them are Ray Bolger, Lawrence Welk, Hank Stram, Chuck Connors and Danny Thomas, celebrities sprinkled among the horde of eager amateurs indulging themselves in what has become one of their favorite vanities: trying to match strokes with the pros.

The Bob Hope classic is, in that sense, an idiot's delight. Instead of disappearing after the first day and leaving the serious golf to the professionals, as in most other pro-am tournaments, here the amateurs linger on for four full days. Playing in teams of three, they get to trade shots with a different pro each day, in a 72-hole best-ball contest. Not until the final day, Sunday, do the low-70 pros get to play solely against one another for the prizes that are awarded on the basis of 90 holes. The Hope is a circuslike marathon calculated to put almost unbearable pressure on even cool ones like Billy Casper.

Last February, 544 contestants were on hand, the amateurs all dressed up in the little outfits their wives had bought them; they spent a lot of time that first morning getting their pictures taken with their arms around each other and their pro partners. But then, as Palmer himself said at the end of that first day of the tournament, "It's simply a matter of taking a liberal attitude." "This tournament is unique, that's for sure," says Casper. "But if it weren't for the amateurs, the pros wouldn't be here." A good point. Who else would have put up the prize money and made it possible for this show to contribute well over $1,000,000 to charity during the first ten years of its existence? The amateurs each coughed up 500 bills to get themselves immortalized standing next to Palmer or Casper, and they obviously think it's worth it; there's smiling and backslapping all over the place. "I love this," says one amateur. "You get to wear all your bright new clothes and you get all these bets going. At night, you get drunk. And the broads! It's a wild turmoil, really fun!"

Just how much fun the pros have is another matter. It takes intense concentration and dedication to win the usual four-day tournament under normal playing conditions, but the Hope lasts five days and is anything but normal. "For one thing, playing on four different courses, you don't get a chance to look at terrain, to get the feel of it," one pro says. "And how can you concentrate for more than four days on your putting without coming down with a bad case of the yips?" In some ways, the Hope is the toughest tournament in which a pro can play. The proof of it is that some of them won't. Quite a few of the famous names were missing this year--Nicklaus, Beard, Player--but then, no pro can play in more than about 30 tournaments a season and expect to keep his game up. High-stakes golf is a sport of frustration, agony, crisis and pressure. But first prize in the Desert Classic this year is $25,000 and a Chrysler Imperial, so you'd have to mind the circumstances a lot to stay away.

Arnold Palmer doesn't mind anything. On the first day of the tournament, he strolls onto the tee to the loudest applause of the day. He has just been voted Athlete of the Decade in a nationwide poll of sports writers and broadcasters, so why should anything bother him? He is 40 now, his hair is thinning noticeably and his powerful arms and shoulders can't entirely disguise the beginnings of a paunch. Back in 1960, when he won the U.S. Open, the golf tour was a $2,000,000 enterprise. Last year, when, after a prolonged slump, he came back to win two major tournaments back to back as the decade ended, the tour had become a $7,000,000 affair and it was mostly his doing. "We all owe our big pay checks to Arnie--he's made the game what it is," Gary Player has said, and he's right. For sheer charisma, no other golfer even comes close to Palmer, who has already magnetized the vanguard of his famous army around the tee. He clouts a prodigious drive and somebody behind me, applauding wildly, squeals, "He really kissed that shot goodbye!" Arnie's army rushes off down both sides of the fairway, hurrying ahead to secure the best viewing points. They seem oblivious to the fact that one of Arnie's partners this morning is Lawrence Welk, a symphony in yellow, who hits his shots with awkward, palsied grace, his right thumb twitching wildly over the grip of his club.

Lee Elder, one of the handful of black pros playing on the tour, is next, but he is delayed by an elderly couple casually crossing the fairway ahead of him. Elder and the other blacks have never been invited to play in the Masters at Augusta, Georgia. (This year, Pete Brown, another black who played at the Hope, was excluded from the Masters' invitation list, despite the fact that his earnings for the year were high enough to make the oversight rather obvious.) Elder finally shoots and one of his amateur partners hooks wildly into what Lee Trevino, up next, calls Marlboro Country.

After Palmer, the big noise with the fans is Lee Trevino, the super-Mex. His army calls itself Lee's Fleas and its members spend a lot of time laughing at their man's jokes. Trevino, a good-looking, moonfaced Mexican American from Texas, is full of light banter. But when it's time to tee off, the jokes stop, and under his white golf cap, Trevino's face turns as intensely grim as a carving of an Aztec god. The ball soars into the air, losing itself against the light-gray sky, and Trevino observes, "I sobered up fast, didn't I? I need the money."

Jimmy Picard, an unsung pro, hooks his first shot way out into the trees; his amateur partners all slice, and somebody in the crowd says they won't be seeing one another for 20 minutes. Other unknown foursomes come and go now and the chatter around the tee becomes oblique: "I'm not going to take my trousers to London just to get the zippers fixed," an old duffer in a green-visored helmet confides to an equally ancient buddy with a purple nose. You can't help but be struck by how old so many of the people in this crowd are. Palm Springs is full of retired people vegetating elegantly in large, ranch-style houses with pools and cool, green lawns.

Now the names are back: Ray Floyd, a big man with a round, cherubic face and curly hair--a swinger with the ladies; George Archer, tall and thin--a concentrated, deadly putter; Julius Boros, a heavily built, kindly-looking man in his 50s--his big years behind him, but still a tough competitor; Doug Sanders, boyishly handsome, happy-go-lucky--a former winner of the Hope who hasn't been playing well for months, but still with a graceful, feathery-looking swing; Billy Casper, the method man, supposedly unflappable, precise, calculating, unexciting to watch--but perhaps the second-best golfer in the world today. They are announced, applauded, step up, tee off and march away, trailing in their wake, like scurrying beetles, the amateurs in their golf carts, fanning out right and left in search of errant balls. The pros, you notice, always walk.

Dave Hill has had the poor luck to (continued on page 176)Fore Play(continued from page 140) draw Danny Thomas for a partner. Thomas is a clown and doesn't know when to quit. "Ladies and gentlemen, the most beautiful golfer in the world," he announces himself and proceeds to swat an orange into smithereens. You wonder how Dave Hill will put up with him, if at all. Hill, who looks like a recent high school dropout, has a famous temper. Once, during a tournament, he put a club behind his neck and bent it double. Bad, though not quite as bad as Tommy Bolt, who once threw all of his clubs--along with his caddie--into a water trap.

The first day remains determinedly cold and gray. I wander from hole to hole at Indian Wells. Chi Chi Rodriguez is deadly with his irons but can't putt; Ray Floyd must have been partying, because he can't find any part of his game; Palmer blows hot and cold and has drawn an amateur named Tom Jones, a boyish-looking Navy pilot who can drive the ball just as far as Arnie can; Trevino's putts are rimming, but with a little luck he could win it all; Boros is so steady he's sure to pick up a sizable chunk of the money; and Casper is just a little off. The clearest image I retain is that of Palmer, trying for a birdie on the eighth, watching his drive carom off a tree to the left of the fairway and bounce back on and ahead toward the green. He takes advantage of his luck, chooses to pitch and run to within three feet of the pin and, sure enough, birdies the par-four hole. He ends the day with a 68, one stroke back of the five leaders.

It has been a quiet, pleasant day, full of color and golf--good and bad. All four courses are within a few miles of one another, but the crowd has concentrated itself at Indian Wells. Some people have gone to Eldorado to watch Donald O'Connor and Glen Campbell cut up; and at La Quinta, golfers like Ken Venturi, Gene Littler and Gay Brewer have drawn small, personal galleries. At Bermuda Dunes, where most of the rabbits (young, winless pros) are playing, the outlying holes are deserted except for the players. "Of course, there's an A and a B list," a pro tells me off the record, "and that holds true for the amateurs, too. The celebrities and big wheels get to play with the A's; the rabbits draw Joe Blow from Kokomo and nobody sees or hears them right from the start." I find myself beginning to root a little for the rabbits, and the first day's results, posted in the press tent at La Quinta, the host course, are heartening. Somebody named Labron Harris and somebody else named Charles Coody have shot 67s at La Quinta and Eldorado, respectively, to share the lead with Larry Ziegler, Bruce Devlin and Bob Rosburg; and Rod Funseth, Bobby Greenwood, Wayne Vollmer, Mike Reasor, Don Bies, Bill Johnston and Dave Eichelberger are all right up there. Will we ever hear their names again during these five days?

Palm Springs bills itself as the winter golf capital of the world, with a couple of dozen courses already in action and others being built. From the air, they look like rambling green lakes scattered about in a wasteland of white dunes and vast housing tracts peppered with bright-blue swimming pools. At night, in the center of town, a few passers-by cluster about a huge scoreboard carrying the day's tournament results. The big weekend crowds have yet to arrive.

There's plenty of off-the-course action, however, even now. Restaurants like Jilly's and Ruby Dunes and night spots like the Howard Manor and Ethel's Hideaway are bulging with celebrants, and private parties are being thrown everywhere. The amateurs come to these functions, but most of the pros are safely home in bed, tucked in long before midnight, either as guests in private homes or in one of the dozens of motels that line the highway. Some of the pros will be seen partying later in the week, especially after it has become clear who will make the cut and who won't. Until then, everyone is concentrating on the money. Especially the rabbits, who, year after year, never haul down a big pay check but hope at least to survive till the last day and pick up a small piece of the money--enough to pay their motel bills and put gas into the car for the long drive to the next tournament on the tour. The rabbits are also called trunk slammers by the more successful pros, because, after they fail to make the cut, you can see them walk out of the clubhouse to the parking lot, open up the backs of their cars, fling their clubs in and angrily slam the trunk lids down. It's not a good idea, by the way, to call a rabbit that to his face, unless you've developed a fondness for fat lips.

The A list on the second day is playing at Eldorado, the most beautiful of the tournament courses, cradled on three sides by the dark-brown, barren mountains that hem the desert in. At Eldorado, four of the holes--the fourth, ninth, thirteenth and eighteenth--finish against the clubhouse's terraces and it's possible to catch a glimpse, at least, of almost every foursome in action without having to do much walking. Even from there, I am struck, as I always am, by how little of any tournament you can actually see. The fact is that no one can claim ever to have seen a whole tournament; the best you can hope for is to pick your spots, to watch a series of golfers play one particular hole or to follow one golfer through several holes. The faithful year-round members of Arnie's army never watch anyone but him, which means that they see nothing of a tournament but what their man does in it. A curious way to follow a sport, not unlike watching a one-horse race.

On the second day, the pressure begins to tell. Dave Hill, looking even surlier than yesterday, is having another bad day on top of the one Danny Thomas handed him at Indian Wells--a 73. Ray Floyd, trying to get onto the green of the ninth in two, hooks his drive into the water and spends a gloomy two minutes peering at the ball lying just under the surface. Appropriately, he is dressed entirely in black, while his caddie, a cheerful gnome, sports a pith helmet. Chi Chi Rodriguez hits a beautiful wood straight down to the dog-leg of the fairway on the fifth, drops his club and applauds himself. "It couldn't happen to a nicer guy," he says. Later, while tramping after his ball and keeping up a constant, deadpan chatter with a covey of pretty golf groupies who are obviously delighted with him, he observes, "You know, I used to be the funny man of the tour, till Lee Trevino came along. Now you ladies ought to join Trevino's golf school. He'll start you with the irons and work you right into the woods." Lots of laughs, but by the end of the day, Chi Chi will be spouting fewer funny lines. After missing another in a series of short putts, he mutters, "I play golf like a gorilla." What is it the pros say? The man who putts wins.

Trevino is having a fine day, but his luck is still out. On the par-four 11th, for example, he hits a tremendous drive that cuts the corner of the sharp dog-leg right and sets himself up for a birdie, but he finds that the ball has rolled into a deep divot. "I don't mind," he tells his Fleas. "I used to mind, but I don't anymore." After hitting his iron beyond the green, he explains how, when Palmer overhits, someone in his army will stop the ball with his chest. "When I do it," Trevino says, "my Fleas shout ¡Olé! and flag it through." But he's playing well today and has confidence in himself. He comes in with a 67 and somebody tells him what Chi Chi's been saying about him. "That little Puerto Rican can walk on water." Trevino says, grinning.

Palmer isn't having a good day. His army has grown noticeably and flows along both sides of the fairway ahead of him like a pair of huge, multicolored snakes. Arnie talks to himself on the tee, urges himself to "find the hole." His drives do just that, but his putting is off and I remember seeing him early that morning, practicing four-foot putts and missing some of them. He's still missing them, long and short, and he says--after coming in with a 71--"My putter has blood on it."

Most of the crowd at Eldorado remains clustered around the clubhouse, and the knowledgeable types keep an eye on the 18th, a 511-yard par five whose green is protected by water on the west side. The choice is to go for it in two and risk a dunking or lay up short and take no chances. A lot of blood flows very freely around that green, but not when Doug Sanders shows up. He had a 75 opening day and is doing no better today, but you get the impression he doesn't care. He has a cigarette dangling from his lips and he's dressed all in lavender. He looks, Trevino tells him, like a frozen daiquiri. Someone to my right says the man obviously plays golf just to show off his clothes. There are a lot of girls following his foursome, and it isn't because Danny Thomas is in it. Thomas is up to his usual stunts, screaming for his momma, and he putts with a trick club bent cutely out of shape.

By the end of the second day, most of the rabbits have disappeared. I find out that Larry Ziegler has blazed around Indian Wells in 65 and taken a three-shot lead, with Bruce Devlin shadowing him. Moon Mullins, a local pro in his second year as the resident at Indian Wells, is two strokes back of Devlin. Of the A-list players, only Trevino is within quick striking distance, five strokes back, and I begin to get the idea that maybe the A-list players, forced to compete in a near-carnival atmosphere, are not going to make NBC happy on Saturday, the day before all the leaders come together in front of the cameras.

If you don't care much about golf, the peripheral action is worth catching--toward the end of the afternoon in the clubhouse at Indian Wells. I discover this after having tried both the Eldorado and the Bermuda Dunes, where a couple of small dance combos begin Welking sprightly fox trots around 5:30. Here, the average age of the guests is 110 and the lindy is considered a daring innovation. At Indian Wells, however, the scene is pure carnage. Murray Arnold, a bandleader from Las Vegas, has set up shop in the main clubroom, long tables have been jammed together from wall to wall, the bartenders pour whiskey into glasses as if it were iced tea and everyone with a little nonsense in his soul--maybe a couple of thousand people--has swarmed into the joint. Never have I seen so many available girls of all ages, from teeny-boppers with bare midriffs and bell-bottoms to swinging grannies in minis. Nobody knows how they've gotten there or where they acquired the passes to get in, but security, thank God, is lax. The adorables are sprinkled along the bar, lined up against the walls, packed together into booths and clustered chirpingly around the tables and, naturally, there are a lot of Don Juans hustling them. The last thing anybody wants to talk about is golf.

The first familiar face I see, however, belongs to Arnold Palmer. Looking slightly bemused, baton in hand, he is leading the band through a medley from Hair. Later, Donald O'Connor takes the floor to do a little mugging and some improvisational dance steps with a variety of volunteers from the audience. Alice Faye (yes, friends, Alice Faye!), looking half her age in form-fitting slacks, has a few songs to sing and some jokes to crack. Other espontaneos come and go and, in between, everyone dances, frugging and jerking in a dense, bobbing mass awash in enough noise to drown out a battery of cement mixers.

I get into conversation with a trim little blonde who, it turns out, is a year-round resident. It so happens she has rented her house for two months and is currently living in her car, and where am I staying? she wants to know. A couple of lovelies in see-through frills tell me that they are secretaries and part-time models and they have a slightly blue look around their eyes, because, they confess, they haven't been to bed--to sleep, at least--since the tournament began. I rescue a miniskirted number from a rickety chair she has been standing on to watch the proceedings, and it turns out she is a child psychologist from Long Beach. Her friend, a pixy with a mop of curls and a tiny waist, is a piano teacher from Redondo who's just dying to dance.

One of the lady officials, a handsome redhead in white slacks and blue blazer, laughs at everything I say and tells me, apropos nothing at all, that she has no dinner plans. A tall, beautiful blonde with sleepless red eyes informs me that she's a television producer from Los Angeles who showed up to follow the fortunes of her favorite rabbit, who, it turns out, has played so badly on his first three rounds that he's already slammed his trunk lid and departed for Tucson to warm up for his next try. In other words, the lady has been stranded and hasn't been able to find a room, but she thinks she can bunk with some pals at the Racquet Club, unless, she says with a smile, I have some other suggestion. The evening becomes a long, bubbly, pink blur of laughs, drinks, music, camaraderie and other pleasures. I can't remember now exactly where our large, unwieldy group of celebrants went, though I do recall other places, other bars, other dance floors and the sunken living room of some oil billionaire's pad out of which we spilled, shrieking like banshees, into the dawn.

There is one other major form of extracurricular activity associated with golf tournaments, and that is gambling--though nobody likes to talk much about it. The pros don't bet--not in tournaments, anyway--but nearly all of the amateurs, as well as most of the spectators, do; and the bets range from a friendly dollar or two to well up in the thousands. The bettors can play parlay cards or bid for a favorite pro in a Calcutta-type pool; but to get in on the big action, you have to have the right underground connections, since, needless to say, betting is not legal and the transfer of large amounts of cash from one pair of hands to another has been known to arouse the curiosity of the Internal Revenue Service. Yet every clubhouse during these major tournaments seems to have its quota of hard-eyed speculators, most of whom look distinctly out of place in the sunshine.

Nor is golf itself the only form of gambling that goes on every day at tournaments and in country clubs. Backgammon and gin rummy are extremely popular. "There's more money won and lost after golf than during," an expert once confided. "You can blow a grand on the course and win five times that amount back in the clubhouse." The pros, however, when they do gamble, stick pretty much to golf, where they know what they're doing and what the traffic will bear. "When I play a guy for $50 or $100," one of them has said, "I'll let the bum hold his own. After a while, of course, he'll want to raise the ante. Usually, he'll find he can't make a shot." Lee Trevino was once asked during a tournament if he minded the pressure, and he is reported to have answered that no one knows anything about pressure who hasn't come up, as he has, from the hustling world of municipal golf courses, where you can find yourself having to sink a 20-foot putt to win $100 and don't have enough money in your jeans to pay off if you don't make it. That, my friends, is pressure.

The mob at La Quinta on Saturday morning is huge and a lot of the people crowded around the tees and greens have rented little stands that look like inverted wastebaskets so that they can see over the heads of the early arrivals in the front rows. It's hard to believe that this crowd has come to see the golf, because, of the A-list players, only Trevino and Casper are still in contention and they are six and seven strokes back, respectively. The leaders continue to be Larry Ziegler and Bruce Devlin, with three strokes separating them, and you would think that the real fans would get over to Bermuda Dunes to watch them play. Arnold Palmer is nine strokes off the pace, but maybe his army expects him to make another of his spectacular late charges--though, of course, it won't desert him even if he doesn't.

Temporary stands have been set up around the greens of the ninth and eighteenth holes and already some viewers, armed with picnic baskets, Thermos bottles and six-packs of beer, are encamped there to wait out the long day. Nearly everybody else, however, is surging around the first tee, where the big celebrities and the game's glamorous figures are scheduled to show up. When I get there, Ray Bolger, who is playing in Boros' foursome, is cutting up. After executing a series of little dance steps, he whirls on Boros and waves a club at him. "I'm not going to play with him," Bolger quips. "He cheats." The people love it. They laugh, applaud, banter with the celebrities. Chuck Connors, looking like an emaciated King Kong, is another favorite. "How about a hand?" he exhorts the crowd and gets it. But through all the clowning, there is an undercurrent of anticipation, of excitement, a feeling of something spectacular about to happen. The place is jammed with photographers and reporters, officials in blue blazers, pretty girls in light-blue miniskirts, dignitaries with big round badges stuck on their lapels and, overhead, from a tower platform, television cameras are focused on the scene.

Everyone is waiting for Doug Sanders' foursome, which today will include Vice-President Agnew, Senator George Murphy and Mr. America himself, Bob Hope. Agnew's arrival is greeted with a big hand. I glance at the faces around me, which look as if they've been posed for Kodak commercials, and I understand why golf is the silent majority's favorite game--no effete snobs nor supercilious sophisticates here. Sanders, ablaze in orange today, greets the V.P. and tells him he's looking forward to the match, then introduces him to his wife, a perky little brunette. "I'm looking forward to it with great trepidation," says Agnew, who admits he doesn't get to play golf more than once a month. Senator Murphy, a little gray man in a little gray golfing outfit, is hustled up to be posed for the cameras with Sanders and the V.P. A Boy Scout festooned with merit badges is tossed in. Bob Hope, driving a custom-built golf cart hand-sculpted to reproduce his famous profile, suddenly arrives and upstages everybody. A Miss Lorraine Zabowski, one of three so-called Bob Hope Classic Girls whose job it is to wander around in nearly nothing, is now propped up beside the V.P. as cameras click. Miss Zabowski has a round, innocent face, a great cascade of blonde hair and she confesses, blushing prettily, that she'd never even seen a golf club before.

Agnew's trepidation, it turns out, isn't misplaced. The V.P. hooks his drive into the crowd lining the fairway just as an admirer shouts, "You're the greatest!" Murphy slices and Hope ding-a-lings one practically straight up in the air. Agnew's second shot is mildly historic. It's the one that hit Doug Sanders on the head, drawing blood. Who's going to follow this act? I wonder.

Arnold Palmer, that's who. It turns out that the crowd cares less for celebrities and politicians than for the Athlete of the Decade. Arnie's appearance on the tee brings a full-throated roar and a five-minute ovation. Watching him standing there, waving and smiling and nodding, you understand how he succeeded in making golf as popular as it is; clearly, he is to his sport what Babe Ruth, Johnny Unitas, Bill Russell and Bobby Hull have been to theirs, only more so. Other golfers may now outshoot him--a Casper or a Nicklaus--but no one outranks him. With his go-for-broke style, with that reckless, lunging grace that hammers golf balls into the blue and batters courses into submission, Palmer is it--the man himself.

But following the play at La Quinta today is impossible. Fifteen thousand people are swarming all over the course. The sun is bright and hot and so many fans have brought cameras that the clicking of shutters succeeds in destroying even the normally supercool Casper's game; eight times he is interrupted in mid-swing and finally, he drops out of contention with a 74. And play is so slow that Palmer, who comes in with a more than respectable 69, says wearily, "I felt like I was born and raised on that course today." The final day, when the low-70 pros will compete only against one another, promises to be even more of a serious-viewer's nightmare.

The real drama of the day is taking place at Bermuda Dunes, the most remote of the four courses, with broad, gently rolling fairways set down smack in a lunar wilderness of sand dunes and rock formations. When I get there, Ziegler, who started off early that morning from the tenth tee, is just coming in on his last few holes--the seventh, a tough three; the eighth, a 540-yard par five with four traps around the green; and the ninth, a 390-yard par four that will yield a birdie to anyone who can really blast his drive. The gallery, I'm amazed to discover, consists of about 50 people, true aficionados all.

Ziegler is a big, blond 30-year-old from St. Louis, who looks like an elongated Mickey Mantle and hits monster drives. So far, he has also been putting well; but now, as the fourth day draws to a close, he shows signs of faltering, especially on the greens. He comes in with a 71 and I find myself wondering how he'll respond to the pressure of the final day at La Quinta. Ziegler won $59,000 on the tour last year, but he has yet to nail down any one of the major tournaments.

Seven or eight holes behind him, Bruce Devlin, playing to an even smaller gallery, turns out to be a cool customer. A tall, slender, ruddy-faced Australian, he plays a slow, deliberate, carefully studied game. He spends a lot of time replacing divots, patting the greens into shape and, all concentration, he stays well apart from his amateur companions. He misses a long putt on the par-four third and mutters, "If I want to make money, I'll make one of those." But he goes on to bogey the fourth by failing to sink another putt, a three-footer this time. Yet not much seems to rattle him. With three birdies, he picks up a stroke on Ziegler and you get the feeling the pressure won't bother him as much as it will the American, who, after all, has had to set the pace for two full days now. At the end of the afternoon, in the comparative stillness of the Bermuda Dunes locker room, Devlin says calmly that he'd gladly settle for a 67 the last day and take his chances. You get the feeling he doesn't believe Ziegler can recapture his Friday form, when he climaxed a great round by eagling the par-five 13th at Eldorado, reaching the green with a driver and a three wood and then sinking a 50-foot putt. Devlin is clearly playing tortoise to Ziegler's hare.

The last day, the crowd numbers roughly 15,000 and Devlin's chase after Ziegler provides the excitement. Devlin, with three birdies on the front nine, catches Ziegler at the turn, and then picks up another birdie on the 15th, a good par-three hole. Then, on the 16th, he wins all the marbles by dropping a 35-foot putt for still another birdie. "I thought we were tied," he explained later, "and I decided to go for broke." I don't think anyone realized until later what a fantastic round of golf the Australian had shot--a six-under-par 66 on the toughest of the tournament courses. He wins by four strokes, with an astonishing total of 339, 21 under par and only one stroke away from Palmer's tournament record.

I have two vivid impressions of the award ceremony. The first is of Arnold Palmer, hands on hips and grinning at Devlin, barking into the television cameras, "Just how in the hell did you do it, Bruce?" The man still is and always will be the champion as long as he's around. The second impression is of Ziegler standing off by himself and staring for a moment at his check for second place, estimating, perhaps, the difference between this and first place symbolized by the $10,000 less he is receiving for being runner-up.

Agnew is also there, as are the celebrities and the girls, but it's all over now. Long shadows are falling across the fairways, and the stands, littered with refuse, are quickly emptying. Bits of paper blow over the greens and, in the distance, a long line of cars is crawling slowly out toward the highway. From the clubhouse comes the thump-thump of the dance band playing and, over it, the laughter. In the press tent, a few typewriters are still banging and the NBC technicians are clambering down from their tower like arthritic monkeys. Behind the clubhouse, the caddies are packing up their gear; and from the parking lot, you can hear the trunk lids coming down. It's a long drive to Tucson.

I remember Lee Trevino, who tied for fourth, watching his putts rim that first day and whirling to tell his Fleas, "I'm going to become a Mormon, because I ain't sinking any putts as a Catholic!" But where are all the jokes for those who don't come in as high as fourth or even fortieth?

On my way out, I catch up with Chi Chi Rodriguez, still as natty and imperturbable as ever, despite his finish somewhere toward the middle of the pack. "What do I like about all this besides the money?" he asks. He waves a hand around at the empty greens and endlessly rolling fairways, at the trees and the mountains and the sky. "This is my office," he says, "and I love my office."