Monday, Jul. 29, 1957
The Young-Timers
One by one, the old-timers were knocked out. Even Sammy Snead could not survive the tournament's fourth round. When the four semifinalists teed off last week in the Professional Golfers' Association championship in Dayton, Ohio, the gallery fastened on two businesslike young-timers: lean Dow Finsterwald, 27, playing his first P.G.A., and chunky Lionel ("Frenchy") Hebert,* 29, who had never won a major tournament.
From their first drives, the young pros buckled down confidently to the high-pressure match play, a hole-by-hole, pair-by-pair elimination contest in which the player who takes the most holes wins the round. Ohioan Finsterwald. playing a cool game in 93DEG heat, won-by two holes over California's Don Whitt, 26, despite a tremendous rally by Whitt that included a startling hole-in-one on the 145-yd. 13th. Hebert, meanwhile, was hitting his approach shots with machine-gun precision, putting straight enough on Dayton's tricky greens to knock off Michigan's Walter Burkemo, 38, one of the game's canniest match players.
In the finals Frenchy Hebert and Dow Finsterwald matched stroke for stroke. Striding up to the 34th tee Hebert led by a single hole. Then Finsterwald cracked. By the time he had retrieved a shot from a ditch under a bridge, he was down two, with only two to play. Calmly Young-Timer Hebert matched his opponent's par three on the 35th hole and, winner 2 and 1, walked off with top prize money of $8,000. It was nearly three times as much as he had won all year.
* Younger brother of promising Pro Jay, 34, Cajun kissing kin to Louisiana's Congressman F. Edward.
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