Sport: That Damned Seventeenth

Emmett Gary Middlecoff, the golfing dentist from Memphis, sank his final putt for a 286 and began his deathwatch. In the pressroom at Medinah Country Club, 23 miles from Chicago, he dragged alternately at a cigarette and two double-Bourbons with Coke. His wife, Edith, was weeping with excitement, and a friend was prematurely pounding him on the back and burbling, "Boy, you're the champ . . . what a homecoming Memphis will put on for you." Reporters were dispassionately batting out new leads about the biggest golf tournament of them all—the U.S. Open.

It was not over yet. Still out on Medinah's...

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