The naming of Amen Corner

Forty years ago this month, Herbert Warren Wind, the doyen of American golf writers, was in Augusta on his favourite assignment - covering the US Masters. There, he witnessed the emergence of the most influential player in the modern professional game. And 1958 was also the year that he named the most famous stretch of holes in world golf.

"Even as an amateur, people loved Arnold Palmer," recalled Wind. "There was something special about him and there still is." As it happened, while battling for the title that year, the young Pennsylvanian had had the presence of mind to seek and get a favourable ruling on an embedded ball at the short 12th.

The writer then described how, after a safe drive from rival, Ken Venturi, at the treacherous, dog-leg 13th, Palmer went all out to hit a long one. Wind recalled: "Arnold followed that with a great three-wood from a downhill lie to 16 feet from the pin and made the putt (for an eagle three). That's when he became Arnold Palmer." And it highlighted the first of his four Masters triumphs.

In those days, the writer normally had to file his story by Monday morning and send it by Western Union to Sports Illustrated, the magazine he had helped launch in 1954. "I've never been quick," he admitted. "So for me, it was always very hard staying up all night and trying to write finished copy."

In the event, he talked his editors into running photographs and captions of the tournament, so that he could have an extra week to file a full report. "Now, I wanted to do a good job and I was trying to think of a good name for that corner, because that's where the tournament was decided," he said.

Wind continued: "Everyone called it `The Corner' like, `I'll see you at The Corner.' So I was trying to think of something like the hot corner in baseball or the coffin corner in (American) football.

"Then somehow my mind landed on a jazz record I had bought in college by a Chicago bandleader named Mezz Mezzrow and his orchestra. One side was `Shoutin' in the Amen Corner', a jazz version of a negro spiritual. And I thought `gee, that is about as good as you can get. Let me put that in', and that was it.

"I think everyone accepted it because it was very southern." So it was that Wind's description of the area covering the second shot at the 11th, the short 12th and the drive at the long 13th, became an integral part of Masters lore.

Interestingly, this is the golden jubilee of another notable Augusta happening. It was in 1948 that a friendship was formed between Wind and Bobby Jones. "As an exceptional writer and scholar himself, Jones was a pal of the writers," he said. "We were treated so well and it showed in our work." Which explains Wind's anxiety to get "Amen Corner" just right.

"It's quite like a Salvador Dali painting. I expected to look up into a tree and see a clock." David Feherty on his first visit to the home of the US Masters.

While snookering down at Goffs last weekend, I met John Coughlan of Masterchef, who had a fascinating tale to tell about a misplaced golf club. The story, which had its beginnings on a golf trip to the Innisbrook resort in Florida last October, is about to have a happy ending.

As golfers are aware, hands and club-grips tend to get decidedly slippy in torrential rain, unless a caddie is on hand with towels and replacement gloves. Coughlan didn't have such a luxury as he hit off the par-three 18th on The Pines course.

"It was a glorious, four- iron shot which left the ball two feet from the hole," said the purveyor of fine food. "The only problem was that the club slipped out of my hand and into a lake. My first instinct was to go in after it but at that precise moment an alligator happened to make its appearance."

The upshot was that Innisbrook promised to search for the club and contact him in a day or so. Several attempts later, however, they were forced to admit defeat and Coughlan returned home sans four iron. But having written it off as an unfortunate loss, he was delighted to receive a message from Florida last week.

The club had eventually been found and was en route by special carrier back to Dublin. "Now, that's service," enthused Coughlan, whose trade has taught him the importance of the word.

Fearful of an exodus by their leading young players to the US, the European Tour are fighting back - with the help of the Smurfit European Open. Highlighting the huge increase in this year's fund, announced last week, the tour has chosen 12 events to reflect a major boost across the board.

In 1996, the prize funds of these selected tournaments totalled £8,875,000 sterling: this year, they are worth £11,270,000 - an increase of 27 per cent. On its own, however, the European Open fund has increased by a whopping 67 per cent in two years. The next largest has been in the Deutsche Bank-TPC which has grown from £725,000 to £1.1 million - 52 per cent.

Carrying the beguiling name of Golden Bell, it has sounded the death-knell for numerous Masters challengers. The short 12th at Augusta is where Tom Weiskopf defiantly dumped five balls into Rae's Creek on the way to an horrendous 13 in 1980. And it's where an eight-iron from Fred Couples appeared water-bound in 1992 before defying gravity by staying on the front bank.

It is also the hole where the ground staff of Augusta have been attempting - with some success - to fool mother nature. Indeed they still regret that the Olympic Games didn't come there in the summer of 1996 as part of the Atlanta staging, so depriving them of challenging the extreme heat and humidity of midsummer.

Back in 1981, a network of PVC pipes were installed 10 inches beneath the putting surface on the 12th and connected to a pump which circulates hot or cold water to regulate the soil's temperature. Warm water is used during the winter months to ward off frost while the cold is turned on during the summer when, ironically, the course is closed.

Then there are the 16, 1,000-watt glow lamps which are strung up around the green to simulate sunlight. Each morning, they are taken down and stashed back in the woods.

All of which has to do with the 50-foot pines which block the green from receiving any morning sunlight with the result that its bent grass has always been sparse and strained.

"What we're doing is trying artificially to enhance agronomics as much as we can," said a club official. In the process, of course, they are adding to the Augusta mystique.

This Day In Golf History . . . On April 4th, 1939, JoAnne Carner (nee Gunderson), the only player to have captured the USGA Junior, Amateur and Women's Open titles, was born in Kirkland, Washington. "I was known as The Great Drundy and I loved it," she said. That was before her marriage at 24 to Don Carner, a considerably older man who gave her financial stability.

In an illustrious amateur career which included five US Amateur titles and membership of four Curtis Cup teams, she also gained the distinction in 1957 of becoming the first US woman golfer to get a US sports scholarship. Later known as Big Momma after joining the professional ranks, she had 42 career victories.

While indulging her love of motorbikes, Carner had an accident in 1979 which caused her to miss half the season and jeopardised her career. Noted as a superb match-player, her thinking was: "When my opponents began trying to make birdies, I knew I had them. They'd go for the pin and end up with bogeys."

In Brief: John O'Shea, whose fund-raising skills seem to know no bounds, has been telling me about some rather special items he will have on auction at the GOAL Ball in Jury's Hotel, Dublin on April 24th. Delighted to have Colin Montgomerie's Big Bertha, he was positively chuffed at an offer from Padraig Harrington. He is prepared to play a round of golf with three people, anywhere in Ireland. Now, that's a prize worth bidding for.

Teaser: A player's ball lies in a playable position on the bank of a water hazard. The player hits the ball out of bounds. If he proceeds under Rule 27-1 and drops a ball on the bank as nearly as possible at the spot from which the original ball was played, the ball will be likely to roll into deep water. May he place the ball in such circumstances, rather than drop it?

Answer: No. However, the player is not obliged to drop a ball within the hazard in accordance with Rule 27-1. He may take the penalty stroke provided in Rule 27-1 and then, under an additional penalty of one stroke, put a ball into play outside the hazard in accordance with either Rule 26-2b(ii) or 26-2b(iii).