Sport: Winter Troupe

The basic income of the average golf professional is derived from the sale of golf balls. If he is employed by a country club of average wealth and size, the average professional's revenue from teaching, the sale of golf equipment and the concession for shining the members' clubs amounts to about $5,000 a year. In the winter months, when the majority of the 2,000,000 golfers in the U. S. turn their hands to bridge and the radio, the majority of the jobless professionals go south. Some are hired to accompany rich club members to their winter playgrounds. Some find comfortable berths at flourishing hotels. But a goodly portion embark on one of the most extraordinary tours in the realm of sport.

Beside professional golfers, only rodeo contestants are willing to travel some 8,000 miles, pay their own expenses, receive no guarantee of being a dollar richer when they return. Every year some 300 trouping golfers jaunt from town to town, from coast-to-coast, making three-day stands in a carefully planned route known as the "grapefruit circuit" (see map). Starting at sporty Pinehurst with the Mid-South Open in November [No. 1 on the map], they move down the coast one jump ahead of the thermometer, spend the month of December shuttling around Greater Miami and Nassau [tournaments this year: $10,000 Miami-Biltmore Open (No. 2), $3,500 Nassau Open (No. j), $3,000 Miami Open (No. 4), $4,000 Holly-wood Beach Hotel Open (No. 5)], swing over to California for a midwinter stand, then return to Florida [this year via the $5,000 Crescent City Open at New Orleans (No. 12)1, work their way up the coast to climax the season with Bobby Jones at his Masters Tournament in Augusta, Ga. [Consecutive map numbers follow tour.~]

To be able to join this caravan is the goal of the average U. S. golf professional. Not only does it give him an opportunity to maintain a competitive edge to his game but here is his chance to observe at close range the better-than-average professionals—topnotchers like Harry Cooper, Horton Smith, Johnny Revolta, Henry Pic-ard—who play in the winter circuit because i) they are on the payroll ($5,000 to $10,000 a year) of U. S. sporting-goods manufacturers to publicize their products, and 2) they usually win from $3,000 to $6,000 in prize money during the tour. But most of all, the average pro knows that in this troupe the lowliest member may suddenly become the leading man at some performance, may win a few hun-dred dollars and get some press notices which will help him find a better job next year.

A larger group than ever started off this year. For fresh in the minds of many was the fabulous feat of Ralph Guldahl, who, debt-laden and jobless, started out on the grapefruit circuit last winter with borrowed clubs and a wheezing jalopy, won $3,500, went on to win the U. S. Open championship last summer and wound up the year with $8,600 in prize money, a lucrative winter job at the Miami-Biltmore and a potential 1938 income of some $25,000 from endorsing golf equipment, exhibition matches, magazine articles and other pickings & perquisites that fall to a U. S. champion.