Golf: No. 2 & Blue

• Share

Gay is hardly the word these days for Gay Brewer Jr. A 34-year-old Texan with the face of a Boston terrier, Brewer has been a regular on the pro golf tour since 1956. He has won eight tournaments and $208,000, but most of his triumphs occurred in such obscure events as the Mobile Sertoma Open and the Hawaiian Open. Actually, Brewer's main talent is for losing—the hard way. He has finished second twelve times, and he has lost three out of five playoffs during his pro career. Now Gay has set some sort of record for frustration by losing two big playoffs in a row—to Jack Nicklaus in the $152,880 Masters, to Arnold Palmer in Las Vegas' $100,000 Tournament of Champions.

In the Masters, Gay had only to sink a perfectly straight 6-ft. putt on the 72nd hole to take home the $20,000 first prize; he missed, settled for a tie with Nicklaus and Tommy Jacobs, and shot a horrendous 78 for third place and $8,300 in the next day's playoff. In last week's Tournament of Champions at the Desert Inn Country Club, Gay had a five-stroke lead with only 18 holes to go, and Las Vegas bookmakers were offering 7 to 1 that even Btfsplk Brewer could not blow that $20,000 title. They should have known better. Palmer shot a spectacular 69—eagling the 586-yd. fifth hole when he knocked his No. 3 wood second shot to within 8 ft. of the pin—and Gay ballooned to a 74.

The playoff was almost anticlimactic. Now the 8 to 5 favorite of the bookies, Palmer birdied the very first hole; by the end of the first nine, he was already two strokes up. Rattled, Brewer drove into the rough on the par-five tenth, dubbed his second shot, knocked his third 20 ft. over the green, chipped 12 ft. short of the hole and missed the putt. He wound up with a 73, and Arnie's second straight 69 gave him a four-stroke victory. Gay tried hard to live up to his name as he accepted the second-place check for $12,000—giving him a total of $20,300 for ten days' work. That wasn't so bad, but his smile grew thin when he thought of what might have been. "You wouldn't be human," he sighed, "if you weren't depressed."