Sport: Small Celebration

Frank Stranahan, son of a Toledo millionaire (Champion Spark Plugs), leads a pretty simple life. He tours the world playing golf. When he is not getting expensive advice from golf pros, he builds up his muscles by wrestling with 150-lb. bar bells. Frank's main ambition in life is to win the U.S. Amateur Golf Championship. Last week he almost made it.

The course at the Minneapolis Golf Club seemed just about built to order for Golfer Stranahan's long-hitting game. It is nearly always windy there, just like St. Andrews, Scotland, where Frank won the British Amateur Championship this year (TIME, June 5). Minneapolis favors a man who can hit walloping tee shots the way Frank does; on one occasion, in an early round match, he boomed his drive past the pin on the 333-yd. 14th.

Stranahan's opponent in the final round was a 24-year-old Italian immigrant's son named Salvatore ("Sam") Urzetta. Sam had achieved a small measure of fame as a basketball player with St. Bonaventure last year; he was the U.S. free-throw champion. As a golfer, Sam was also pretty good around his home town of Rochester, N.Y. He had won the New York State Amateur Championship in 1948, and last year, when the U.S. Amateur was played in Rochester, he gained the third round before an admiring flock of locals. But nationally, he was a nonentity.

Stranahan soon got to know him well. Nearly three-quarters of the time during their 39-hole match, muscleman Stranahan found that he had been outdriven. Four times, Stranahan pulled even. But Frank could never get ahead.

On the 39th* hole, Stranahan sliced his drive out of bounds and it was all over. Sam, who takes his athletic conditioning almost as seriously as Stranahan (no smoking or drinking), celebrated his victory with a glass of ginger ale spiked with lemon. Said Sam: "I won this tournament for my brother Joe. I really mean it. He was killed fighting in Germany with the 8th Division. He was a greater golfer than I'll ever be."