1957 U.S. Senior Amateur
J. Clark Espie - Winner 1957 U.S. Senior AmateurTwenty-two years after the Ryder Cup, the national spotlight returned to Ridgewood for the 1957 USGA Senior Amateur. This championship was held for the first time in 1955, its popularity reflecting the surge in senior golf in the prosperous years following World War II.
There were few household names among the 120 elder statesmen (minimum age fifty-five) who gathered at Ridgewood for the championship, which was contested over the West- East course in cool and rainy weather September 30 through October 5. Thomas Green of Seattle was the medalist with a 73. Also among the thirty-two who played in the championship flight were Woodie Platt of Philadelphia, winner of the inaugural in 1955; Fred Wright of Watertown, Massachusetts, the defending champion; and J. Clark Espie, an advertising executive from Indianapolis who lost to Wright in the finals in 1956.
This marked the first time ever in USGA competition when the previous year’s finalists met again the following year. The fifty-eight-year-old Espie, with a chop-like golf swing, played a deadly short game to edge the stylish Wright 2&1. Three down after eleven holes, Espie holed two long putts and took advantage of a pair of three-putt greens by his rival to take the lead, then won the match on 8 East when Wright placed his tee shot in an unplayable lie in the base of a tree. Espie played the final six holes of the match in one under par.
J. Clark EspieAlso competing were Paul Dunkel of Ridgewood, third in the qualifying with a 75, but a loser (3&2) to Wright in the second round; seventy-two-year-old Runcie Martin, who had played in the 1905 U.S. Amateur; and Chick Evans, then sixty-seven years old, who won both the U.S. Open and U.S. Amateur in 1916, and the Amateur again in 1920. Evans shot an 84 in the medal round, failing to qualify by three strokes, and then competed in the first consolation flight.
Evans, Wright, and Platt all had been part of an American team that competed against the British in 1921 in what proved to be the forerunner of the Walker Cup matches. Evans was a member of the United States’ first Walker Cup team in 1922, and Wright won a crucial match in the 1923 renewal.
There was a sidelight to the actual competition at Ridgewood in 1957. At the Players’ Dinner before the tournament, the seniors kicked off a campaign to help speed up play on the nation’s golf courses. Evans, Platt, Wright, and Espie did a parody of the four types of “golfing snails” – the nature lover, the debater, the
waggler, and the surveyor. It is interesting to note that as a young man a quarter of a century earlier, Platt enjoyed a reputation as the fastest player around.