R.I.P. Kathryn Murphy

David Owen files a wonderful remembrance of Kathryn Murphy, the saint of a woman who worked as Clifford Roberts' assistant and who no doubt died knowing more about obsessive compulsive behavior than any person should ever have to witness.

Murphy, 81, attended this year's Masters and passed away Sunday night.

Owen remembers a kind soul who was also a terrific source for all things Masters history. He details Murphy's recollection of Roberto de Vicenzo's scorecard incident and everything Roberts did to try and remedy the situation.

A few sportswriters and others have alleged that Roberts must not have wanted a foreigner to win, and had therefore made a ruling that gave the green jacket to an American. But the ruling was the only one possible under the Rules of Golf at that time, and it was made not by Roberts but by the tournament’s chief rules official, Isaac Grainger, who was a past president of the U.S.G.A.

Furthermore, as Murphy told me, the idea that Roberts had been out to get de Vicenzo was absurd, since it partly at Roberts’s urging that he had come to play in the Masters in the first place, in 1950. (That year, his manager wrote to accept his invitation to compete in “the Annual Teacher’s Competition” — a mistaken retranslation from a Spanish version of the invitation.) The two men were close friends, Murphy said, and de Vicenzo and his wife often spent Masters week in the home of Wilda Gwin, who was another of Roberts’s secretaries. De Vicenzo’s birthday fell on Masters Sunday in 1968, and the tournament staff, with Roberts’s assistance, planned a surprise party for him. Murphy told me that she remembered sadly throwing away the birthday cake when it became clear that holding the party would now be impossible.