by KYW's Ed Abrams
Legendary broadcaster Jack Whitaker is really looking forward to the Walker Cup at Merion next weekend. Whitaker loves the amateur game and everything the Walker Cup stands for.
He is also fond of Merion, and says it played an interesting role in his career path when it hosted the 1950 US Open:
"I was in radio at the time in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and not going anywhere. And I came into the YMCA, where I was living, and I looked up at a little TV monitor in the lobby, and Bobby Cruickshank was putting out on the 18th green at Merion in the US Open.
"And I said, that's what I should be doing -- golf in my own hometown! So Monday morning I quit my job, and two months later I was in television."
... as a newswriter and newscaster at Channel 10 in Philadelphia. To say his career went somewhere would be an understatement.
The guy who won that Open did pretty well for himself, too. It was Ben Hogan.
(File photo: sports reporter Jack Whitaker, equally at home on a golf course or a horse track.)
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