This story is excerpted from "Pinehurst Stories: A Celebration of Great Golf and Good Times" by Lee Pace.

Word first circulated through the Zeta Psi fraternity house in Chapel Hill late that Friday afternoon in April 1948.

It filtered over to the SAE house, through Big Fraternity Court, and then spread like a fire through an autumn hayfield down Franklin Street, where students at the University of North Carolina were beginning their weekend rounds of the Goody Shop, Harry’s, the Curve Inn and the Ranch House.

Harvie Ward had just beaten Arnold Palmer and would play Saturday in the final of the North and South Amateur.

Road trip.

They piled into cars the next morning, and the Zeta brothers and the Tar Heel golf team led a caravan down U.S. 15-501 to Pinehurst and its No. 2 golf course, where Ward and Frank Stranahan of Toledo, Ohio, would square off in the 36-hole match that day.

A crowd estimated at near 2,000 lined the fairways. Golf World magazine described the scene like this: "A number of attractive coeds from Chapel Hill, some in bare feet with painted toes, were included in an exuberant gallery of collegians, wealthy tourists, town folks and caddies on the championship course at Pinehurst Saturday, April 24."

The contrasts in the competitors were striking. Stranahan, 25, the heir to the Champion spark-plug fortune, was a fine golfer. But his deportment was gray and cool, his game methodical and disciplined. He played power golf as his arms bulged with the muscles honed through religious weight-lifting. He’d been hooked on weights since his teens, when he took the Charles Atlas course to beef up for prep school football. He carried his weights on the road, and the Pinehurst bellboys knew they were in for a workout unloading Stranahan’s barbells each spring. (Stranahan once posed wearing a loin-cloth with muscles flexed for Pinehurst photographer John Hemmer, and the photo ran in a New York newspaper).

He was polite but distant. His handsome face was tanned after a spring of full-time competition on the professional golf tour.

Ward, 22, the son of a Tarboro pharmacist, had never met a stranger. He epitomized a golden era in post-war Chapel Hill where students had little money and few cars, so they jitterbugged to Les Brown and his Band of Renown, cheered "Choo Choo" Justice on fall Saturdays, and campus became like one big, happy family.

The frisky 21-year-old was more of a finesse player. One of his favorite shots was a little punch wedge that could make the golf ball dance on the bermuda grass greens. Another was anything struck with his ancient, hickory-shafted putter he found some eight years before in the locker room of Hilma Golf Club in Tarboro.

"You had the austere Stranahan, the Greek god, who played a subdued game and rarely said anything," says Bob Cox, a Carolina golfer at the time who now lives in Charlotte. "Harvie was one of the most popular students ever at Carolina. He had a certain rhythm and motion and romance about his game. Harvie would be walking down the fairway talking to people."

Or, as fellow Zeta Collier Cobb III of Chapel Hill remembers: "Harvie was the happy-go-lucky type. He’d be walking down the fairway with his arm around a girl."

So they set out early that Saturday morning, and, over 36 holes that day and another 35 one year later, Ward and Stranahan would make North and South history with the most hotly contested rivalry in the half-century of the event. In 71 consecutive holes of match play, Stranahan would hold a one-hole edge. Each would win a championship. But there was no doubt about the crowd favorite.

"It was kind of embarrassing," says Ward. "Most of the kids from Chapel Hill knew nothing about golf. The game was kind of in its infancy. Every time Frank would miss a shot or miss a chip, they’d cheer. The only people Frank had pulling for him were his mother and father and sister. Anytime I’d get the ball airborne they’d go nuts. You’d have thought they were in Kenan Stadium at a football game."

Stranahan adds two names to his rooting section: "Art Wall and Mike Souchak, who played for Duke, were cheering for me."

(Today Stranahan lives in Palm Beach, Fla.; he doesn’t play golf anymore but still lifts weights and runs in frequent marathons.)

"But it was something," Ward continues. "It was the first big golf tournament I was ever in, and it was certainly the first big win I ever had."

Ward had no visions of winning when he decided to enter the tournament. The field was full of good golfers: Stranahan had won in 1946 and was generally considered the world’s finest amateur (he would win the British Amateur later that year), and Charles "Chick" Evans was returning for the first time in 37 years after winning the 1911 North and South.

That was the year dare-devil pilot Lincoln Beachey, who was spending the spring at Pinehurst, promised the winner a ride on his airplane. Beachey would fly in his "weird collection of bamboo, wooden struts and a great deal of wire," according to one eyewitness, over the golf courses and terrify the caddies, and he scared Evans a good bit, too, when he was strapped in for his victory ride. "That was the only tournament I ever won with mixed emotions," Evans cracked. (Another rider was a Japanese admiral who commented that an airplane could be developed into a formidable machine of war.)

But in 1948, Evans and his wife left Chicago at 1 p.m., changed planes in Cincinnati and were in Pinehurst in time for dinner.

Ward entered at the last minute and had to call his golf coach, Chuck Erickson, for permission to miss class on Monday for the qualifying round. He shot a 74 to make the field of 64 for match play but appeared to be headed home after five holes Tuesday morning in his match against Charles Mulcahy of New York.

"I stood on the sixth tee and was four down," says Ward, who spent much of his adult life in California but now has "semi-retired" to Pinehurst. "I was playing bad; I was nervous. But I just kept plugging along, he started playing worse, and all of a sudden I was back in the match."

Ward tied it on 18 and won on the 19th hole and moved into the round of 32. He returned to his $7 room at Pope’s Cottages in Southern Pines and called Erickson to ask if he could stay another day, then removed his tan gabardine pants, white shirt, maroon sweater and washed his clothes in the lavatory.

"See, I wasn’t expecting to stay very long, so I didn’t even take a change of clothes," he says. "So every night that I week I’d call Chuck and ask to stay another day, and then I’d wash my socks and shirt and underwear there in the motel room. Then I’d show up the next day with my clothes half wet. By the end of the week those clothes could almost walk around without me in them."

Ward used his deft short game and the sound counsel on the greens of his stumpy caddie, 30-year veteran Barney Google, to march through the field to Friday’s semifinals; it took a nerve-wracking, downhill 15-footer on No. 17 on Thursday to dispatch long-time North and South challenger Dick Chapman of Pinehurst, 2-and-1.

Then Ward faced an unknown sophomore from Wake Forest College with thick forearms and a gunslinger’s golf swing in the semifinals. Arnold Palmer was no match for Ward that day, losing 5-and-4.

"I don’t remember a thing about that match," says Ward. "I do have a picture of Arnold and myself taken before the match. One day I need to get Arnold to sign it for me." (Two weeks later, Palmer would get a measure of revenge by posting a 145 total to edge Ward by a shot in winning the Southern Conference collegiate championship on No. 2.)

Grover Pope announced he’d feed Ward "the biggest steak in the house" that night and reminded the Pinehurst Outlook that Babe Didrikson Zaharias stayed with him the year before when she won the North and South Women’s Amateur. "Good golfers stay at Pope’s," he said proudly.

Ward called a frat brother to bring him a change of clothes for the championship, and the helpful friend arrived Saturday morning with Ward’s entire wardrobe.

"What the hell did you bring all these clothes for?" Ward asked. "Well, I didn’t know what you’d want to wear," his buddy responded.

Stranahan was the bettor’s favorite. Ward confided to friends he just wanted to "make a good showing," but Ward had the crowd on his side. His parents drove down from Tarboro for the match and Mr. Ward promised his son they’d talk about that new car Harvie had been wanting if he could beat the "Adonis from Ohio," as the papers took to calling Stranahan.

The match see-sawed throughout, with neither golfer gaining a commanding advantage. Stranahan’s approaches were sharper, but Ward constantly got up and down from around the greens for halves or would drain a 30-footer for an occasional birdie.

In the end, Ward’s short game prevailed.

The match arrived at its 35th hole, the par-three 17th, with Ward 1-up, but that looked like it could soon change when Ward was bunkered front right off the tee and Stranahan was safely on the green. Ward skinned his explosion into the back bunker; a double bogey was quite possible. But Ward exploded his third to within inches for a bogey, and Stranahan missed a three-footer for par. Ward remained 1-up and secured the championship with a par on 18.

The crowd and the dispatched Stranahan left the 18th green that day marveling over Ward’s putting and chipping magic. And the contributions of old Barney Google weren’t ignored. "Ward didn’t beat Stranahan today," one spectator said. "Barney Google did."

In all, Ward one-putted 18 greens in 36 holes, and Carolina roommate and tennis star Heath Alexander, who’d been playing in a match at Davidson, remembered returning to Chapel Hill late in the night, finding Ward in bed and wondering who’d won the match.

"I crawled into bed and my foot brushed against something," Alexander told Ron Green of The Charlotte News years later. "I threw back the covers and there was the silver tray Harvie had gotten for winning.

"I went over and pulled the cover off Harvie to wake him and he was lying there hugging that old putter of his. He was just clowning, of course, but I couldn’t much blame him for sleeping with that club."

"Boy, could Harvie putt and chip," Cobb remembers. "Playing those bermuda greens was an art. A lot of people would get on those bermuda greens in Pinehurst and there’s no way they couldn’t chip the ball on those grainy greens. Harvie had a little, short punch shot. It would take about two scoots and bite right at the cup. He’d pull the face down on a wedge and, boom, it’d take off with all kinds of backspin. You can’t do that on bentgrass, it won’t take the spin."

Ward won the qualifying medal the next year with a 69, defeated Chapman in the semifinals and was set for a rematch with Stranahan, who ousted Palmer 12-and-11. Stranahan had been exempted from qualifying at the last minute when he needed that Monday for a playoff against Bobby Locke in the Cavalier Invitational in Virginia Beach.

The Outlook reported the events like this: "Walter Hagen Jr., who was associated with the Virginia Beach operation, called Richard S. Tufts, long distance, and inquired if Pinehurst would excuse Frank from qualifying." Tufts responded, also long distance, in the affirmative.

Another huge crowd turned out, and a local radio station, WEEB, presented its first live, remote broadcast from the tournament. Gen. George C. Marshall was in the gallery and later awarded the championship and runner-up trophies.

Ward’s short game wasn’t as precise this year, and Stranahan’s was. The latter holed a 40-footer for a birdie on the 27th hole for a 2-up lead and remained in control for a 2-and-1 triumph.

Stranahan, never shy with an opinion, recalls the two matches like this: "I remember that Harvie should never have beaten me in ’48. I played much better, I missed a bunch of short putts, I was very unfortunate to lose. Then the following year, in ’49, I played him and I won, and I played so poorly and I chipped and putted so well I didn’t deserve to win at all. And it just shows how funny golf can be."

Ward would add to his amateur accomplishments with the 1949 NCAA championship, the 1955 and ’56 U.S. Amateur titles and the British Amateur at Prestwick in 1952 (with a victory over Stranahan). Ward credits that latter title, in part, to his ability to hit the pitch-and-run shots required on the firm, crown-shaped greens of No. 2.

"You had to play a lot of bounce-up shots on No. 2," says Ward. "You couldn’t play into the green. It was more like Scottish golf — you had to bounce it in there. I grew up on sand greens in Tarboro. You used to have to hit the chip-and-run or putt from off the green.

"There, and playing at Pinehurst, helped when I won the British Amateur. They were amazed over there how good I was hitting the pitch-and-run versus the flop wedge, where you hit it in the air and stop it by the hole. I adapted to golf over there very easily."

In later years Ward flirted with the idea of playing the Senior PGA Tour in the Super Seniors (over 60) division, but that division is closed unless you won a regular tour event or a senior tour event.

"I haven’t played competitive golf in 20 years, and there’s no sense in my going out and banging my head against the Trevinos out there," he says.

Today he lives in Pinehurst with his wife, Joanne, and gives golf lessons at Pine Needles, plays at the Country Club of North Carolina and occasionally tours Pinehurst No. 2, which he still lists as his favorite golf course.

He tootles around town in a black Jaguar with license plates that read, "Ol Harv."

After 43 years, Ward is tickled to be back where he enjoyed so many fond memories.

"I always said two places I’d love to live are Carmel in California and Pinehurst," he says. "Pinehurst reminds me a lot of Carmel. The city fathers have done a nice job over the years maintaining the ambiance and the feel of the place. I was just surprised to come back and find a stop light."

Collier Cobb says of his old friend: "Harvie Ward’s in the briar patch now."

The book "Pinehurst Stories: A Celebration of Great Golf and Good Times" by Lee Pace, is available at the Pinehurst ’99 pro shop.