Ghost

A score of golfers sat at lunch and with them sat a ghost. The golfers were amateur teams of the U. S. and England, who had completed three- fourths of their annual matches for the Walker Cup. The ghost was England's chance of winning.

The first day's play over the gravelly, bunch-grassed links of the Garden City Golf Club (L. I.) had been at two-ball foursomes. Francis Ouimet and Jess Guilford, Boston's representatives on the U. S. side, had executed their alternate strokes upon the same ball with skill consummate enough to subjugate ponderous Cyril Tolley, leader of the Britons, and his partner, Major Charles O. Hezlet. National Champion Max R. Marston, representing Philadelphia, and Robert Gardner, Chicagoan and U. S. captain, had subjugated W. A. Murray and E. F. Storey. Jess W. Sweetser, of Manhattan, and Harrison Johnston, of St. Paul, had beaten "Tony" Torrance and C. O. Bristowe. The only match the Britons had won was from the representatives of Pittsburgh and Atlanta, Walter C. Fownes and "Bobby" Jones, respectively, over whom two stouthearted worthies named Scott, the Hon. Michael and Robert, had slipped in 1 up.

Thus the Britons had been down three matches to one when they teed off the second morning to try the U. S. defenders singlehanded. The ghost of hope appeared when they came in to lunch with these matches half- played, to find three of their number leading, two even, five not badly down.

But the ghost was a ghost only. Lunch over, play rebegun, it vanished forever. Huge Tolley tried to recall it with colossal drives and dogged putting that overcame Marston on the last green. The Hon. Michael Scott besought it by crushing Sweetser 7 and 6. Of the other English, none could raise a finger, all lost.