Smith at St. Cloud

They brought him a cake with 21 candles. That and the French professional golf championship, the first European championship he has ever won, were Horton Smith's birthday presents. To Aubrey Boomer, the St. Cloud professional and Smith's nearest competitor, they brought a score card which Boomer, nervous, could scarcely sign. The figures scribbled on this card showed that Boomer had made a record-breaking 61 (33-28) for 18 holes on the St. Cloud golf course. The course is 6,507 yds. long. Boomer averaged 107 yds. per shot, including puts and approaches. For Gene Sarazen who came in third they had in readiness a white-tired automobile to speed him to the Gare St. Lazare where puffed a boat-train for Havre.

Champion Smith had found on the St. Cloud course, just outside of Paris, what golfers call their "element." The Smith golf is highly stylized, has mostly been played on the hard, fast fairways of Missouri and California. Golfer Smith's two feet and the head of his club, when it touches the ground, nearly always form that invisible equilateral triangle so exuberantly eulogized in golf textbooks. During the recent European venture of U. S. professional golfers, he has been the direct antithesis of erratic unorthodox Leo Harley Diegel. On the careless hillocks and ridges of Muirfield and Moortown where he had his first taste of European golf, Golfer Smith generally had to forego his orthodox stance. In St. Cloud, however, the land's conformity did not interfere with his form. Furthermore, there was no wind, and the shimmering heat had baked the clay soil so that the balls seemed to be rolling on billiard tables. The best Smith scores were two consecutive 66's (par is 71.)

Proceeding to Germany, Horton Smith came within two strokes of tieing Percy Alliss for the German Professional Championship which Alliss has now won four consecutive times.