British Open

Near the Royal Liverpool Club at Hoylake, where the British Open was played last week, stands a hotel owned by a man named John Ball. Old now, John Ball has gone to live in a cottage over the Welsh border, but they remember him at Hoylake--his wiry figure, the yellow tea rose he used to wear in his buttonhole, his deadly iron shots, the intense partisanship of the many friends who came over from Liverpool and marched silently behind him when he was playing in a championship. There is a place on the course called "Johnnie Ball's Gap," an opening which he alone could hit hard and straight enough to try for. There is a place at the "Dun" hole famed because there he once played a terrific carrying shot over the out-of-bounds field and over the cross bunker, putting everything to the touch to win the championship. Until last week John Ball was the only man who ever held the British Amateur and Open championships at the same time.*

For a long time Robert Tyre Jones, Jr., has had an idea of equaling John Ball's record, and his ambition goes even further --to hold the four major titles of England and the U. S. at the same time. Last week, with the British amateur safely won a fortnight before, Jones started on the second movement of his campaign. In the qualifying rounds a giant rose up in his way -- Archie Compston, British professional who once beat Walter Hagen 18 & 17 in a 36-hole match. Compston qualified nine strokes better than Jones and after two indifferent rounds of title play broke the course record by two strokes, his 68 putting him a stroke in front of Jones with 18 holes to go. MacDonald Smith was doing well; Leo Diegel, playing in uneven streaks as he usually does, was still in it; beefy Cyril Tolley had ruined his chances with an awful first round; George Von Elm got his ball under the ledge of a tough, muddy bunker and went to pieces trying to play it out; Horton Smith was playing smoothly, although once on the 17th his second shot almost hit John Ball's hotel. In the hot sun a spectator, one Clem Todd of Sheffield, dropped dead.

It was anybody's tournament as they started the last round. Jones had been nervous all along, had snapped at photographers, hooked into the long grass again and again, missed short putts, puckered his lips angrily when he missed a shot. His second round was two strokes worse than his first, his third two strokes worse than his second. On the second hole of his fourth round his drive, starting for deep rough, bounced off a spectator's head into a shallow bunker from which Jones pitched it to the pin. He went out in 38, but coming home in the west wind he played better. At the 16th, from a deep bunker on the left of the green, he flicked out a perfect shot with his niblick and got his four. Two more fours gave him a total of 291. He sat in the clubhouse wondering whether Diegel could beat him, but Diegel, who was out in 38 and started back 4, 4, 3, 3, needing only even fours to win, took two over. Meanwhile, Giant Compston had suddenly forgotten how to play. Mac Smith tied Diegel for second place. Horton Smith and Fred Robson tied for third. Compston trailed in with an 82 for fourth place.

Said Jones: "I was lucky. . . ." Said his father in Atlanta: "Of course we are very happy and proud, but we got a bigger kick out of the Amateur. . . ."

On Lloyd's Insurance Exchange, London, odds against "Robot" Jones' winning all four major titles in 1930 dropped from 50 to 1 to 25 to 1.

*In 1890. Jones is the only golfer who has been simultaneously Amateur and Open Champion of Great Britain, and Open Champion of the U. S. In 1916 Charles ("Chick") Evans Jr. of Chicago was first (and so far only) man to win both the U. S. Open and Amateur in the same season.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.