British Amateur

Cinema contracts prevented Golfer Robert Tyre Jones Jr. from going to England to defend his British Amateur championship last week. But there was a curiously neat compensation. Ready on the first tee of the Westward Ho! course at starting time was another U. S. celebrity even more famed & popular than Golfer Jones. A brownish, stocky little man, he attracted an unprecedented swarm of autograph hunters. A dozen ladies were so anxious to have their children see him play that they pushed perambulators after him over five miles of gently undulating Devonshire. British golf critics agreed that his swing was good and his manners, though slightly formal, better than those of most U. S. players. Perhaps because he took it all a bit grimly, however, Cinemactor Douglas Fairbanks did not win. A good sport, he conceded a one-yard putt on the last green which gave hole and match to his able opponent, one J. R. Abercrombie. Then he hurried off to meet Mary Pickford who was just arriving in England.

The British Amateur begins with a series of 18-hole matches in which a mediocre player may have a good round and beat a better one. None of these quite likely developments, usually described as reversals of form, occurred last week till the fifth round when the three most likely contestants lost their matches on the same afternoon. One was George Voigt, beaten by the young Nottingham clerk, Sidney Roper, who last year came close to putting Jones out of the tournament. The others were the onetime Champion Roger Wethered, who was runner-up to Bobby Jones last year, and beefy, self-important Cyril Tolley.

The finals were played between two young Bachelor Club members, Eric Martin-Smith and John De Forest. Martin-Smith, a Cambridge undergraduate, showed traces of the style which enabled his father, a London banker, to play for England against Scotland 20 years ago. The coal-tycoon father of John De Forest had sent his son to the U. S. a year ago as a reward for good golf in last year's championship. In the U. S., John De Forest was shown how to putt by Stewart Maiden, Bobby Jones's teacher, but it did not seem to do him much good last week. At the end of 18 holes, Martin-Smith sent a telegram to the captain of the Cambridge golf team saying he was two up. At the 22nd he was four up, but De Forest squared the match at the 34th. On the 35th his ball went into a trap, he took six to Martin-Smith's five. Both played their second shots short on the last hole, halved it in fives. Golfer De Forest was consoled for losing by $13,750 in bonuses from his proud father.

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