NEW GOLF CHAMPION.

AMERICAN VICTORY.

There is a new golf champion, and again he is an American. The superhuman efforts put forward by the whole army of British golfers, amateur and professional, to win back the cup which Jock Hutchison took to the States last year for the first time in its history, have signally failed. Walter Hagen, of Detroit, to-day won the British championship with a score of 300 for the four rounds. I am not in the least bit surprised at his triumph, because he has played the most convincing and business-like golf, without being in any way brilliant, of all the world’s competitors. Hagen is a sturdy fellow, who gives the impression of a welltrained athlete. Golf is his profession, and in his efforts to climb the Olympian heights he long ago concluded that something more than science and skill in the game were required; preservation of health by careful methods of living was absolutely essential. He is practically an abstainer, and the use of tobacco is reduced to a minimum.

When he strode off the last green amid a shower of congratulations he lit a cigar for the first time for a week. And one of the first men to shake him heartily by the hand was James Braid, who had been following the unusual role of spectator. Hagen was born at Rochester, New York, and is 29 years of age. He commenced to play golf on a small, unpretentious inland course at Rochester, and in his early days was a caddie. As a matter of fact, Hagen first hit a golf ball when he was just able to toddle. Here we have an example of the benefits to be derived from swinging a club in infancy. Hagen has to thank Andrew Christie, an old Carnoustie player, who went to Rochester as professional, for nis early training in the mysteries of the game. After earning a precarious livelihood by carrying people’s clubs, Hagen, who showed distinct promise, then went into the professionals’ shop for four years to learn the art of club-making. In 1913 Christie left and Hagen jumped into his shoes and embraced the chance of a lifetime.

In 1914, at the second time of asking, and when only 21 years of age, he took the American golfing public by storm by winning the national championship Three years later he left Rochester for a more ambitious undertaking at Detroit. He was there eighteen months, and then for four years he dived into the maëlstrom of finance. He became a stockbroker. Now he has gone back to his first love and is a roving golfer, playing the game wherever inclination and fancy lead him. It must be a highly-lucrative profession, something far different from what it’s in this country. Hagen has travelled to Europe at his own expense to engage in competitions for a silver cup, which is not his property, and a prize of £65, which will not pay a tithe of his out-of-pocket expenses. To-morrow he starts on a world’s tour with Kirkwood as partner, and a year hence he will be back to fight again for America.

HUMILIATING POSITION.

The humiliating position, so far as Great Britain is concerned, is that of the first four places in the championship three have been captured by Americans. And it is all the more significant because these were the only American competitors. I hope this fact will stir the rising generation of British golfers to a realisation of the ignominious position we now occupy. By sheer hard work combined with some hard thinking, we must make every effort to win back our supremacy.

It was a day of intense excitement and dramatic thrills, in which the three Americans fought desperately to gain the lead, with the veteran J. H. Taylor hanging like a terrier on to their skirts. He refused to be shaken off, but in the end the strain was too much for the old warrior, and he loosened his hold just when the supreme effort had to be made. Hagen is the finest home-bred professional golfer that America has produced, and, as an indication of his skill, I need only say that Harry Vardon, a wise judge, is of opinion that he is the best golfer he has seen for years.

When the last round came to be played Hutchison had deprived Hagen of his lead, and was two shots in front. It was fortunate that Hagen was playing immediately behind Hutchison. By means of a messenger he knew exactly what the other fellow was doing at every hole. This must have been information of priceless value.

There was an ominous delay at the fourth, where Hutchison was dodging about the sandhills watching his second shot to that terrible little green perched on the top of a hillock. It met a terrible fate; the ball plunged headlong into the kitchen garden beyond the small wooden fence. He took an awful seven for the hole, and as it turned out this one mistake robbed him of the championship. what were the feelings of Hagen, who was waiting on the tee watching this human tragedy, I do not know; but a heavy load of anxiety must have been lifted from his soul. That awful garden, with its cabbages and onions, and the scoffers sitting on the fence, will live long in Hutchison’s memory.

Hutchison, playing through a perfect deluge of rain, against which umbrellas only offered a poor sort of protection, finished in 76, which gave him an aggregate of 302, Hagen made a supreme effort from the seventh onwards. At this hole, which measures 484 yards, he put a long iron shot a yard from the pin; then, with a three at the short “hades” hole, and a four at the ninth, he reached the turn in 35. He was still one stroke behind Hutchison, but he got on level terms at the tenth, lost the lead again at the eleventh, and squared again at the twelfth.

The excitement now became fast and furious. The issue was practically settled at the fourteenth, “the Suez Canal” hole, where Hagen was short of the water with his brassie shot. He then put a full wooden club shot near the pin, and holed the putt for a four.

With a 4 and a 3 at the fifteenth and sixteenth holes respectively Hagen increased his lead to three strokes. But at the hast hole he pulled his brassie shot into a little hollow to the left of the green and played a half-hearted run up. The putt trembled on the very brink of the hole for a 4.

He was now leader with a score of 300, and when he inquired what other people had to accomplish to overhaul him he smilingly said, “Well, that will keep them busy, anyway.”