At Troon

Along the low Ayrshire coast it is all boats and fishing and drinking your ale or "whusky" and going to the kirk. Between times, it is golfing. Everyone plays. The courses string out among the dunes like a ribbon spattered green and gray-green with the white flecks of bunkers through it, so that they say you can play a ball all the 20 miles from Ayr up to Ardrossan without leaving the fairway. Last week, at Troon, which is hard by Prestwick* and not so far southwest of Glasgow, Britain's golfing women inarched among the dunes for their championship. In their own counties, they were most of them little champions, but among them there was easy-going young Joyce Wethered, who, last year (as in 1922), kept every one of them from being a big champion. Had a Scotchman been inclined to bet against Miss Wethered this year, he would probably have chosen either braw Cecil Leitch, unbeatable just before and just after the War (1914, '20, '21), or Glenna Collett, of Providence, R. I., a girl quieter than most of her countrymen, who had turned up with the Canadian and an old U. S. title (1922) in her record. A bye, a tidy win from the Welsh champion and, one misty morning, Miss Collett had her chance. They floated the Stars and Stripes with the Union Jack over the clubhouse. The galleries swelled to a mob. But such shots as Joyce Wethered's few men could have launched. She was never off the course. She was 37 to the turn! At that, the American got 38 and was only 1 down when the gruelling told and she began to cut drives, to foozle putts. Miss Wethered finished off 4 up and 3 to play, and spent the afternoon trouncing her 1923 conqueror, Doris Chambers. To her father, who concerns himself deeply in her success, Miss Collett cabled (truthfully) : "Joyce played unbeatable golf." Of Miss Wethered's play up to the finals, able critics said : "Incredible . . . like Vardon [British open champion 1896, '98, '99, 1903, '11, '14] in his most invincible days." In one match, she did the first nine in 33, two below men's par. Of Miss Leitch they said: "She has a great heart." That was the way it was. The schools let out, the shipyards closed, the people swarmed to see. Miss Leitch let down first under the annoyance of unruly spectators, came grimly back from 2 down at the 34th to square at the 36th hole. Her second on the 37th was a hook, her third too delicate, her putt too great to sink. Meantime, Miss Wethered arched two shots true to the green, putted firmly past the hole as a sound golfer does, putted exactly back to its center as only a champion can.

*Sound advice, from a certain diminutive Carnoustie man who teaches golf near Chicago, to persons going to golf at Troon, is this: "Gae oot on the fi-rrst nine o' Troon, an' gae in on the second nine o' Pr-restwuk. Hae yer lonch, an' gae oot on the fir-rst nine o' Pr-restwuk, comin' in on the last nine o' Troon. Aye, an' ye'll pay only one gr-reen's fee."