Down-in-Four

(See front cover)*

Intermittently from 1915 to 1920 a robot called Mike, then Fritz von Blitz the Kaiser's Hoodoo, then Percy the Mechanical Man, performed prodigies of senseless versatility in the U. S. funny-papers (New York Herald et al). Cartoonist Harry Cornel Greening equipped his creature with a row of buttons down the back which, when pushed, set Percy to his tasks. Only trouble--and chief source of comedy--was that, being brainless as well as tireless, Percy would keep on doing whatever he started until someone pushed another of his buttons. Thus, stoking a warship, when he had stoked away all the coal, he shoveled into the powder magazine, blew up everything but his indestructible self.

Robert Tyre Jones Jr. likes being called "Robot, the Mechanical Man of Golf," better than a lot of other names to which sportswriters, their superlatives utterly exhausted, have had resort. Before and since his appearance in the golfing firmament in 1916 (one year after Percy), he has had no peer but Percy, and making oneself a mechanically perfect golfer--when one is equipped with temper, indolence, misgivings and other frailties to which robots are heir--is as satisfactory, when accomplished, as it is difficult.

Last week Robert Tyre Jones Jr., possessor thus far this year of three of golf's four highest titles--British Open, British Amateur, U. S. Open--a record never before held by any man--took his golfing machine out on the No. 2 course at his home East Lake Country Club near Atlanta, Ga., to see how it was running. It scored 70, one under par. Putts were all that seemed to need oiling and tightening up as Jones packed his equipment and headed for the Merion Cricket club near Philadelphia, where he would try the coming week, in the U. S. Amateur Championship, for four-square perfection.

When he tees off in the qualifying round at 9:15 Monday morning (partner: Emery Stratton, young & able, of West Newton, Mass.), no real sportsman in the tournament will wish for anything but the completion of as perfect a gesture as ever was made in any game--all four titles in one year. Nor will any real sportsman pitted against Jones in the match-play rounds do anything short of his very best to prevent the gesture from being completed. Of this stimulating paradox Jones is well aware. And he knows from experience as well as from theory that there will be many a man among the 32 qualified capable of scoring a 72 or better, that 72 or better is hard for the most mechanically perfect golfer to beat in an 18-hole match. In the Amateur one must play two 18-hole matches per day for three days to reach the 36-hole final. "They are all tough enough and getting tougher every year," said Jones last month of championships in general.

A round of 72 is an average of four strokes per hole. The figure 4 is a magic one in golf, but never so magic for Jones as this year at Merion where for him it is the big number on the title he wants to win. Could he press a button on himself that would put him "down-in-four" at each & every hole, Champion Jones's 1930 record might well be made quadrilateral by acclaim. Straining in mind even more than body, tightlipped, his good-humored smile and easy Georgia drawl in check for the tremendous occasion, Jones will be trying for such precision as he marches over the carefully tailored links. It will help him to remember that over those same holes he qualified 14 years ago for his first national tournament, that there too he won his first amateur championship and that as the most multiple golf champion of all time he is the most awe-inspiring competitor a rising amateur can have in match play. Brilliant 2's at the short holes may thrill the galleries, dazzling birdies and eagles on long holes strengthen one's confidence. But down-in-four, down-in-four, down-in-four is a champion's march-beat. The problem for whoever wins at Merion is to keep that step all week.

*Painted by Artist Eleanor Harris of Manhattan and Aldie, Va.

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