Sport: 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.