From Our Own Correspondeni, Edinburgh, June 13
Troon was pessimistic about the professional golf tournament. You will know the result by the time this ''Scottish Letter" is passing through the Mediterranean, but I may say that here and now some local authorities had -esigned themselves to the possibility of "three Yankees at the top."' Troon is impressed by the painstaking thoroughness with which the task in hand has been approached by our American challengers. They have weighed up the championship course exhaustively. Faulty knowledge of the correct shot required at any part will not handicap them. Like their amateur colleagues at Deal and St. Andrews earlier in the season, the American professionals are demons of practice. Certain ticklish approach shots have been played over and over again to discover "the true line." These calculated American preparations to lift our greatest golfing honour, contrasted with the leisurely, not to say haphazard, preliminaries of the home exponents, account for loca] pessimism as regards the probable outcome. The late arrival of George Duncan and Abe Mitchell on the scene, and their participation in so many exhibition games on the eve of the championship, has caused unfavourable comment. Duncan, as the man who almost held the pass at Sandwich last year, and Mitchell, as a player whose championship is "bound to come," are rightly regarded as two of our strongest representatives. Hence the feeling of irritation that they should be indulging in an orgy of exhibition games this week instead of settling down at Troon to get themselves into the best condition, physically, and in a playing sense, for the ordeal ahead.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.