Tracking Down "Hot Tip" At the Race Track By Hewry McLemore Honolulv, Mar. 10.
This is not a story for general publication. It is a private memorandum to all persons who have the same two weaknesses that I have; namely, preferring to hit a long tee that above anything else on the golf course, and an inability to resist betting on any tips heard at a race track.
Those of you who don't have either these weaknesses in your makeup will please stop reading this right TOW, Or cross your heart that you won't tell a soul about it.
About long tee shots: It would seem that they mean little or nothing. I talked to Jimmy Thomson, Sammy Snead and Lawson Little about it, and being three of the longest hitters ju the world their words count for something. Each one of them assured me that he would gladly take thirty yards off his drive in exchange for an inch or two more of accuracy on the putting green.
All-Important Tap "A long tee shot is fine for publicity purposes" Thomson said, and earns you a lot of nicknames such as 'Bomber' and 'Seige Gun' and 'Big Bertha.' but no man has ever wea a tournament by hitting them a mile down the fairway. The tap that you have to give a ball thet hangs on the lip of the cup, counts just the same en the tap you give it to send it 275 yards off the tee."
Thomson would gladly give Houton Smith some of his power off the tee for some of Horton's "feel" on the greens, Little and Snead agreed with Thomson, but would prefer to swap with Harry Cooper, the man they regard as the greatest of all putters. Little and Snead admit that Smith has the finest eye in the business, &nd can "read" strange greens more quickly than anyone else, but they do not believe that his putting stroke is equal in mechanical perfection to Cooper's.
Sounds Very Strange All of this sounded very strange to Ime, because your average golfer would rather hit a long tee shot than sink a 20-toot putt. With us, the brave band that plays "two-bit" golf, the tee shot is the bread and meat of our existence. When we thunder one 200 yards down the fairway it is because our swing is perfect. When we si a long putt it is because our luck holding.
Next to hitting long drives, most of us like to get a hot tip on a race. In he interest of science I recently decided to trace down the source of has a place of Library of the Club in the li Odds and Ends New York, Mar. 9.
y that Johnny Vander nce into professional Il was via the movies? He was ec a the hero of a angers ed supposed to typify at was never developed or cir-
perican boy. The job one hot tip that spread around Santa Anita and had me, for one, doing e Jesse Owens toward the mutuel window. In looking over my pr gramme I saw a horse named Joe Sam, and I mentioned to Spencer Tracy, who dies at the race track as often as he does on the screen, that 1 had once known a boy named Joe Sem. I then wandered away ani ten minutes later I got an extra hot tip on Joe Sam and rushed to get all the change I had left in my pocket on his nose.
When I traced my "hot" tip back, here is what had happened:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.