Hagen Drubbed

When anyone's hands blister playing golf it means that the player is just learning the game or that he has not played for a long time. Walter Hagen, after one day's practice in England where he had gone to play Archie Compston a match for $3,750, got a big water blister on the pad of flesh at the base of the little finger of his right hand. One English sports writer said that the match ought to be postponed. Hagen wanted it postponed himself. He explained that he had come all the way from Los Angeles in twelve days, and that except for that one day at Moor Park he hadn't had any practice except a few balls which he drove off the roof of his hotel into the Thames, and that he had been acting in the cinema all winter. Told that he would have to play anyway, he hired a detective to get him out of bed on time.

Two years ago, Hagen kept Abe Mitchell waiting half an hour on the first tee at Weybridge. When he finally arrived he said that he was very sorry, his car had broken down, an explanation that nobody accepted, least of all Mitchell who, exhausted and keyed up by waiting, played badly and was badly beaten. This time Hagen, with a tall detective beside him, got to the course an hour early and waited for Compston. The Englishman laid him a stymie at the first hole, was three up at the fifth; Hagen sliced his drive into a ditch at the sixth and picked up; at the seventh Compston outdrove him by 50 yards. Hagen had 148 for the first 36 holes. Compston had 133.

Next day Hagen was better. He had plaster on his blister and he was missing fewer three-foot putts. The crowd, usually annoyed by Hagen's lolling walk, his smile, his Americanisms, his arrogance, and his frequent cigarets, was cheering him now for being a sport; when he played out of a bunker at the twelfth, a retired major with an umbrella shouted "Good cricket" and was silenced by the hisses of people who were afraid his enthusiasm would disturb Hagen's putting. The match ended at the 55th hole with Hagen 18 down.