True to Form

Professional golfers are somewhat like race horses. They receive no salary for their competitive performances, are rewarded only when they finish in the money.

If golfing addicts paid as much heed to the past-performance charts of golf pros as racing addicts give to form sheets, no one would have been surprised last week when, at the close of the winter circuit, the Professional Golfers Association announced the top money-winners of the season. Leading the field for the second year in a row was British-born Harry Cooper of Chicopee, Mass., never yet Open champion but generally considered the most expert golfer in the U. S.

Baldish, 33-year-old Harry Cooper has a past-performance chart that dates back to 1927. That was the year he lost the U. S. Open championship to one-eyed Tommy Armour by the slim margin of a 15-ft. putt. For the past five years he has maintained a scoring average that no U. S. pro could equal: he has never finished lower than fourth in annual scoring. Last year his form sheet* revealed that his 1937 average--in 82 rounds of competition--was 71.62 strokes per round (better than even fours, which is considered perfect golf), that his average finishing position was fourth, that he had won more prize money ($14,138) than any of his competitors. Although an average of fourth place might not impress racing addicts, it is comparable to the records of War Admiral or Seabiscuit, since golfers go to the post against a field of 100 to 1,000 opponents.

That Harry Cooper is still No. 1 golfer in the U. S. was conclusively demonstrated during this winter's competition (the first quarter of the 1938 race). Although slam-bang Sam Snead posted the season's lowest score for a single tournament (267 in the Miami Open) and long-driving Jimmy Thomson and painstaking Horton Smith each made headlines with record-smashing 36-hole totals of 131, smooth-moving Harry Cooper, straight as an arrow from tee to green, plodded along--over soft fairways and hard ones, over slow greens and fast ones--like the tortoise in Aesop's fable, reached the quarter-pole first with winnings of $4,448. A hair's breadth behind was curly-headed Johnny Revolta ($4,390), whose red-hot putting kept him in front of Henry Picard ($4,113), Jimmy Thomson ($3,355), Byron Nelson ($3,220), Sam Snead ($3,078).

Most of the 200 other trouping golfers, who hopefully embarked on the winter circuit last December, pocketed nothing but Experience.

* An innovation, started last year by the P.G.A., which shows the finishing position of top-notch professionals in every medal-play tournament of the "stake-race" class.

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