The Second Test of the Champion

In Every Sport, the Title Holders Will Face Most Serious Opposition During the Coming Year

GRANTLAND RICE

IT may be that you have already observed a certain earnest group peering into the immediate future with anxious eyes. It may be that you have wondered what the strain and anxiety were all about. If so, the answer is simple. This is the patrol of Champions, who, during the new year in sport which opens with the spring campaign, must face the most difficult tests any set of champions has ever known.

Nineteen twenty-one overthrew any number of stars, but the young year promises to be one of the hardest ever known for the established champion. As the patrol files along the highway into early tests, more than one will be sniped and more than one will be driven from the field by the charge of some new star with both fate and skill upon his side. Probably the most interesting feature of the new season is the speculation as to which will be the hardest championship to defend, and which leaders have a chance of retaining their places through the coming year.

The Most Difficult Sector

THE most difficult sector to defend will undoubtedly be golf.

Just a year ago, Chick Evans, Alex Stirling, Ted Ray and Jock Hutchison held the four main golf titles of the United States. Today not one of these survives with his title intact. Guilford dethroned Evans, Miss Hollins eliminated Miss Stirling, Jim Barnes supplanted Ted Ray, and Walter Hagen took Jock Hutchison's place as Professional Champion. Jock retained his laurels by winning the British Open, but he was forced to leave one throne room to find lodging in another. The others were left with only an ex-prefix to their titles, thrust aside in one of the most uncertain of all competitive sports. The situation is quite different when such men as Jack Dempsey and Benny Leonard take charge of pugilistic heights. Boxing is far more of a fixed science than golf, tennis, baseball or football, depending far less upon the luck of the game or the fortunes of war. The better man, especially when he is champion, is usually much better and almost sure to win. With Dempsey and Leonard it is not so much a matter of defending their titles with the issue in doubt as it is in securing some challenger strong enough to arouse public interest, and so build up the gate.

At this writing there is no one in sight who, on form, looks worthy enough even to give Dempsey an interesting battle. Dempsey would be a 1-3 favourite against almost any challenger now outlined against the horizon, whereas Jim Barnes, or Jesse Guilford, Open and Amateur Golf Champions, would find odds of 7 to 1 laid against their defensive success. With Dempsey and Leonard looking for first class opponents, who are still to be discovered, Guilford faces such competitors as Chick Evans, Francis Ouimet, Bobby Jones, Bob Gardner, Rudy Knepper, Harrison Johnston and other fine players capable of playing golf just as brilliantly as the champion.

The odds against Guilford are extremely heavy. One only has to recall that eight years have passed since an amateur golf champion was strong enough to repeat. Jerry Travers won in 1912 and again in 1913, but that was the last of the two-year reigns.

The same situation applies to Jim Barnes, who, this next summer, will find the big field presenting such opponents as Walter Hagen, Jock Hutchison, Emmett French, Eddie Loos, Cyril Walker, Bob McDonald, Chick Evans, Bobby Jones, Freddie McLeod, Alex Smith and other stars, including at least two or three ranking British entries. Barnes may repeat, but if he does, he will be the first to win two years in a row since Jack McDermott turned the trick in 1911 and 1912. With golf it is not only a matter of superior skill, but also the good fortune of being on top of one's game at the right time that counts.

The Struggle in Tennis

TENNIS holds a place somewhere in between golf and boxing. Winning form isn't as elusive as it is in golf, but more so than one finds in the ring. Years ago when the defending champion was not forced to play through, W. A. Larned was good enough to win a string of tennis crowns in unbroken order. But times have changed, and about two years seems to be the period allotted by the fates. Bill Tilden won top honors in 1920 and 1921. The Philadelphian still stands supreme as the champion tennis player of the world.

He will be favoured again in the next national championship, but his position is uncertain, compared to Dempsey's, who should be safe for at least another year.

Tilden is the strongest individual player in the game, but it may happen that by next summer Bill Johnston or Vincent Richards may give him a strenuous time of it.

Tilden seems to be good enough to beat any player in the game three matches out of four. But he may be due for an off day at the wrong moment. The odds, however, will walk by his side throughout the year and he will be ruling favourite when the big test comes.

In the same way Mrs. Molla Mallory, women's tennis champion, will be extremely hard to displace. She has been the ruling figure in women's tennis for the better part of the last six years, and at present there is no American rival strong enough to take her place in a championship test, where stamina counts almost as much as skill.

Tilden and Mrs. Mallory are an exceptionally strong pair of champions in their respective fields and, when the roll call is sounded at the end of the season, it will be something of an upset if either is displaced, despite the skill and power of many first class challengers.

Billiards and Boxing

THOSE who are quite confident that neither will be beaten might turn to the case of Willie Hoppe, one of the most enduring champions of all time. Yet, even Hoppe fell in the last big engagement of the old year when young Jake Schaefer stepped forward and coyly plucked the veteran's sceptre from his grasp.

Schaefer, in turn, will find his stoutest billiard opponent to be the ex-champion, who is far from being a has-been in any turn or twist of the word. Billiards, like boxing, gives its champion a better chance to hold the royal toga for a few years. The shift doesn't come as often as it does in golf or even in tennis. Part of this is due to the fact that both are safe from the elements,'neither wind nor rain entering into account. Neither do breaks of good and bad luck figure so heavily. In golf, for example, one stroke may find a heel print in a bunker, resting in the pit of disaster. Whereas, an even worse stroke may stop just short and leave an easy approach to the green. The element of chance must always be a factor in golf. The same thing, to a lesser degree, may frequently apply to a world series or to a single football game. In football this element of chance is almost as large as it is in golf. An unlucky fumble, a bad bound, any one of five or six things may turn a game completely over.

One rarely comes across any such upset in boxing, court tennis or billiards. As brilliant as Willie Hoppe and Jay Gould have been, neither could have survived for so many years if there had been anything approaching the chance element of golf. This is fairly well proved in boxing by the fact that a beaten champion is rarely able to come back and overwhelm his conqueror. "They never come back," was written on the prize ring.