Sports News From Britain

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27092, 28 May 1949, Page 7

Sports News From Britain

NZPA Special Correspondent Rec. 9 p.m. LONDON, May 27. Although the New Zealand runner, D. M. Harris, is naturally greatly plessed by his record-breaking win over A. S. Wint, the Olympic champion, in the half-mile event at the Universities Athletic Championship meeting last Saturday, he is not satisfied that his injured leg is yet fully recovered. He is still experiencing difficulty in rounding bends at high speed and said that this was the real reason why he left his winning sprint in the university half-mile until he had passed the final turn. This was also the reason why he did not enter in the quarter-mile, which he considers ,his best distance. Harris does not intend to overdo matters this season, but to concentrate upon being fully recovered by the time he is ready to return to New Zealand in mid-November. He will run for the Leicestershire County Athletic Club at White City on July 2 and July 16, and on June 11 may run in an athletic meeting at Dublin. More New Zealand Cricketers Two 13-aside cricket teams, one representing New Zealand civilians living in London and the other representing New Zealand exservieemen, met on the Upper Clapton Rugby Football Clubs ground at Epping last week-end. The civilians, who batted first, made 122, to which the servicemen replied with 100. ’ The match, the first of its kind to be held among New Zealanders in London proved so successful that another match is to be arranged between a combined New Zealand civilian and ex-servicemen’s team and a team representing the Upper Clapton Rugby Club. This club has already a number of New Zealand members. - * Amateur Qolf Championships Whoever may win the British Amateur Golf Championship at present in progress at Portmarnock near Dublin, it is agreed by all golf writers attending the championship that there will be no better match than that in which' Ronnie White, a Walker Cup player, and one of Britain’s leading amateurs, beat P. B. (Boy) Lucas, the British Walker Cup captain in the third round on May 25. The match went to the twentieth hole where White sank a fifteen-foot putt, while Lucas’s final shot, coming in from an equal distance, struck the lip of the cup and bounced clear. There was so little between the two men that the match looked like continuing indefinitely. They halved most of the early holes in par. figures and it was not till the sixteenth that White obtained a lead of one. Then Lucas holed out from fifteen feet playing up a difficult bank and made the match all square and one to play. Lucas almost holed his tee shot at the eighteenth but White halved by sinking from a bunker. White was unexpectedly beaten in the fifth round by Ernest Millward, who is the West of England champion. In a driving competition held prior to the opening of the championship, the former champion, James Bruen, who later had to retire from the tournament because of illness, recorded drives of 250 and 280 yards,, both in a slight cross wind. Bruen’s drive of 280 yards equalled the record set by Henry Cotton at Walton Heath in 1938 when playing in a £SOO challenge match with Reg Whitcombe against the South Africans, Bobby Locke and Sidney Brews. . Last year’s winner, Frank Stranahan, and the 1947 winner, Willie Turnesa, are the only Americans left in the British Amateur Championship. Eighteen Americans have been eliminated in four rounds. Stranahan and Turnesa have reached the quarterfinals, and as they are in opposite halves of the draw there is a pr6spect of an all-American final. Wimbledon Tournament This year's Wimbledon tournament has attracted the strongest entry since the war. There is hardly a player of world class who will not be competing The American entry includes both Richard Gonzales, the present Singles champion of the United States, and Fred Schroeder, the American Davis Cup player, who ranks next below him. The two are very keen rivals, and Wimbledon may well decide the hotly-debated question about their ranking. , " Bob Falkenburg, who won the Wimbledon Singles title last year, will defend it, but on his recent form American tennis writers consider that he will be beaten by both Schroeder and Gonzales. Strongest of the Continental champions is probably the Czech, Jaroslav Drobny, who recently played a major part in eliminating Britain from this year’s Davis Cup competition. Among the Australians, John Bromwich and Dick Sedgman will be back again and this year no less an authority than Dan Maskell, the professional champion of Great Britain, considers that Sedgman will prove to be the better player. The most favoured of the Commonwealth entrants is the South African, Eric Sturgess, who got through to the final of the American Championship last year, three months after he had been defeated at Wimbledon. Honours in the Women's Singles seem almost certain to go to the United States. Miss Louise Brough, the present holder of the Wimbledon women's title, will again be competing and so will the present American women’s champion. Miss Margaret Osborne Du Pont, and Miss Doris Hart, who is the third-ranking American woman. . . , , . England’s hopes are not bright but rest chiefly uiSon Tony Mottram among the men, and Miss Jean .Quertier among the women. Mrs Jean Bostock, who is at present England s No. 1 ranking woman player, will not be competing.