NEW CHAMPIONS ARISE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19732, 29 December 1926, Page 11

NEW CHAMPIONS ARISE

A PHENOMENAL SEASON SWEEPING AMERICAN CHANGES The sporting season of 1926 will always be remembered for the dethroning of the greatest number of champions of any year before it, writes a San Francisco correspondent. In tennis, golf, aquatics, boxing and baseball the old adage has been proved, that “uneasy lies the hdad that wears a crown.” In one week Tilden and Bobby Jones lost their national tennis and golf championships. Frenchmen captured the tennis crown of the United States, the event being the first for a quarter of a century in which an American player and tin American pair have not held the American title fur singles and doubles. What new history might not have been written had the Australian Davis Cup team been in the arena during the present year!

The “jinx,” tis the American sporting writers term the dethroning agency, has not operated exclusively against men. Women have toppled from their pedestal. -Miss (Henna Collett, doyen of American golfers of her sex, was defeated by an unknown Chicago girl.

The world’s boxing title was held to be so sU-fe in the hands of Dempsey that ho had come to be known as “the killer” by ring annals. Yet he was dethroned by a quiet, studious youth, who spent more time reading Shakespeare than practising the fistic art. The works of the immortal Bard never had such a vogue in the great Republic. Every sporting writer had his shilling edition in his coat pocket for weeks before, browsing for figures of speech pertinent to the issue. The prize went to a scribe who put. Hamlet’s soliloquy on the lips of the victor as he faced “the killer” in the crucial opening round. The Pittsburgh and Washington baseball teams, who fought out last year’s world championship in seven matches, failed to get into the final. One or two facts about these “world series” finals may be of interest.. The two opposing stars this year. Babe Ruth and Hornsby, were ‘purchased” by their clubs for £25,000 and £BO respectively; yet, £57,500 was refused for Hornsby recently. Ruth gets a much greater salary than the Governor-General of Australia or of New Zealand. It is estimated that 50,000,000 people watch the “playograph” at the newspaper offices all over the United States and Canada for two hours a day (about lunch-time) while these contests are on. The instrument actually records the flight of the ball from the bat to the spot where it lands.