Sport: Harmsworth Cup

There is always at least one serious mishap in the Harmsworth Cup races. It was almost a relief to the crowd of 325,000, in boats and grandstands on the banks of the St. Clair River near Marine City, Mich., when the mishap came so early last week. Just before the race, Horace E. Dodge decided to enter his three-year-old Delphine V, rebuilt for a speed of 85 m.p.h., to help Gar Wood’s Miss America X, which has gone 124 m.p.h., defend the Cup against this year’s British challenger, Hubert Scott-Paine’s Miss Britain III. Fifteen minutes before the start, which had been postponed for three hours because of rough water, the Delphine V sputtered out from her boat well, where mechanics had been trying to solder up leaks in her fuel lines. Two miles below the grandstands, she burst into flames. Her crew drove her ashore, stood by safe but helpless while Delphine V burned to the waterline.

First Race. Powered with one Napier-Schneider Cup 1,375-h. p. engine, against the four 1 ,650-h. p. Packard motors in Gar Wood’s 38½-ft. Miss America X, the 24½-ft. duralumin-hulled challenger was well known to be much slower, even if her maximum speed was 100 m.p.h., as re-ported. Her chance was to beat Miss America X on the turns, which Hubert Scott-Paine expected to make at full speed while Miss America X was laboriously slowing down and regaining speed. The water was smooth when the boats roared out across the start and for just that instant it looked as though Gar Wood might have a race on his hands. By the time Miss America X reached the second turn on the first seven-mile lap, the possibility had disappeared. Miss Britain III, almost a mile behind, was chugging along smoothly but a little pathetically, at 66 m.p.h. to Miss America’s easy 88. Wood throttled his boat down to 85 for the next lap, 82 for the third, a bare 80 for the fourth. Rotund, red-haired Hubert Scott-Paine and his mechanic. Gordon Thomas, crouching in Miss Britain’s small streamlined cowl, got their motors warmer as the race went on, reached a maximum of almost 81 m.p.h. on the third lap. Miss America X was about two miles ahead at the finish.

Second Race. A stifling day and congested highways let only a skimpy 150,000 get through to the second race, which turned out to be the most exciting of all Harmsworth Cup events. This time, his motors warmed up beforehand, Scott-Paine managed to get across the line first. At the first turn in the 7-mi. oval course Miss America X swerved past him. Thereafter Gar Wood patently tantalized Scott-Paine. Miss Britain III, leaping from the water every half mile, would inch up on Miss America X. Miss America X would spurt ahead, then relax. Neither boat broke records Miss America X averaged 86.937 statute m.p.h., Miss Britain III 85.789. But Scott-Paine was only 22.33 seconds behind Gar Wood at the end and that was the nearest Gar Wood has let any contender approach him in the Harmsworth Cup races.

If he really expected to win the Harmsworth Cup Hubert Scott-Paine proved last week that he was a better loser than boat-driver. Said he, after the first race: ”The best time of my life . . . the water was beautiful . . . my boat ran up to expectations. . . .” Unlike Kaye Don, whose Miss England III broke down last year in the Harmsworth races, Hubert Scott-Paine has no backer. Like Gar Wood, he builds his own boats, works on them with a staff of six mechanics with whom he shared quarters in Detroit last week. At 14. Hubert Scott-Paine ran away to sea. Before the War, : his early twenties, he became interested in airplanes, flew so recklessly that IK was jailed for “suicidal intent.” Stranded in the South of France, he joined a circus, got 20 francs a bout for boxing with anyone who wanted to earn £3 by staying three rounds. An Englishman who did it made friends with Scott-Paine, took him back to England, started him in airplane building. In the War, Hubert Scott-Paine became a director of Imperial Airways, to whose board he still belongs. In 1921 he helped build up British Supermarine Motor Co. He sank his whole fortune financing and building the plane that won the Schneider Cup from Italy in 1922, defended it suc-cessfully the next year. He happened into the motorboat building industry when he and his wife, Brenda Scott-Paine, almost as good a boat-driver as her husband, were planning a trip to Africa on their power cruiser. He went to a boat-works to buy new parts for their power cruiser, became so much interested that he bought the boat-works, canceled his trip. His British Power Boat Co. makes most of Europe’s fastest speedboats, including the Miss England in which the late Sir Henry Segrave beat Gar Wood at Miami in 1929. He says he will keep after the Harmsworth Cup “until I am spent out … or take it home.”

Tennis

At Longwood. In the first set, young Frank Andrew Parker was erratic and his tall partner, Francis Xavier Shields, had to make most of the impossible gets, the titanic smashes that finally won, 13-11. Wily George Lott and willowy Lester Stoefen, smoothing out the soft spots in his game as the match wore on, concen-trated on Parker in the next two sets and won them both at 9-7. In the fourth set, Shields & Parker worked the score up to 3-all. Then Lott won his serve, Parker lost his, and Stoefen won his—for set match and the U.S. doubles championship.

Encouraged to team together by Bernon S. Prentice, non-playing captain of this year’s U. S. Davis Cup team, Lott & Stoefen proved one thing by their victory last week: that Chicago’s hairy, hard-bitten George Martin Lott Jr. is the best doubles player in the U. S., if not in the world. Last week’s doubles title was his fourth. He won in 1928 with John F. Hennessey, in 1929 and 1930 with John Hope Doeg. Saturnine, good-humored, Lott’s doubles game is noteworthy for steadiness, tactical brilliance, unwillingness to be discouraged by his partner’s errors—Stoefen made 80 in last week’s three-hour final. Playing with John Van Ryn he won at Wimbledon in 1931. Last week’s tournament was his first with Stoefen, a handsome 6-ft.-3½-in. Californian, who balances the team with cannonball serves, unplayable overhead shots at the end. He taught himself to play tennis on Los Angeles public courts in 1927, when Lott was already in the U. S. first ten. Then 16. a high-school football, baseball and basket ball player, he grew 97 inches in the next three years, won a match against John Hope Doeg in 1930.

At Forest Hills, rain delayed the national singles championship after a first round in which the closest thing to a surprise was a set dropped by Lott to Herbert Bowman.

In Paris, famed Henri Cochet, No. 1 tennist of France, finally stopped denying rumors, increasingly persistent for the last two years, that he would turn professional. His plans: a series of matches, with Martin Plaa for partner, v. William Tilden II and Bruce Barnes, late this month.

In San Francisco, Mrs. Helen Wills Moody said she did not regret defaulting to Helen Jacobs in the finals of the women’s national singles championship last fortnight. She entered Stanford University Hospital for treatment of her painful back.