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Show tjrrHEN YOU HEAR lomeone cry-" cry-" ing or complaining about his bad luck or the tough breaks that have followed him, you don't have to pay the slightest attention to the sombre squawk. All you have to do is think about Al Snyder. His dream, that of every jockey, was to ride a Kentucky Derby winner. win-ner. Beyond that, to be the winning win-ning rider of the Triple Crown. Snyder, after 10 tough riding years, was set to make his triple move in the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont on a three-year-old known as Citation, rated today as the surest Triple Crown winner in racing history. Unfortunately, Snyder went fishing fish-ing in a small boat with two friends. They were in the famous Florida Keys. A gale 'came along without warning, and someone else will ride Citation in the three rich races. A whirl of wind at twilight and the small boat had vanished. As the latev Mr. Henley so well wrote: "Into the night go one and all." Snyder would have drawn 10 per cent in each of these $100,000 tests. As far as one can peer into the fogs and mists of the future, here was $o0, 000 plus other big races to come as well as the fame of riding a standout champion. Citation is still here and ready. So are Ben and Jimmy Jones. But just what happened to Snyder is anybody's guess. Sport Is always packed full of soul-searing breaks of sodden turns that mean the difference between be-tween victory and defeat. But this is a different case. This sudden sud-den squall meant the difference between life with fame and gold and the sudden blotting oat of a career that was just beginning to unfold. ' On the verge of moving Into the greatest fame a Jockey could know, Snyder suddenly came to the end of the road in the roaring, boiling water of the Keys. Fate never bothers where the aces or the deuces fall. Golf Winners in 1948 Who will win the Masters? Who will win the Open? Who will win the P G.A.? Apparently it doesn't matter. Herman Keiser won the Masters in 1946 and has won little since. Lew Worsham won the Open at St Louis last year and hasn't won a tournament since. Jim Ferrier from Australia won the P.G.A. but has set no blazing woodlands on fire since. Why Is It that we have no golfers golf-ers who can win more than one tournament on a 3,500-mile junket? I'or'.on Smith won six around 1928. Jimmy Demaret won six or seven a few years back. MacDonald Smith won eight big ones In a year. Bobby Jones mopped up In 19C0. Jones and Hagen won 24 national and international championships cham-pionships between them. Now you can't find a golfer who can win as many as two. Ben Hognn never has won an Open. Jimmy Demaret never has won jn Open or a P.G.A. Sammy Snead never has won a U. S. Open, al-thouph al-thouph the brilliant but erratic Snead has won the P.G.A. and the British Open. Hogan, Nelson, Snead and Demaret Dema-ret are too good to stand on their records in the U. S. Open, the British Brit-ish Open and the P.G.A., the three top titles of golf. Where is another Bobby Jones? Another Walter Hagen, another Gene Sarazen? I might add another an-other Tommy Armour and another Jim Barnes, who won these three major events. The modern charge Is made that Jones, Hagen and Saraxen played In only few tournaments that all three would have been nervous wrecks If they had followed the rough trail that Hogan, Demaret, Snead and the others have taken. This ran be true. I am not going to deny It for I can't prove these charges are wrong. All I know is there are too many tournaments today for the good of the player. Especially the better player. Big money golf Is much rougher on the nerves than .world series baseball or any form of football. The mental side is far more Important Im-portant in golf than it Is in baseball, football or boxing. Yogi Berra, the Mrm" A year ago at the St Petersburg dog track, I bought Yogi Berra a $2 ticket on a greyhound that paid $112. Lately I have given Berra several tips that finished last or close to last Much to my astonishment, astonish-ment, Berra still remembered the first and only good deed. "Who cares?" he would say as my tip finished far out of the money. This made me realize that Berra was an exceptional human being. He remembers only the good that it buried with mankind, not the evil that lives after them. Berra, the Yankee catcher, has a friendly heart and a deadly batting eye. The pride of Dago Hill, st Louis, likes everybody and everybody every-body likes him. |