19TH HOLE: THE READERS TAKE OVER

NEW DATE WITH DESTINY?
Sirs:
Hurrah for Herbert Warren Wind's report on the National Open (Destiny's New Favorite, June 27). However, I should have liked one more word for Jack Nicklaus. This young National Amateur champion all but had the Open in his pocket—a trick no amateur has pulled off in 27 years. He may yet prove destiny's next favorite!
MRS. JIMMY HINES
Los Angeles

A SHOT IN THE ARM
Sirs:
Perhaps your article on Olympic canoeing (The Man Who Kidnaped Canoeing, June 20) will give a shot in the arm to a sport that has had fewer participants each year since the middle '30s.
C. J. McDOWELL
Member, 1940 Canadian Olympic team
Pacific Palisades, Calif.

Sirs:
If Ray Dodge thinks he has problems way out west in Michigan, he should be with us another 5,000 miles farther west. We in Hawaii started our canoeing program in the fall of 1958, but we hope to be heard from in Olympic canoeing in the not too distant future.
JOHN W. BUSTARD
Honolulu

Sirs:
I would like to try building my own K-1. Would you kindly let me know where I can obtain information on design, materials, etc.?
BROTHER AUGUSTINE LANDRY, FMS
Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

•Olympic kayaks, K-1 or K-2 B.K.V. (made by Bituddens Knotvarv, Vastervik, Sweden), may be obtained, in kit or finished form, from Peter F. Theis, International Idea, 574 Hawthorne Place, Chicago 13. Danish-made kayaks and Canadian canoes in the K-1, K-2, K-4 or C-1 and C-2 sizes can be ordered (as finished boats only) from Raymond Dodge, Competition Canoes, 1625 Broadway, Niles. Mich.—ED.

FOUR SHOTS IN THE ARM
Sirs:
Considering the sudden—if temporary—resuscitation of the Boston Red Sox under their new manager, Mike Higgins (SCORECARD, June 27), this suggestion:

Since the appointment of a new manager seems to act as an automatic hypo to asthmatic baseball squads and since the average big league manager makes $40,000 a year, why not let each team have a platoon of, say, four managers-each getting $10,000 a year? A ball club could thus revive itself four times per season and go on a good winning streak each time.
ROBERT L. JONES
North Indian Rocks Beach, Fla.

FLEDGLING SWIMMERS
Sirs:
I read your item on 17-month-old Cynthia Odom who dives and swims underwater (FACES IN THE CROWD, July 4). You say she learned to swim in her bathtub. Where did she learn to dive...off the hot water faucet?
LAURA HART
New York City

•Not according to her mother, who says "Cynthia did 'fall-in' dives at 9½ months off a conventional springboard."—ED.

Sirs:
Congratulations on your fine swim series by Matt Mann (Teach Your Child to Swim, June 27). Matt is my father-in-law and I thought your readers might be interested in what he was doing as a boy. This picture shows him, age 11, as English amateur boys champion. The preferred stroke then was the single overarm or overarm sidestroke, and Matt took on all comers.

He trained in the open dikes (sluiceways) running out of the woolen mills in his native Leeds, England. "One day I'd come home blue and another day I'd come home brown," he says, "depending on whether they were dyeing blue serge or brown serge."
BUCK DAWSON
Ann Arbor, Mich.

•For Part II of Matt Mann's Teach Your Child to Swim series, see page 41.—ED.

INK FOR THE GOPHERS
Sirs:
In case your staff hasn't got the word yet, the World Series of college baseball was played at Omaha. We realize it doesn't mean much, it just includes all the major colleges in the U.S.
CAL BACKER
New Ulm, Minn.

Sir:
When a national NCAA title is won, I for one believe it should rate some kind of notice in your magazine.

Such a title was won on June 20 when the University of Minnesota Gophers beat Southern California in 10 innings in baseball's collegiate World Series. I think this deserves some ink, don't you?
FRED PETERSON
St. Paul

•Here it is in black and white: Oklahoma State sophomore Jim Wixson, who had pitched only one winning game (a one-hitter) this season, pitched a no-hitter (the second in the college World Series' 14-year history) as the defending champs eliminated North Carolina (7-0) in the second round of this rain-besieged double elimination series. Minnesota, meanwhile, swept through the first four rounds to build up a 4-0 lead before losing (4-3) to USC in the fifth, but came back in the final game to beat the runner-up Trojans (2-1) for the 1960 title.—ED.

YANKOPHOBES VS. YANKOPHILES
Sirs:
Welcome to the ranks of the "Yankophiles," that fanatic group with the cast-iron stomachs, i.e., able to abide 61 (or is it more?) "trades" with the junior varsity at Kansas City (SCORECARD, June 20).

Please be advised that we Yankee-haters are not anywhere as "sick-sick-sick" as you Yankophiles were when the "Bombers" limped out of Baltimore with their collective tails between their legs! Casey Stengel must remember Boston, Washington and, last but not least, the Athletics in his prayers every night.
BILL SIMMONS
Schenectady

PHOTO

ENGLISH AMATEUR BOYS CHAMP, 1895