19TH HOLE: THE READERS TAKE OVER

VIVE LES GIRLS
Sirs:
Congratulations on your much improved covers: Francine Bréaud (Dec. 25), Joan Hannah (Feb. 5) and now Donna de Varona (April 16). Please keep it up.
BILL FITZPATRICK
Plattsburgh, N.Y.

Sirs:
Thanks for telling us Donna is a "girl swimmer." We would never have known.
MURRAY NAIDICH
Los Angeles

Sirs:
Enjoyed immensely your article on Donna de Varona (Still on Top at 14). In my work in swimming instruction I have seen promising young swimmers give up on further instruction as soon as they become accustomed to swimming, so that they may just have fun. I found it a pleasure to read of a swimmer who has used her talent and available instruction to the utmost.
CHARLES D. ULMER
Mont Alto, Pa.

TIGER'S SHOT
Sirs:
I was very pleased to read Gilbert Rogin's brief advancement of the claim by Dick Tiger to a shot at the muddled middleweight championship (The Count: One, Two, Three and Out, April 16). If anybody deserves a chance, it is Tiger. Without exaggeration I think he could have disposed of both Downes and Pender in one evening.

Dick is a refreshing performer in this lean, uninspiring and difficult period that boxing is going through. It is a pleasure to watch a man who has learned his trade well and boxes for the full three minutes of each round, without the continued clinching, holding and other illegal tactics that one has to witness far too often.
PATRICK A. NUTT
Kennett Square, Pa.

FATE'S QUIRKS
Sirs:
Your writer would like us to shed tears over the miserable fate of Art Quirk (Springtime Trials of a Rookie, April 16). A salary of a mere $7,500 a year (for some seven months' work), a $15,000 bonus, and a family of only three.

Really, your misguided sense of values is appalling.

Many very capable, veteran university faculty members with larger families survive on a lower salary. How about doing a long feature article on their endurance and stamina?
IGOR V. SARKISSIAN
Morgantown, W. Va.

UP NEW ZEALAND
Sirs:
It is quite sad that the only coverage that you gave to the recent four-week tour of the New Zealand Universities All-Star Rugby team in California and British Columbia was the reporting of a social incident [a postgame party involving beer and an insulted butler, SCORECARD, April 2], rather than informing your public how their visit had given West Coast Rugby a tremendous boost in all aspects of the game. The caliber of their play, their skill, their sportsmanship, their behavior (on and off the field) while in California was exemplary.

People in the Bay area, who got to know them collectively or individually, find it very hard indeed to believe that all the blame for the breakage and bad manners can be laid at their door.

I played host to the New Zealand and California Rugby teams and their respective dates in my home in North Berkeley before they went to Vancouver. I am glad to report the breakage of one solitary glass—dropped by one of the coeds dating said touring Rugby players.
JOHN S. HARRISON
Berkeley, Calif.

Sirs:
As a New Zealander residing temporarily in the U.S. I was very interested in your April 2 report of a party in Vancouver attended by the N. Z. Universities Rugby team. Having played Rugby myself, I was naturally mystified that a mirror was the target for the substandard hamburgers, when a properly good, brooding butler was available. Moreover, it has always been a Rugby custom in New Zealand to throw the butler into the swimming pool along with the beer glasses.
R. G. MENZIES
Acton, Mass.

•The British Columbia Rugby Union, moving in amidst the broken glass, has now established by investigation that no particular blame should attach to New Zealand Rugby players; that "without question the New Zealand Universities team was one of the finest, best-behaved and most well-managed teams we have ever met."—Ed.