The championships of France, which began in a small and gentle way, have lately risen to be very important events, and they gain a most wonderfully cosmopolitan entry. In 1913, which was the greatest year for championships in general that the game has ever known - Taylor winning his fifth Open at Hoy-lake, Mr. Hilton his fourth Amateur, Mr. Travers his fourth American Amateur, Ouimet beating Vardon and Ray in the American Open - the championships of France did indeed rise to the first class, and in both events, the Amateur at La Boulie and the Open which was held for the first time at Chantilly - and the first for it to be taken away from the mother course at Versailles - produced some most exciting business. I have never seen a more extraordinary final in its way than that in the amateur event at La Boulie on this occasion, when Mr. E. A. Lassen came to grips with Lord Charles Hope - and such grips they were! I was led to describe it at the time as a dramatic affair of four periods and a spasm, and that is just what it was. Lord Charles Hope, though not physically strong, has acquired a fine game, and in the first period of this thirty-six holes match we witnessed him playing some quite beautiful golf and exercising the most complete self-possession and steadiness, gradually piling up a big lead of holes upon his more experienced opponent, who has been once Amateur Champion of Britain and a finalist another time, and seeming to make himself a certain winner. The duration of this period was one whole round, and at the end of it Lord Charles had five good holes to his advantage. The second was a period of peace, in which we watched Lord Charles keeping a tight hold on his most valuable gains, while Mr. Lassen, if losing nothing more, was gaining nothing when it was absolutely necessary he should be gaining quickly if he was not to be the loser of the day. Time was flying and holes were being done with, and fewer of them being left for play and recovery. This period terminated at the turn in the second round, with Lord Charles Hope still four to the good and "still winning." The third period lasted from the tenth to the fourteenth holes in this round, and in it the man who had seemed to be very well beaten threw a new life into his game, tightened it up, made it exact, certain, and aggressive, while at the same time his opponent seemed to collapse entirely, his driving becoming soft and uncertain and his short game nervous. The Yorkshire player won four of these five holes and at the fourteenth he was level with his man. Never was there a more extraordinary illustration of the truth that no match is lost until it is won; to some extent it recalled that amazing championship at Hoylake, when Mr. Sidney Fry so nearly gained the title after being at one time, as it appeared, hopelessly beaten by Mr. Charles Hutchings. Now it was surely Mr. Lassen's match; but in the crisis Lord Charles Hope came again and fought every inch of the way home. In this period every hole was halved to the end of the round, so that after the statutory thirty-six had been played the state of things was as at the beginning of the day. No business had been done, and each man might be said to have had his tail up quite as much as the other. The spasm followed. The thirty-seventh had to be played. Mr. Lassen teed up his ball, said to himself that he must keep it to the left as there was the dread out-of-bounds on the right that had been a constant trouble to him, swung, struck, and to his dismay saw the little white ball bearing slowly but surely to the right after all. It did not reach the trees, but, almost as bad, it fell into the big deep bunker out that way, and made recovery difficult. Lord Charles Hope seized his advantage. A good ball shot straight down the middle of the fairway, and the hole and the match were his. An extraordinary game indeed that was.

In the Open Championship at Chantilly there was an entry that was nearly good enough for a championship on British soil. Vardon and Ray, out across the Atlantic, were missing, but otherwise the class was as numerous and good as need be, and there were a few of the best British amateurs. George Duncan won, as he had won the "News of the World" tournament the week before, and so made it clear that he had come into his own at last. These two were his first really big victories in classic open events, and they were brilliantly and indeed easily gained. But it was not Duncan's victory, so well deserved as it was, that makes this championship at Chantilly worth a place in golfing history. It was something else that very nearly happened. Among the competitors was an amateur in Mr. H. D. Gillies, who at different times in recent seasons has shown an immense capacity. At St. Andrews in the Amateur Championship only a few months before he had made a brilliant display. Now, here, he did a thing which to the best of my belief and after a searching of all the records had never been done before, and that was in an open championship competition of the first order, decided by four rounds of stroke play and with the best players of the world arrayed against him, he as an amateur led the whole field for three consecutive rounds. Mr. Ouimet in America did not lead for three rounds, no amateur had led for three rounds in any open championship before, and it is not often that any professional has done so either. Mr. Gillies has enormous powers for concentration and effort, and, as one might say, he can strain himself at the game until he nearly drops. In his third round he had a wicked piece of bad luck which cost him two most valuable shots - not the sort of bad luck that one gets through finding a specially nasty place in a bunker, but the much worse variety which is the result of a grave error in course construction. After one of the finest drives one might wish to see, at a hole just after the turn he found his ball lying on a road which had to be treated as a hazard, and from here he was bunkered. He knew that Duncan was pressing him hard, and that he had not a stroke to spare. Still by an enormous effort he kept his lead, and at the end of the third round it looked as if it would still be a lead of two strokes, when alas! on the home green he lost a stroke in putting. Instead of having a lead of two over the terrible George for the last round he had now a lead of only one. There is not much difference between one and two - it may all be accounted for by the very smallest of putts - but in a case of this kind the moral effect is very great. You see, when you lead by two strokes you realise that you can afford to lose one of them and still be leading, but when you only have an advantage of one there is the cold truth that you cannot afford to lose anything at all or the lead will go - the lead that Mr. Gillies had held all the time. One may be sure that he felt this, for coming off" that home green some one said to him quietly, "You still lead, Gillies," and he turned with a little melancholy and responded, "Yes, but one stroke is not much to lead Duncan by, is it?' The effect was visible at the first tee in the afternoon. He knew the responsibility. He took an infinity of pains, far too much. He addressed his ball until he was sick of looking at it any more, and then he topped it into the bunker in front of him. Good-bye, Open Championship of France! But there it was, a brilliant achievement for all that, and if he had won, as once he seemed likely to do, no man could have done justice to the golf history of that year with amateurs Ouimet and Gillies as Open Champions.