Today the Varsity golf team is perched at the top of the heap in the Northern half of the Eastern Intercollegiate circuit, but last weekend's victories over Brown and Dartmouth were only dress rehearsals for the crucial tests on this week's golfing calendar. Powerful Williams rolls into town tomorrow afternoon to do battle with the Hoddermen on Belmont, while Holy Cross and Yale follow in rapid succession on Saturday. The Crusaders should be a rather soft touch, but the Elis will be out for blood, anxious to avenge two straight lickings at the hands of Harvard.

Crimson victory hopes must be based mainly upon the ability of a well balanced team to score points in every foursome, but standing head and shoulders above the rest are two Seniors, Captain Ace Cordingley and Bob Graves. They provide balance plus at the top of the lineup, because they can match shots with any intercollegiate golfers in the United States. Every team opponent must reckon with that due and realize that it will be hard to take any points from them. Graves has never lost a Varsity match in three years of play.

Cordingley is probably as long off the tee as any collegian in America, outdriving his teammates by 50 yards on the average shot. Graves, kingpin of the New England college linksmen, is much shorter with woods but is a scrambler par excellence. Both he and Cordingley, however, are good iron players who rarely miss a green badly. They will both be three year men, sneaking into the number five and six jobs as Sophomores and working their way to the top as Juniors. A third returning letterman on this year's team is Junior Watty Dickerman, teaming with Don Elbel as the number five man last year. Dickerman has had his ups and downs this spring but is tried and true in match play. Cordingley, Graves and Dickerman have been playing the lead positions on this year's golf sextet. The last letterman, Don Elbel, has been in a continual dog-fight with newcomers for one of the remaining three jobs and has just missed out on every occasion. He may break into the lineup this weekend.

The reason for this competition for the last three jobs has been the rise of three or four comparative unknowns. Juniors Gerry Davis and Don Peddle have won regular roles, and Sophomore Pete Macgowan slipped into the Varsity lineup in the second match and has been there ever since. He has yet to lose an individual contest, and he and partner Don Peddle have lost only one best ball. In addition to Elbel, that leaves Jack McCann, Bill Melsh, and Ted Allis on the outside looking in. Both McCann and Allis have been used in the starting lineup this year and are not out of the fight yet. McCann, in fact, is probably the number seven man. As it stands now, Cordingley, Dickerman, Graves, Davis, Peddle, and Macgowan look like Coach Hodder's nominees to face the Elis, but anything can happen by the weekend.

The job of a college golf coach is usually a bed of roses, but Clark Hodder's experiences this spring have been the exception to the rule. Actual instruction of course, is left to Bert Nichols, famous Belmont professional, but Hodder has had his hands full herding his squad through to four wins in five starts. The men competing for the bottom spots have been very erratic. There have been five men, almost evenly matched fighting it out for three positions. Harvard has defeated Rhode Island State, Boston University, Brown, and Dartmouth and has lost only to Amherst--in a non-league clash. And it has been no small task to decide which six men were the best six golfers on the squad on one particular day. A couple of bad guesses might have turned at least one of those triumphs into a narrow defeat.