LAWN TENNIS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLVII, Issue 7, 8 January 1916, Page 16

LAWN TENNIS.

An American paper lives up to the traditions of American journalism when it mikes the following comments on we lady champion, Mies Bjurstedt:— A lady • who can stay up most of the night, ■ smoke cigarettes ad libitum, take appa- ■ rently not the slightest care of her ■ health, and yet tirelessly win her way into fame as the apparent world's champion woman tennis player, is the stran_,e phenomenon that ds bewildering tennis lovers. One newspaper editoT has already gone so far as to administer a severe sermon to hie readers on this subject, accusing Miss Molla Bjursted of accomplishing all th is on the vitality and energy handed down to her by scores ot ancestors as remote from the cigarette and late hours as from the tennis court, and- adjuring those of his reavers who did not iboaet such ancestry not to attempt to •win championships by similar methods. However that may be—and doubtless the lady's foibles ihave been much exaggerated—the fact remains that Miss Bjurstedt's comet-like sweep into fame from practical obscurity only six months ago is hardly equalled in the annals of any sport in this country. . . . The experts awoke to the fact that Miss Bjuistedt was the most remarKable player that the United States had ever seen. She was the holder of more titles than any tennis player who hau ever stepped on a court. No man or "woman has ever before held all of the national titles in tennis. Thus, in a few months, Miss Bjurstedt, from an unknown tennis player, has come to be a universal woman champion; there has appeared no girl or woman who has ibeen able really to give her. a game. iMay Sutton, fcue woriu s champion of a few years past, and who is now the wife of Thomas C. Bundy, McLoughlin's partner in doubles, is returning to the game expressly to see if she can wrest the honours from the newcomer."