The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1938. CUPS AND CONTESTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 208, 3 September 1938, Page 8

The Auckland Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, The Echo and The Sun.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1938. CUPS AND CONTESTS.

For the cause that lacka assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance, For the future in the distance, And the good that tee can do.

The United States regained the Davis Cup last year, and to-day in Philadelphia the Australians will make a great effort to win it for the southern hemisphere, where it has not been since Tildcn and Johnston swept all before them in the challenge round played here in Auckland in 1920. Seven years passed before the symbol of tennis supremacy was wrested from the Americans, and if the Australians fail this year it may be that the Americans will reign supreme lor another long term. From the huge number of players who throughout the United States learn their tennis under competitive conditions there arise, almost regularly, two or three who are superlatively good. At present J. D. Budge is in a class by himself, but. the 20-year-old Robert Riggs is a coming champion, and he and Parker, and perhaps Grant, all of whom are ranked in the world's " first ten," will be stout defenders of the Cup in future years, even if Budge should take the advice lately offered him, " to turn professional at the end of the current season before his money-making powers dwindle through defeat." But first of all Budge and his lieutenants must defend the Cup this year, and whether or not they do so successfully depends largely on one Adrian Quist.

Quist, but for illness, would lust year have been ranked No. 3 of the world's best players, after Budge and von Cramm. Australia's hopes of him are very high, or were until last week, when most calculations were upset by the easy victory of Budge and Mako in the United States doubles championship. The form of Quist and Bromwich in that preliminary test—for if the Australians cannot win the doubles they can hardly hope to win the Cup—seemed too bad to be true. Since then we have heard of Budge's team mates, American professionals and members of the Japanese Davis Cup team all " practising feverishly to improve his form." Sympathy must be felt with a player in such a predicament, keenly conscious that everything depends on him and that if he cannot strike form all will be lost. He is suffering one of the penalties of "stars" in all branches of highly-organised sport. A great many unthinking people expect a champion to be At the top of his form on all important occasions, and even—as Budge discovered in Australia not long ago—on minor occasions too.

Some such thoughts must have been in the mind of Dwight Davis when he was heard to remark that he occasionally wondered if the Davis Cup had been an asset or a detriment to the game. "It has become too big, and requires too much time from young fellows who ought to be thinking of the serious problems of life." The contest has indeed become big. For three years there were only two competitors, but the number rose to more than thirty, from Europe, North and South America and Australia. From players who reach the first rank the contest demands time, energy and travel endurance for several years, and for several months of each year. Is it all worth while? Perhaps the realisation is coming, as seems to be happening with the Olympic Games, that a cosmopolitan contest open to all the world is admirable as an ideal, but in practice it is too big, both for the players and for the good of the game.