New Zealand and the Davis Cup

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21473, 15 May 1935, Page 10

New Zealand and the Davis Cup

We have drawn attention before to the short-sighted policy which leads the New Zealand Lawn Tennis Association to waste its money upon entering lor the Davis Cup year by year teams which neither represent New Zealand nor give this country the benefit of their overseas match play. A nation enters, or should enter, this contest not because it hopes to win a valuable and famous trophy, nor because it wants publicity, but primarily because it wishes to give its players experience in the international field and so to improve the standard of tennis within its own territories. This latter need is particularly urgent in a country so isolated from the ten-nis-playing centres as the Dominion. The team which has been playing Australia at Eastbourne no more represents New Zealand than would a team of All Blacks selected from New Zealand footballers who happen to be working or studying in England. E. D. Andrews, A. C. Stedman, and C. E. Malfroy make a reasonably strong team, possibly a stronger one than could be found within the Dominion. But they return none of the benefits of their play where these benefits should be returned—in New Zealand itself. In recent, months both Norman Brookes and F. J. Perry, the present world's champion, have emphasised the urgent necessity for our players to travel overseas; and what they say is proved at every New Zealand championship meeting. Yet all the association can do, year after year, is to enter for the Davis Cup a team of players who scarcely ever see New Zealand. There are half a dozen young players in New Zealand who must be as promising, for their age and experience, as any in the world; yet they are being completely ignored by the body which is supposed to help and encourage them. The association would do the game it controls a far bcttci seivict if it were to forget all about the Davis Cup for the next 20 years and devote its money and energy towards sending, every now and then, on a modest trip to Australia or California, a team of young New Zealanders who play their tennis in New Zealand.