F. J. PERRY'S REMARKABLE CAREER

Press, Volume LXXI, Issue 21553, 16 August 1935, Page 18

F. J. PERRY'S REMARKABLE CAREER

TRIBUTE TO BRITISH TENNIS STAR "Before I describe a contest which will-certainly go down in history as a•' great final—great because of the qutUty of the play and the attacking dSwacter of nearly ever? shot—one may pay a tribute of unstinted praise tgr the winner," writes A. Wallis "Myers, in the "Daily Telegraph," in ©smmaating on the recent Wimbledsta tennis singles championship final between F. J. Perry, of England, and G. von Cramm, of Germany, which Parry won. "Perry is not only the first 'playSag through' champion to keep his be properly reserved for the ins round, when the opposition was sipaagest, his soundest and most conleanteateti display. ""What a remarkable and romantic .Perry has had—the first TPjopie a Champion' we may call him. A native of Stockport, Lancashire, fie Has just turned 26—two months «ger than von Cramm. At Wallasey *p®Bi»3r Scbflipl and at Ealing

County School he showed an aptitude for ball games, but it was not until he spent a family holiday at Eastbourne, and, as a boy of 15, watched the tournament in Devonshire Park, that his ambition to become a champion was fired. "A year later he turned up at the Middlesex junior championship, with a racket that had two strings missing, and reached the final. Then he com peted in the junior championship at Wimbledon, where his old racket collapsed in the middle of a game. "But, as his father said afterwards, be came home like the proverbial dog with two tails, for he had hung up his clothes in the pavilion of the AllEngland Club in the locker used by Rene Lacoste, the reigning champion. "How Perry went 'to Budapest and became the first non-Hungarian • competitor to win the world's table-tennis championship; how he' brought the qujck-firijng methods of the tabletennis table, with the ball struck on the rise, to the tennis lawn, and came within a stroke of beating Austin at Queen's Club; how. given the opportunity to travel by his father and the Lawn Tennis Association, he subsequently "won almost every important title open to competitors abroad, taking the crown at Wimbledon last year—that is only a bare, outline of his upward flight. "Incidentally, he can make a very neat after-dinner speech—and I've heard him tell an amusing story in more than one country-"