Interesting Games Likely In Tennis Tournament

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28742, 13 November 1958, Page 15

Interesting Games Likely In Tennis Tournament

piRST tournament on the grass courts in Canterbury for the 1958-59 season —the annual Show week-end fixture —will begin at Wilding Park tomorrow, again with a slight change in organisation. Before last year the tournament comprised men’s singles and doubles and women’s singles and doubles and was played on the Friday and Saturday of the week-end holiday. Last season the tournament was changed to men’s singles, women’s singles and mixed doubles, and matches were played on the Friday and Sunday so as not to interfere with ordinary Saturday club competitions. Because tournaments usually draw more men competitors than women, and men are left without mixed doubles partners, a return has been made this season to the men’s and women's singles and doubles, and play will be held on Friday, Saturday morning and Sunday. Keen Contests Competition in the Show weekend tournament over the last few years has been most interesting, especially in the men’s section. With wins for three years in succession from 1953, the Woolston player, W. M. Logan, who now lives in Wellington, monopolised the competition and usually showed his best form of the season after a winter’s soccer. In 1956. G. A. Burton, now of the AvoYiside club, who had come to Christchurch from Roxburgh and had been an Otago representative, won the men’s singles. Then last year, another former

Otago representative, who has since become the top-ranked player in Canterbury, C. W. Pritchard, of North Linwood, beat Burton in an exacting final. Pritchard, an entry again this year, looks almost certain to hold his title and he is seeded first He recently won the Labour week-end hardcourt men’s singles and is in good form although he has been extended by some promising young players. Opposition Most opposition to Pritchard will probably come from A. D. L. Hunter, present holder of the Canterbury men’s singles title, C. G. Judge and G. Moss. Moss, a Linwood High .School pupil, proved a difficult opponent for Pritchard in the Labour weekend final. Miss G. Hopkinson, the leading University player, stands out among the entries for the women’s singles, especially because she was in such grand form on the grass in her first club match of the season against Mrs J. McKay (Avonside), Miss Hopkinson reproduces that aggressive but accurate stroking she should not be beaten. Her main opponents are the Souter twins, formerly of South Canterbury, who play for the new North Linwood women’s team in Christchurch, and the Avonside quartette, Mrs McKay, Misses D. Norrie, C. Smith and L. Mardon. They are the four members of the Avonside senior team. In last season’s rankings, Miss Hopkinson was first. Miss Norrie equal third, Mrs McKay fifth and Miss Mardon sixth.