Tennis Match With Otago Revived Successfully

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28766, 11 December 1958, Page 15

Tennis Match With Otago Revived Successfully

(SEVERAL noteworthy factors <- emerged from Canterbury’s second representative tennis win Of the season when it beat Otago by 14 matches to 10 at Wilding Park last week-end. Canterbury beat West Coast a few weeks before in its first fixture.

Most important, it appears that the annual contests between Can/terbury and Otago have been revived for the meeting at the Week-end was so successful that it would be most disappointing if it were let slip again. This is the second revival; the first, in 1955, lasted only two seasons before the .fixture lapsed again. Players Pleased Players on both sides on Saturday expressed their pleasure that the match was being held again and one prominent Otago representative thought it was “silly” that it had ever lapsed. Although Canterbury beat Otago this time after losing the last twice, Christchurch tennis enthusiasts were surprised by the Otago team in two respects. First was the ease by which the two top Otago men beat their Canterbury opponents. Otago has gained a very sound top man in Trevor Withers, who played top for Hawke's Bay before he shifted to Dunedin, and who before that was a leading member of the Woolston club in Christchurch. He was a member of the Canterbury Wilding Shield team in 1950. Out of Form Withers was much superior to a sadly out of form A. D. L. Hunter, who was only able to take one game from the Otago man. As an entry for the men’s singles in the New Zealand championships to be played at Wilding Park from January 3 to 10, Withers has drawn the Auckland player, B. E. Woolf, who Should prove a more difficult opponent. In the doubles the

Otago man is paired with a promising young Canterbury junior, L. Martin.

The second Otago man, D. Shaw, beat C. W. Pritchard, formerly of Otago and now top ranked in Canterbury with just about as little difficulty. Pritchard got three games. Shaw is remembered for some fine games on Wilding Park as a member of junior teams and as a winner of the New Zealand plate in 1956. The other respect in which the Otago team surprised was in its predominance of left-handers. Canterbury has only one leading player in senior tennis—R. G. Pattinson—who is a left-hander, but Otago had four left-handed men in its representative team and it appeared that their style of play was at times just a little disconcerting to the Canterbury righthanders. At one stage in the men’s doubles these four—Shaw, D. Brookes, D. Duncan and W. Macauley—were all playing on the two centre courts.