Tennis Juniors Are Not Easy To Rank

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28938, 4 July 1959, Page 5

Tennis Juniors Are Not Easy To Rank

/pHOSE interested in Canterbury lawn tennis, unused to having representatives on the national senior ranking lists in recent years—Miss J. Davidson was on this year—can be reasonably happy with three players on the junior lists announced last year. They are C. G. Judge, sixth, and G. Moss, ninth, on the boys’ list, and L. Mardon, ninth on the girls’ list. One of the significant points for Canterbury is that in some of its leanest years * of senior tennis it has 'had several nation-ally-ranked juniors—two in 1956, four in 1957, two in 1958 and three this year. Now to be watched is whether these players ever appear on the senior lists in the next few years; Miss Davidson has. Difficult

Compilation of the national junior lists must be much harder than listing of the seniors, which causes enough headaches and later criticism any year. For New Zealand’s leading juniors do not meet one another, as a rule, as often as seniors do in a season, and much of the assessment must be done on meeting with mutual opponents. Whereas there are at least three main touraments in which most of the seniors play there is virtually only one for the juniors—the

national junior championships. Even there the tournament is divided into two sections, under 19 and under 17, with the resultant difficulty of comparing standards when making one ranking list. In spite of these factors, Canterbury might still be a little disappointed that Judge slipped from fourth place, which he held in both 1957 and 1958, to sixth, and that P. Alexander did not make the list at all. G. Judge I. Crookenden, the under 17 Waikato player, and R. Hawkes, of Wellington, were ranked fourth and fifth respectively ahead of Judge. Judge did not take part in the New Zealand junior championships, where Crookenden won the under 17 section and Hawkes was a semi-finalist in the under 19 section, because he was away with the New Zealand Universities team in Australia. But Judge’s perfomances elsewhere seemed better than those of either of these players, especially against some well-performed seniors. In the South Canterbury titles he beat G. L. Johns, a wellregarded Auckland player, and did well against another, K. H. Long, in the third round. At the New Zealand titles, he excelled when he gave a fighting display, taking the Davis Cup player. M. A. Otway to 7-5 in the first set of their third-round match. Victories In Slazenger Shield matches, he beat R. Clarke (Wellington), ranked second junior, and took a set from J. B. Souter. In other matches, Clarke - ' fcteat Crookertden

Moss, ranked ninth on the list might well have been ahead of P. Dibley (Auckland), and Alexander might have been ahead of them both. Dibley had a win over Clarke in a Slazenger Shield match but Moss put him out of the New Zealand Junior championships. Alexander’s claims lay In two magnificent performances against Souter in the Canterbury and New Zealand championships, and a sound defeat of J. H. Lockington, second ranked junior in New Zealand last year. He suffered from a recurring back injury for a great pl|rt of the season.