RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30042, 29 January 1963, Page 20

RANDOM REMINDER

WHO’S FOR TENNIS?

Tennis is a splendid game, to watch. Summer offers few things more pleasant than a long, cool drink, while one may offer expert comments on the brown, loose-limbed young men and the brown, looselimbed young women as they bring off stroke after beautiful stroke with athletic grace. But watching is one thing, playing is another. Take, for instance, the sad experience of a woman of our acquaintance. She was dragged, protest! igly, into the campers* team to play against the local resident in an annual match at a Canterbury seaside resort. Her tennis career

to that stage had been noted for its brevity, and for its complete lack of athletic grace. She had no racket. She had no shoes. She had no ambition. The racket was provided for her. She wore brown lace-up shoes (rubber-soled) belonging to one of her sons. And she looked very like Little Orphan Annie. Inevitably, she was drawn with an equally incompetent partner against the best of the opposition, two fit, lean, active-looking women whose lives on farms had not prevented them from playing plenty of tennis. And the ability to handle high-spirited horses made our little

heroine’s second service a piece of cake. Inevitably, too, she put her small foot in it, first by making a mistake in the score, although that hardly seemed possible, then by congratulating her partner, when she achieved a sharp crosscourt volley from the racket-handle. But when it was all done, and the little lady had narrowly avoided decapitation from the opposition’s nasty, kicking service, haa performed rather like a short-sighted butterflycatcher, and had lost the game 8-0, she came off the court, hot and smil-

ing. “Tennis” she said. “Isn’t it a lovely game?”