Overseas Players Will Add Lustre To Canterbury Tennis Titles

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30668, 6 February 1965, Page 13

Overseas Players Will Add Lustre To Canterbury Tennis Titles

yyHEN Canterbury reluct-

antly agreed to forego the holding of its tennis championships this season at the usual time between Christmas and New Year there was some apprehension the tournament might be ruined.

As it turns out the field will be the most interesting for many seasons. Most interesting of all, however, will be an associated event in which a Canterbury or New Zealand women’s team will play ostensibly an unofficial test with Brazil for this will involve the Wimbledon champion, Miss Maria Bueno. It was decided the Canterbury tournament should be held immediately after the Wills invitation tournament in Auckland and that overseas players taking part there should be invited to travel south. Since then there have been plenty of frustrations through protracted negotiations because of the uncertainty in the movements of the overseas players and the difficulties of making early arrangements.

It was only by the middle of this week that the tournament organisers could see some stability in the likely entry—and the prospect of four days of exciting tennis next Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Wednesday will provide one of the highlights because that morning, the national women’s champion, Mrs R. Davy, and a former champion, Miss J. Davidson, who has returned to competitive tennis, will play the Brazilian Federation Cup team. Misses Bueno and M. Schwartz. The Brazilians

were unable to play in the championships but this meeting may be even preferable. If Miss Davidson had not decided to take a break at the end of last season she and Mrs Davy would very likely have been the New Zealand Federation Cup team. In the event Mrs Davy played with distinction in Australia. Apart from that the championships themselves have a fascinating overseas entry—the Frenchman, P. Dannon, his wife, Mrs R. Dannon, G.

Stilwell and K. Woolridge, I of Britain, Miss H. Schildknecht, of Germany, Misses S. Marchant and L. Holstein, of Australia, and, of course, Miss R. Bentley, former New Zealand championship winner and runner-up at Wilding Park last month. Darmon, top for France, is one of the world’s outstanding amateurs, ranked tenth in E. C. Potter’s world list. In recent months he has won six European tour-

naments. He was a semifinalist in the French championships, one of the world’s top four tournaments, and more recently has played with success in America and Australia where he had a 6-0, 6-3, 6-2 win over F. Stolle, twice Wimbledon finalist

Mrs Darmon, formerly Miss R. M. Reyes, of Mexico, also has a fine tournament record. At the end of the 1950’s she and Miss Y. Ramirez, also of Mexico, were one of the best women’s doubles pairs. They won the French title and were semi-finalists at Wimbledon. Mrs Darmon has also been a French singles semi-finalist and has reached the later stages at Wimbledon. Stilwell is well known in New Zealand after his tour with the British team in 1963. At that time he was still a junior and beat some of New Zealand's leading seniors, but he is now ranked in Britain, and in Australia recently beat the Davis Cup player, J. Newcombe.

Miss Schildknecht was second to the well-known

Miss Helga Schultze in the German Federation Cup team in Australia and she has done a great deal of tennis touring recently. She has made her mark in Continental tournaments and also did well to reach the third round of the United States singles. The two Australians last week won the Auckland doubles title, beating Miss Bentley and Miss S. Clement in the final, 6-4, 6-2. Once a New South Wales junior finalist, Miss Holstein is a younger sister to the former ranked Australian woman. Miss B. Holstein, who visited New Zealand in a New South Wales team several years ago. Miss L. Holstein recently won the New South Wales country singles and doubles and Miss Marchant was runner-up in the doubles. They are in New Zealand on a working holiday.

To the visitors are added the leading New Zealander, L. A. Gerrard, and another, R. N. Hawkes, of Wellington, Mrs Davy and other Canterbury players, terbury players.