LAWN TENNIS

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 132, 30 November 1935, Page 24

LAWN TENNIS

LOWLY BEGINNINGS

REMARKABLE GROWTH

Time brings many changes; and not the least of all in the world of sport. Games come and go in popularity, though no pastime ever really becomes extinct. It survives in some form-or other.

Probably no sport has changed so rapidly in scope and method as lawn tennis—a game in its modern incidence not yet 60 years old. These are days of great crowds, high admission charges, professionalism, and shorts. But it was not always so. Tennis had very humble beginnings, but like many games of lowly origin, the growth of its vigour has been remarkable. The story of the first championship ever played at Wimbledon in 1877 reveals

truly how great has been the change wrought. The players in A the memorable final of that year were W. Marshall and Spencer Gore, who took the court wielding pear-shaped rackets, weighing Host. The gallery numbered 200, and the charge for admission was Is. ■ The umpire, if perhaps not suspended like the sword of-Damocles, occupied a very insecure chair mounted upon a still more precarious table, while the net hung by guy ropes from two poles. At the sides it was five feet high, but sagged to 3ft 6in in the centre. The service, like the bowling of cricketers, was underhand, and the rallies almost interminable. STEADY STROKES. Volleys were rarely attempted; in fact a description of the match says that such a stroke was not played in the three sets. Lobs, too, were equally rare. The match was just a succession of steady strokes up and down the centre of the court, with but an occasional departure toward the sidelines. Gore won the first two sets with a loss of only two games, and while Marshall made a more spirited showing in the third, the set and the match went to the former at 6-4. Gore was thus the first champion of the world, though the tennis world was then small indeed. He reigned until 1878, when P. F. Hadow, better known as a cricketer, adopted tennis as a novelty, and showed such aptitude that he not only went through to the challenge round at Wimbledon without the loss of a set, but in the final defeated Gore 7-5, 6-1, 9-7. By this performance Hadow earned a distinction that no other player has yet achieved. He was the only man who never lost a set at Wimbledon—j a record he- kept intact by virtue of! the fact that he did not appear there again. During the first six years men's singles only were played at Wimbledon, but in 1884 with the gradual emancipation of women ladies' singles were included in the programme. Tennis has travelled far and fast since those days, receiving its first great impetus with the advent in' 1880 of the Renshaw brothers, who amazed the critics when they had the temerity to exploit in a manner hitherto unknown the full possibilities of the volley. Certain it is that those responsible for the creation of Wimbledon never, even in their wildest phantasies, envisaged its future growth, nor the spread of the game, which is now the most popular of all international sports.