PERRY AND TILDEN

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 June 1937, Page 5

PERRY AND TILDEN

MERITS DISCUSSED The series of five matches between W. T. Tilden and F. J. Perry, which ended at Boston on Tuesday with a record of four to one victories in favour of the Englishman, has provoked two questions (wrote Wallis Myers, in the London “Daily Telegraph” on April 13 last). The first concerns the character of these contests; the second , involves the relative place in history of these famous players. That all of the five contests were “all out” affairs, each man bent on success, the communications I have received Irom America confirm. Professionals'do not “back their fancy” if they are not. assured beforehand that the fight is absolutely “square,” and just as Vines laid odds on Perry winning, so Vincent Richards was prepared to back Tilden. An eye-witness of the first match in New York, where 15,000 spectators paid £6,000 to watch the play, tells me it was “a hopelessly uneven” encounter in which Tilden revealed beyond question the measure of his own decline.

Seldom had the Philadelphia veteran received a greater volume of encouragement; seldom, my informant adds, has a great gallery been more saddened by what it saw. The truth is—and it makes any comparison between the two champions in 1937 fallacious —Tilden at 44 was no match physically for Perry at 28. The matter of stroke repertoire and of tactics did not influence the result.

With the passage of years, Tilden has shed both his speed of drive and of foot.

Perry, I am told, had the door wide open in the backhand corner, and the fact that the once superlatively accurate American netted the ball 50 times in the four sets is proof of his plight. Both men have made big money out of these trials of strength, and none will grudge them the gain, but the result, in view of physical laws, has no bearing on the relation between Tilden and Perry as world exponents of lawn tennis.

Tilden was in his prime during the six years that he held the American chamilionship against all comers. That period came between his three Wimbledon victories in 1921, 1922 and 1930. The Wimbledon crowds, in fact, saw Tilden only before and after his npctheosis. • TILDEN’S ADVANTAGE 1 have often been asked whether I think the best Tilden would have beaten the best Perry, and I have no hesitation in saying that I think he would. Fcr Tilden, oven when he was past his peak—as lie was in 1930 —could oiorwhelrn players like Allison, who wr re a match tor Perrv.

Perr.v has superb stamina and mobility, but Tilden's reserves of strength were even «reater. Literally he never "wilted," whatever the temperature or strain. Moreover, ho had assets that Perry, in spite of his three successive victories at Wimbledon, never possessed—a service that could win four aces in a row without a ball being touched; a speed and control of drive on both' wings that were the despair of Johnston, the American winner at Wimbledon in 1923 and one of the great Cali lornian players, and an all-round skill

that forced W A Latned to declare that he could have conceded almost 15 io any of his contemporaries. The greatest 'Tilden, however, like every oilier champion, had his limited reign, and during that scintillating period he did not cross the Atlantic