TENNIS

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 30 January 1926, Page 10

TENNIS

The Miramar courts, which were opened on Thursday, January 21, on the occasion of the Wellington Provincial championship meeting, are bitu-men-surfaced, and it is expected that when the pavilion is erected the courts and accommodation will be the best south of the line. A large number ot grass courts will soon b e .ready, and Wellington players are assured of a splendid ground of their own. They have had the whole-hearted assistance ot Mr Norwood and his and Messrs Peacock, Goodie and Kean, who, with th© management committee of the Wellington Association, are to be congratulated on their energy and enterprise. Following the successful inauguration last February at Monte Carlo of the Butler Trophy, for an international men’s doubles competition, wliicli Italy, represented by Baron H. L. de Morpurgo and P. Gaslini, won from a field comprising teams from England, America, France and Switzerland, a new. competition, run on similar lines, for international ladies’ doubles, will be held at La Festa, Monte Carlo, on February 22-28. 1926. It will be known as the Beaumont Cup, Commodore Louis l>. Beaumont having offered two trophies. British doubles competitions, other than those of England, Scotland and Wales, must enter from the various Dominions, such as Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Sooth Africa, Canada and India, etc.

TEAM FROM AMERICA. After all the hard and deserved things said and written about the nog leet of the American Lawn Tennis A? sociation to .send a team to Australia, there appears to be a prospect that the visit may yet bo fulfilled. At least a cable received in the Dominion a few davs ago lent some colour to that view. Even the editor of: America Lawn Tennis, Mr. 8. V,. Alerrihew, tools a little bit of the guilt at the Unit 1 I States association failing to keep its promise to send a team out this season if its players retained the Davis Cun Commenting on the subject, Air. Aferri hew writes in the last issue of has paper:—“There will be no American team for Australia this year. . . Mindful of the close and friendly relations that have existed between the two countries for many years, and of the pluck of the Australian body in sending teams to the United States year after year, the U.S.L.T.A. has been most earne-tly desirous of reciprocating in kind.” After referring to the trip of the American players to New Zealand and Australia in 1920, when they took the cup home, we read: “Prior to that the U.S.L.T.A. had sent teams to Australia in 1908, 1909, and .1911, all three invasions being unsuccessful. The Australians came to America in 1913, 19.14, 1921-22-23-24, and 1925, Davis Cup invasions only being taker, into account; so it will be seen that the United States is in debt to Australia, and the U.S.L.T.A. has laboured unceasingly to fulfil the promise made nearly a year ago to despatch a team of our best men to the island continent. . . . While admitting failure this year, the project is not given up. The most cogent reasons for sending a team exist, and the U.S.L.T.A. will leave no stone unturned in their efforts to secure a team of strength commensurate with the object sought for. Of course it is felt that to send younger and less well-known players would not achieve the object in view.”