LATE CAPTAIN WILDING.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXIX, Issue LXIX, 25 May 1915, Page 6

LATE CAPTAIN WILDING.

AN AUSTRALIAN APPRECIATION

The Melbourne A*££ <fi ~^@ 13th inst. has. <„-< fiM" &]ipl'eciation of the late,. Captain A&thouy Wilding. W^. 1 quote the . following passages»-»- ' '

"Th<a, death of Anthony Frederic1 Wilding removes perhaps the l^ost widely known amateur athlete iji the whole world, for lawn tennis ,is the most universally played of *vi sports*' and Wilding had during i\& last few years played and won char/pionships in almost every European, country, in Australia, and in America. He held more important championships than any other player, past or present. He was a man of magnificent physique, with pleasant personal qualities which won mm affection wherever he went, and with a high standard of sportsmanship which was always keenly appreciated by the crowds before whom ne appeared and those who were opposed to iiim on the court. " He was a splendid winner, and, still finer, a splendid loser. He took the luck of the game as it came to him, and played every match to the finish.

"Wonderful stories are told of the grand uphill fights Wilding fought on the green turf of the tennis courts when the odds seemed all against him before duty called him to the grimmer game of war. No one who saw it will ever forget how, here in Melbourne, in 191)9, when two sets down and apparently hopelessly beaten, he struggled so gamely against N. E. Brookes, and eventually, carried off the nest, three sets, and with them the Victorian championship. Those who knew him— in fact, all who ever saw hini play-T----will have no doubt that,, howeve.r death came to him on the battlefields, it found him game to the last.

"Of his tennis little need be sr.id. He was tli3 perfect player. His style was an idsal combination of the effective and the graceful, and was regarded as a model for all text-books upon the game. Opinions differ, and always will differ,, as to his relative standing among all past and present champions. A great many fine judges of the game hold that for the last four or five years he had been the best all-round, fair weather or foul, player in the world, and that he would have beaten either of the great Doherty brothers at their best, owing to his superior pace and the wonderful stamina which enabled him to sustain 'a constant standard of excellence from the first stroke to the last, however long the match might be. Perhaps N. E. Brookes always had more sheer genius as a player —could at his best rise to heights that Wilding could never reach—but all will readily admit that in pace and technique and stamina Wilding was incomparable."