TENNIS

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3369, 24 September 1931, Page 2

TENNIS

SHOULD BE STARTED EARLY. The other day, when one of the usual howls about our being beaten and decadent and a few other things was being sent to high heaven (and the lawn tennis authorities), I was very interested to notice the ages of our junior champions during the last few years, wrote Betty Nuthall, famous English player, in the Daily Mail recently. Of course this has a keen personal interest for me, but nobody seems to be starting the game as young as I did. I was just 13 when I won my first three junior championships (singles, doubles, and mixed), and I do not think I started too early. Forgive me for being critical right at the start, but with all this outcry, why don't the lawn tennis fathers and mothers step in and try to help the country by starting the coming stars young? With but very, very few exceptions they do not seem to be doing it.

Many “reasons” have been forthcoming when I have asked the question in conversation, the principal one, sometimes accompanied by a shrug of the shoulders, being “the danger of physical strain in a mere child.”

Well, there is doubtless something in that as far as athletics, which is taking a great hold among girls and of which I am afraid I know little, is concerned, but I do not think it applies to lawn tennis. Let me explain.

Go and See the Juniors.

Lawn tennis is certainly a competitive game, and one which has grown more and more exacting in its calls on physical stamina in recent years — even since the time I began it. But it has its degrees, and to compare even the final of a junior championship with an ordinary first round at Wimbledon is to sink to absurdity. If anyone doubts this let him go and watch those sadly neglected junior championships and this public neglect and coldness should incidentally provide the grousers with an object lesson! There is very little danger of overstrain in a lawn tennis match between two youngsters, for when they tire physically they also tire of the game, and very soon turn it in. In no other game I know can one conserve one’s energy, take a “mike” course, it is bad for one’s skill and technique and I am not recommending

it, but at the moment I am dealing with the alleged danger of physical strain, and I do not think it exists as a sensible reality. Teach Them Early. With that argument out of the way —if you will allow me to put it there —I think all the other reasons are in favour of starting lawn tennis as early as it is convenient to do so. But I suggest one stipulation, borne out not only by my own limited experience, but by that of scores of sportsmen and women I know in lawn tennis and other games as well. The young beginner should have good advice and examples at his hand before he touches a racket.

In every sport —indeed, in every walk of life, I think —it is fully recognised to-day that bad habits, so easily and naturally formed, are far more difficult to eradicate than new good ones are to form. There are scores of people, even in first-class lawn tennis, who while realising how utterly weak and futile some of their strokes are, cannot remedy them. Half an hour’s tuition at the age of 10 might have spared them years of annoying failure. I will not emphasise this beyond saying that Bill Tilden, Gerald Patterson, and Rene Lacoste have all told me about the agonising hours they have spent unlearning strokes which they have realised were ruining their games; strokes they had picked up carelessly, unknowingly, and hardened by years of match play. Incidentally most of them were concerned with the backhand, but not all of them.

This is why the coaching schemes put forward by the Lawn Tennis Association ought, in my opinion, to be extended enormously. But are they, even now, getting anything like an enthusiastic welcome throughout the country? One of the reasons why girls, in particular, do not start very young is because they cannot master the overhead service, but I do not think this should be regarded as a bar to their playing, even in good-class lawn tennis. Though I have abandoned the underhand service, I still use it in another form, for it is practically my forehand drive in my present game. My old service was never more than this really—a forehand drive with a lot of top spin, in order to bring the ball down into the service curt. Any girl can master that, and it served me well! I used the underhand service in winning all my eight junior championships. Just before I won the first I had an amusing experience. My entry for one tournament was sent in, but when the list came out my name was not in it.

When my mother inquired why, we were told, in surprise, that as I was so young my entry had not been regarded seriously the tournament people thought someone was having a little joke. Anyway, room was made for me, and I went on to do quite well at that particular meeting. On Their Toes. This plea of mine for players to begin young sprang partly from the vivid memories which endure with me on my own early tournaments. To-day they are more clear-cut than my memories of even last season’s games, and I remember what I learned in them so very, very, well. They seems to have laid the foundation of whatever success has come my way, and I should never have cared to appear at Wimbledon without those many years of little tournaments behind me, to bolster up my trembling confidence.

Footwork, I am certain, can only be learned properly by beginning young. Then it comes naturally. Observation will show anyone that few of the young players are afflicted with the flat-footed style which characterises so many of the older ones. In conclusion may I say, without giving offence, that in America and France the young player seems to be welcomed and encouraged by his elders more than he does in England. Look how Cochet has pushed young Marcel Bernard ahead. And look at the help Sidney Wood has received! Also, of course, lawn tennis occupies a recognised and even honoured place in the games carriculum of the schools of the two countries, while here it is still something of a pariah.