The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1886.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 8034, 6 December 1886, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. MONDAY, DECEMBER 6, 1886.

The Napier lawn tenuis playem seem determined to push their gamffl They want to have a New Zealanjj Challenge Cup established : a cup of very substantial value. Now, while it must be admitted that a great deal of rubbish has been talked against Challenge Cups of various kinds, it is also true, to our thinking, that the kind of Cup proposed by the Napier players is not of a very desirable kind. The Cup is not to be played for by Clubs, but by individuals, and is to be the absolute property of anyone able to win it for three years m succession. It is one thing for a club to struggle for a Challenge Cup and to wish, if possible, to win it outright. It is quite another thing for a single member to make such a thing the aim and end of a season’s play. Now that lawn tennis is entering into serious competition with other games, it becomes needful to point out its main disadvantage. This is, that lawn tenuis is a thoroughly selfish game. This is what stamps it inferior to cricket as a manly sport. This is why we should think it a national misfortune if there were any danger of the old game being supplanted by the new. This is why anybody having anything to do with the training of the young would be sorry to see a chance of such a change. If care were taken that in lawn tenuis tournaments players only entered on behalf of their clubs, and only won challenge cups for their clubs, and not for themselves, this unpleasant element of selfishness in the rising game might be minimised. If the trophies absolutely given to individual players were limited to rackets, we think it would be a good thing, just as in cricket it would be a good thing if trophies were never anything but bats and balls. The trophy nuisance, luckily, is dying out of cricket. Unluckily, there seems no chance of its doing the same in lawn tennis. The tendency is very much the other way. In England the “ pot-hunting ” which resulted therefrom has for years past been publicly denounced as a scandal. The spectacle has been quite common of crack players passing the summer in roving from one tournament to another, fighting for nothing but their own hand and striving for nothing more honourable than a twentyguinea cup. Is lawn tennis going to lead to this sort of thing in New Zealand ? If so, its rise and progress will not be so welcome as it otherwise certainly would be. The game has a dozen good qualities to recommend it. It has a definite place to fill. It is exactly the right exercise for strong young women and for men who are either too delicate, too busy, or not young enough to devote themselves to one of the sterner athletic exercises. Further than this it would be a pity for lawn tennis to go. Outside the classes which comprise all tolerably wealthy people, we don’t think it ever will go. As a spectacle it will never have the slightest chance with the general public against either cricket, football or rowing. As a social instrument it very possibly has an important future before it. If, however, its appeals to the selfish feeling of personal distinction should draw strong young athletes away from sports like cricket, where esprit de corps counts for so much, then lawn tennis will certainly do harm as well as good.