The New Professionalism In Lawn Tennis, And Its Future

Taranaki Daily News, 19 November 1934, Page 11

The New Professionalism In Lawn Tennis, And Its Future

TILDEN SEES NEED FOR COMPETITION

ALTHOUGH F. J. Perry has been made rather hot and bothered by the frequent questions addressed to him about 'whether or not he intends to become a professional player of lawn tennis he chose what has been termed a trend toward professionalism in the game as the subject of an article that has been published for him since he arrived in New Zealand. Thus he has practically invited more discussion of the subject. However, really more interesting than Perry’s barely-concealed sympathy for professionalism in lawn tennis is a sidelight thrown upon the public’s attitude toward professional exhibitions of lawn tennis by the experience of W. T. Tilden and part of his troupe in England recently. This is more enlightening than the financial success of the American tours of the Tilden troupe—there are so many large American cities that two or three tours of . them may be profitable, but even their number does not necessarily ensure a continuance of public favour.

But for the presence of Tilden himself the professional exhibition games played at Southport, England, a. few weeks ago would have fallen flat. There was overmuch exhibition, too little of the element of competition, in them. Textbook play -is good for all

players, but spectators who have gone beyond that stage want it to be salted with battle. In a travelling circus the performers become too well acquainted with each other’s tricks, and if the size of the circus is increased to provide greater variety of tricks the “overhead” is swelled. Similarly with professional tennis organisation such as the Tilden troupe, variety cannot be given to the performances without lessening too much the margin between profit and loss. The formation of other troupes of professional players would increase the variety, but would also make professional tennis too common a spectacle; in any case, no new troupe could compete successfully in. gatereceipts with any which has Tilden as its brightest star. '

When Tilden drops out of the professional tennis firmament there- will, of course, be much more scope for troupes other than that which he formed. But what will be the demand for professional tennis then? Perry says that “the professional game has the big names that.were made originally in amateur sport, and that fact alone will serve to increase its popularity by leaps and bounds.” But he assumes a little too readily that the professional arena will continue to attract the “big names.” Even if it does attract them it is not likely to have any measure of perm-

anence unless there is more competition and less exhibition in it.

■K* ’K' Tilden recognised that the public '

wants competitive play. He said so after the exhibition games at Southport, and added he and his associates were aiming at the introduction of money prizes. “Then,” he said, “we shall have real competition, which, after all, whether it be amateur or professional, is the life-blood of the game.” What would suit the professionals better than anything else probably would be the introduction of large “open” tr/urnaments with considerable money prizes for the winners if they be professionals. Then the exhibition games would be the “side-lines,”' instead of the major goods.

A definite change in public taste may give professionalised lawn tennis a permanency as an entertainment, saving it from being merely a fashion of a day. But the experience of other sports suggests that nothing else than such a change can do so. The only highly-individualised sports which in their professional aspects have held public support continuously are highly combative, and even these do not appeal to the public so uniformly as do team-sports, into which the element of competition between clubs or countries enters largely. The promoters of professionalism in tennis are really gambling on the popularity of the game, but that popularity is founded on something which is inherently amateur—the virtues of lawn tennis as a game for a vast number of people.

Perry thinks that professional tennis has come to stay, “provided new talent can be obtained each year.” To have any continuity of existence it must keep on drawing from the higher ranks of amateurs, so that the curiosity of the people in the “trouping towns” may be reawakened from time to - time. But the more this new growth extended the more would it betray its weaknesses. In no long period of years many professional exponents of lawn tennis would fall to the social and financial level of fourth-rate pugilists. A. L. C.