LAWN TENNIS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8618, 9 May 1906, Page 4

LAWN TENNIS.

NOTES. (By VOLLEY.) Anthony Wilding lias, by his recent sueceases, mad© good his claim to be reckoned in the first flight of English pkyere. Mis overwhelming defeat ot 3. G. Ritchie at the Mentone tournament in three seta straight, the first and third beingi practically love sets, is sufficient endorsement of the contention that he has mad© wonderful strides in the game since he left Ghristchurelu He had no chance against H. L. .boherty at Nice in. the final of the Singles, but the winner is in a class by himself. At the Covered Courts Championship he got as far as the final, where he was beaten by A. W. Gore, who held the championship of England in 1301, but the game must have been close-. for the fulL five sets were played. He re- ' trieved his fallen fortunes at the same meet- | ing when, with Miss K. Douglas, he defeated R. F, Doherty and Miss Eastlake-Smith in the challenge round of the Combined Doubles. The following account of Wilding's recent matches is supplied by our London correspondent:—The New Zealand tennis player, Mr A. F. Wilding, acquitted himself very creditably in the tournament recently decided at M&nton© and Nice. At the former Riviera resort, partnered by Miss Ransome, he won the Mixed Doubles, and -in the Gentlemen's Singes final smothered Mr G-. J- Ritchie, the former holder of the cup. Ritchie only won one game in the first set, and, though he made a' good fight in the second, he lost it, whilst in the third the New Zealander won every game. At Nice, Wilding carried ail before him in the SingLes iiil he met J±. L. Doherty in the final, but the English champion, who has won the cup every year since 1888, proved far too cJeverr for the Antipodean, and beat him decisively. Partnered by G. C. Allen, Wilding also reached the final of th« Doubles, only -to be -beaten therein by Doherty and the evergreei* Australian, Dr Eaves. „ , Miss M«y Sutton, the holder oi the Ladieu Singles Championship, leaves California for England to defend her title at Wimb.edort in June. The English Lawn Tennis Association is at last waiing up to the fact that it should control the English championships, and not allow a club to do so, as is ihe case at present. At a meeting o! the Lawn Temnis Association a motion to confer -with the All-England Club to make arrangements for ihe chen-. pionships to be under the control* of th» Association was carried, after defeating a ccn- ! servative amendment to let matters stand as they are and not disturb what has come to be a settled practice It is only in England that such a state of -things could have existed so long, where a controlling bod 7 like the Lawn Tennis Association allowed its rights to be usurped by a club. I suppose it would be rank heresy to say thst the change has been made on account of the straight talk P. A. Vaj'® has been dealing out io tennis authorities in England. Perhaps it would be most charitable to say it is a singular coincidence that this change should be broug-Jit about directly after one of Vsile's onslaughts in the " Pall Mall Gazette." The following is the decision of the Appcnl Council of the New Zealand Lawn Tennis Association upon a case referred to in these columns some weeks ago, where the strikersout changed courts before the end of a set. " The player was on the wrong side, and the order of striking out, once arranged, should not have been altered. The player would have to change to the proper side as soon aa the mistake was discovered (Rnlo 31). AgninJ'-that if the player was in the wrong court, and received a service which was wrong, as Rule 31 plainly states thai 'no player shall receive or return a service" delivered to his (or hsr) partner.' " Rule 33 provides that if the ball strikes the player (or anything he wears or carries) who is partner of the proper striker out, the server wins the -stroke. All faults served, or strokes scored before the discovery of tho mistake, must be reckoned, but the ptroJre, or service (if not a fault) upon which. t>:o mistake was discovered, must be awarded to the server, if the player who was in wrong court touched the service, tho point would still go to the server, as the proper striker-oot did not return it, or was beaton by it." Whether this decision is correct is debatable, but there is only one side to the question that the English of the decision is simply shocking. Perhaps so much energy was expended by tho Appeal Council in manufacturing reasons for their finding that none was left for setting it up in language that would be intelligible to the ordinary mind. Take, for example, the second half of the first section. It commences with a conditional " that if " that naturally demands a conclusion after the condition is stated, but, being omitted, simply makes unadulterated ncnserse. Again, in the second section, beginning at " all faults," this decision runs on in one long involved sentence to , the end, and sense can be made only by putting a full point in after " server." This, of course, may be a blunder of the typist, but it is no excuse for tie unfinished first section. Other errors are evident, but the reasons given by the Council for their finding are more interesting. That the Btrikers-out were out of position is granted, but to say that they " would have to change to proper side as soon as the mistake was discovered " follows from Rule 31. is not warranted by a reading of that rule. What ia forbidden is absolutely plain, bat what shall be done under the circumstances, or what penalty is to be inflicted, is not set out as it is in Rule 34, where a player serves out of turn. To use Bule 33 where it states that a ball striking the striker-ont's partner gives & score to tha server as. applicable to the case is, to my mind, simply ridiculous. The server deliberately serves to the wrong striketf-out, who intercepts it in its right-angled course to the player on the other side of the court. Again, only the stroke at the time of the discovery of the error counts to the server. All scores up to that paint stand. So that the transgressors of Rule 31 may have scored, say, three strokes up to that point, by pimply taking each other's serve, for, according to the decision, not one was intended for the player who took it, but for the player who didn't, and yet they score the strokes. There are other points that I may refer to next

week, but it appears that while the Council a decision may be sound, their reasons for arriving at that decision are as tortuous as the server who is serving with a right-angled bend in his serves, that never reach their intended goal.