LAWN TENNIS AT NICE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 9222, 29 April 1908, Page 4

LAWN TENNIS AT NICE.

MR ANTHONY WILDING'S TKll/MPHS. [From Our Correspondent.] LONDON, March 22. Mr Anthony Wilding has had many triumphs on the tennis court, but he has fairly capped them all at the Nice tournament. He won all three championships, two of them with the greatest ease, and his third victory involved the crushing defeat of the famous Doherty brothers. Wilding has never shaped better in his brilliant tennis career than in his match with Ritchie against the two Dohertys yesterday. The " Telegraph's " correspondent at Nice describes the features of the match as painfully monotonous in the regularity with which U llding and Ritchie took game after game, winning ultimately by three sets to one. "ihe Dohertys lost their opponents' service games automatically, and strove desperately to win their own. ' R.F. might have been shod with lead, so slow were his movements, so frequently was he trapped in that fatal danger zone near the service line. To see such able students of tactics advancing timidly on short lobs and meeting the inevitable fate — a smash at the feet — made one doubt the serious purpose of the brothers, and not until it was seen how manfully ' H.L. worked to stem disaster was this doubt removed. Of course Wilding and Ritchie, metaphorically speaking, dined off ' ii.F.' They tossed persistently in his direction, aimed at his feet, az_d, in short, exerted all their powers to emphasise and lay bare his weakness. " But fpr a slight aberration on Ritchie's part in the third .set, the Dohertys would have gone down in three straight sets. As it stood, the score was sufficiently impressive. Analyse it how you will, there is nothing to explain this defeat beyond the patent fact that, as one pair oppose'ti to another, Ritchie and Wilding were altogether too alert, too ' full of beam.' too sound in limb and wind for this untuned combination, but shadows of their former selves. I need hardly add that tne many fashionable admirers of the brothers, who had come in their motors from all parts of the Riviera (such a crowd never witnessed any match at Nico), were sorely disappointed and somewhat chastened in spirit at the turn events had taken. It was as if they had been bidden to a sumptuous banquet and found there only empty dishes." After tbis Wilding scored a brilliant triumph over Ritchie in the final of the open singles. Never before has the New Zeaknder given such a brilliant exhibition of hurricane driving. To quote the "Telegraph's" correspondent once more: — "He resemblecf a repeating gun charged to destroy Ritchie within record time, and so successfully, and with such eclat, did he accomplish this task, that the match was . all over in a little more than half an hour. Do not suppose that Ritchie played badly. He didn't play at all. He simply tossed the ball over the net for Wilding to bang, top-spin and all, into an unassailable corner. He repeated this manoeuvre three times, and then the man working the scoring-board raised his arm, and the game went -m. Wilding got a little tiredof these lovegames by-and-by, and, allowing his attention to be diverted by Mr Reginald Vanderbilt in the grand stand; failed to score a bull, and only got an " outer." This temporary abatement of the deadly firing caused Ritchie to pull his head up an inch or two? and subsequently to win a couple of games Just when the spectators were hoping that Wilding would miss a few more shots and prolong the contest, Ritchie served a double fault, and the match ended."