A Good Word for Suzanne

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17835, 1 May 1926, Page 17 (Supplement)

A Good Word for Suzanne

“ The stimulus which her genius has given to the game has multiplied her potential challengers a thousandfold. ‘All the world is mobilised against her sovereignty. She is literally contra mundum in her defence of a throne the possession of which is everything in life to her. From California to Tokyo candidates are in training to dethrone her. Anerrficy are inspired by the lessons she has taught them." SO writes “A.G.G.” in his character sketch of Suzanne Lenglen in the “ Daily News.” He forsakes the politicians and the giants of industry, and pays an unstinted tribute to the genius of Suzanne. He concludes his sketch by saying:—

“ For lawn tennis to-day, so far as women are concerned, is what she has made it. She burst into the field with a new technique. Until her appearance

lawn tennis had been a superior game of pat-ball for women. “It was not conceived that they could imitate the methods of men. Nature did not permit it and decorum almost forbade it. They were content to play from the baseline, receiving the ball and returning it, pit-pat, pit-pat, relying for success upon the mistakes of their opponents rather than upon the positive merits of their own attack. “ They did not so much score as wait till the other allowed them to score. Suzanne changed all that. Trained in the methods of men, deliberately habi-

tuated by her father to measure her skill with men, she boldly left the baseline, followed up her service, volleyed and smashed, and in a season banished the old pit-pat game out of higher realms of lawn tennis.

“ For seven years the world of women have been trying to undertake that flying start of the young adventuress, and stlil she leads the pack, European, American. Asiatic, out-manoeuvred, outwitted. “ She has improved by her example the whole standard of the game, and remains herself alone and unapproachable. But the ‘ glossy purples ’ will go. Helen Wills has already thrown the shadow of coming eclipse across the luminary. The pressure of the pursuit will be intensified and the palm will be snatched from her hand.

“ That is the cankerous thought that, as Caruso once said, eats at the heart of the wearer of the crown in any competitive art. Perhaps Suzanne will be wise and act on Nelson’s maxim. 4 Go at 3 r our zenith.’ The world would regret to see so well-graced an actress leave the stage. We shall not look upon her like again.”