The Star. MONDAY, JANUARY 3, 1927. PROMISING LAWN TENNIS MATERIAL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18044, 3 January 1927, Page 8

The Star. MONDAY, JANUARY 3, 1927. PROMISING LAWN TENNIS MATERIAL.

That great lawn tennis partnership between Australia and New Zealand, which brought the Davis Cup contest twice to New Zealand courts, owed its success to the outstanding brilliance of two men, Brookes and "Wilding, and difficult as it may appear to secure such another combination, there is always the hope that each year may bring forth that rare combination of an old head on young shoulders that bespeaks the tennis genius. At the moment France threatens to wrest the Cup from the United States, which, like Australia, and even England, is at the stage at which there are no youngsters coming on to take the place of flic veterans. But French sportsmanship is notable rather for clan than'tenacity, and it is not to be presumed that France would hold the Davis Cup as grimly as it has been held, first by Australasia, and latterly by the United States. There arc so many challenging nations that it is unsafe to predict where the outstanding men may come from. New Zealand, now a separate tennis nation, is al least not going backwards, and may hope to go a long way forward. Iler greatest handicap is her geographical isolation, which precludes frequent visits to and from other nations. So far, this handicap has been reduced by an interchange of visits with New South Wales, and the entry of the visiting New South Wales team in the New Zealand Championships this year makes it possible, in some degree, to take stock of Hie Dominion’s lawn tennis material. The process is not, however, very enlightening. It is distinctly • a matter for congratulation that the visitors were not able to carry off any of the New Zealand Championship titles, hut the sodden condition of the courts—which incidentally upset the calculations of certain New Zealand entrants — must have proved a severe handicap to the visitors. For all that, this lias been a young man’s year in New Zealand tennis history. E. D. Andrews, the new singles champion, is only twenty-one. Against a much more experienced player, flic leading man of the New South Wales team, he showed good match temperament in bringing off a most decisive win from a point at which everything was in the other man’s favour. N. Wilson is also a very young player and, by comparison, Ollivier and Bartleet appear as veterans. Knott and Sturt, who played themselves into the New Zealand team by winning the doubles against a redoubtable Australian pair, are also young men, twenty-one and nineteen, anti when it is considered that Malfroy, who is not yet eighteen, was able to dispose of Canterbury’s second man, it seems quite possible that these young players only need proper handling to bring them up to international form. The headmistresses’ conference of a group of English ladies schools is not the place from which to expect anything very illuminating on the subject of the modern girl, and yet it is possible to agree in the main with one of the speakers who, according to a cablegram to-day, states that the girl of to-day is much more philosophic and rational than the girl of twenty years ago, but is far too satisfied with her own crude and raw opinions. But it is not at all certain that the mere discussion of modern topics with older people is going to do much good except, perhaps, to the older people themselves. Experts who attended the last American Health Congress came to the conclusion that the youthful rebellion of to-day could be blamed in a large measure upon the parents rather than on the children. “ The two most important aims in the education of boys and girls should be the gradual emancipation from parental control and the achievement of a healthy heterosexuality,” Dr Frankwood K. Williams, medical director of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene, declared. “Beckless behaviour, while undesirable in ilsclf, is not, in many cases, necessarily a sign of moral depravity, but of a healthy tendency toward normal adulthood. Some of the wild things Hie adolescent may do may themselves be wrong, but they arc the symptoms of the emergence of a very desirable factor in (lie developmental period of life.” Perhaps the greatest blame should he laid on the parents of the present parents, because they were so anxious to make their children pure, and we re so convinced of the depravity of human nature that they were often afraid to give the human being a chance to grow and develop. The parents of to-day have swung too far, maybe, in the opposite direction, and there is too little control for the good of their offspring. But this much is certain, that science xvill do much to counteract these bad tendencies by seeing that the people arc physically and mentally well, and il cannot he denied, on the thresh - hold of 1927, that new methods of education and training, coupled with a quickened public conscience in the matter of public health, arc going to do more for the youth of to-day than could ever he accomplished by Ihe old repressive measures.