NIGHT TENNIS

Waikato Independent, Volume XXIII, Issue 3146, 4 December 1923, Page 2

NIGHT TENNIS

SPECULATORS BUSY. Tennis enthusiasts, land speculators, and others are frequently asking my opinion as to whether night tennis has come to stay or not (wrote M. H. Marsh in a Sydney paper a few days ago). At present it is booming. New courts are being fitted up with electric lights daily, and there is not the least difficulty in hiring them out to parties both during the day and night.' The opportunity to play is denied to many during daylight. Either they cannot get the time off or have difficulty in finding a club handy to join up with. I am often asked if I know of a club in some area prepared to accept new members. Hence we have, a big section most anxious to play who can only achieve, that desire at night, on a hired court. These, I believe, constitute a large and growing section; consequently those building new courts fitted for night tennis have no reason to worry. On the other hand, the ordinary club members, or those with private courts, arc most unlikely to continue with night tennis to any extent. It is a new craze. Later it will depend mainly on those who can get tennis in no other way. No matter how the courts are lighted there is a certain eye-strain. One doesn’t see as in daylight. A first-class man, playing frequently, would probably develop an uncertainty in his ordinary tennis, because he would get into the way of making snappy shots at the last moment, at balls not eloarly followed.

One other thing—it may not affect everyone the same, way, but my experience has been that violent exercise after dinner in the evening is not conducive to a. good night’s sleep, consequently one is not fresh next day.

Hence, first-class players may try it occasionally for its novelty, but not. continuously.

Tennis is wonderfully popular. It is becoming more so every year. Hence one laying down courts has little ( to fear, and the instalment of electric lighting should be a payable proposition. It is, however, not a school from which our future champions are coming, if they depend, on that alone. Night tennis satisfies a long-felt want, and certainly deserves its fair share of support.