TENNIS AND SENSATIONALISM

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19516, 20 February 1926, Page 6

TENNIS AND SENSATIONALISM

All the fuss that has been made this week over the meeting of two lady champions at. lawn tennis has served to show that international sport can be very easily depreciated. This, of course, is the fault of the speculators and sensationalists who are greedily watching for events out of which they can make capital. Genuine interest in an exceptionally important sporting event can do no harm, but the American methods of commercialisation must inevitably lead to destruction.

It happened that Mdlle. Suzanne Lenglen, the Frenchwoman who for some time past has been the world’s champion, had to compete against Miss Helen Wills, a young American girl who has had a remarkable career in lawn tennis. In the ordinary course the Riviera tournament at which they were playing would have attracted little notice, but this match was sufficient to lift it. from comparative obscurity into the full glare of the limelight. For days beforehand the match was “written up” by publicity agents of the American type, and even the report of it appeared to come from the same source. Much of it was fatuous nonsense.

Perhaps Mdlle. Lenglen has suffered in the past at the hands of the publicity experts. On this occasion they gave us some ridiculously contradictory statements about “the temperamental Suzanne.” A better report of the play would have been preferable. When world champions in any sport meet it is the game itself that interests us.