The Art of Lawn Tennis

by William T. Tilden

England has but to interest her youth in the game to hold her place with the leaders. I believe it will be done. I look to see great advances made in tennis among the boys in England in the next few years. I believe the game will change to conform more to the modern net attack. England will never be the advanced tennis-playing country that her colonies are, for her whole atmosphere is one of conservatism in sport. Still her game will change. Already a slight modification is at work. The next decade will see a big change coming over the style of English tennis. The wonderful sporting abilities of the Englishman, his ability to produce his best when seemingly down and out mean that, no matter how low the ebb to which tennis might fall, the inherent abilities of the English athlete would always bring it up. I sound pessimistic about the immediate future. I am not, provided English boyhood is interested in the game.

Japan is the country of the future. There is no more remarkable race of students on the globe than the Japanese. They like tennis, and are coming with increasing numbers to our tournaments. They prove themselves sterling sportsmen and remarkable players. I look to see Japan a power in tennis in the next twenty-five years.

France, with her brilliant temperamental unstable people, will always provide interesting players and charming opponents. I do not look to see France materially change her present position—which is one of extreme honour, of great friendliness, and keen competition. Her game will not greatly rise, nor will she lose in any way the prestige that is hers.

It will be many long years before the players of those enemy countries, who plunged the world into the horrible baptism of blood from which we have only just emerged, will ever be met by the players of the Allies. Personally, I trust I may not see their re-entry into the game. Not from the question of the individuals, but from the feeling which will not down. There is no need to deal at this time with the future of Germany and Austria.

Australasia and South Africa, the great colonies of the British Empire, should be on the edge of a great tennis wave. I look to see great players rise in Australasia to refill the gaps left by the passing of Wilding and the retirement of Brookes. It takes great players to fill such gaps; but great players are bred from the traditions of the former masters.

The early season of 1921 saw a significant and to my way of looking at it, wise move on the part of New Zealand when the New Zealand tennis association withdrew from the Australasian tennis association and decided to compete for the Davis Cup in future years as a separate nation.

No one can deny the great help Australia has been to New Zealand in tennis development, but the time has come now for New Zealand to stand on her own. Since the regrettable death of Anthony F. Wilding, in whose memory New Zealand has a tennis asset and standard that will always hold a place in world sport, the New Zealand tennis players have been unable to produce a player of skill enough to make the Davis Cup team of Australasia. It has fallen to Australia with Norman E. Brookes, to whose unfailing support and interest Australasian tennis owes its progress since the war, G. L. Patterson, W. H. Anderson, R. L. Heath, and Pat O'Hara Wood to uphold the traditions of the game.

The Davis Cup challenge round of 1921 was staged in New Zealand in accord with the agreement between Australia and New Zealand and also in memory of A. F. Wilding. The tremendous interest in the play throughout the entire country showed the time was ripe for a drastic step forward if the step was ever to be taken. So after careful consideration the split of Australia and New Zealand has taken place. What will this mean to New Zealand? First it means that it will be years before another Davis Cup match will be staged on her shores, for it takes time and plenty of it to produce a winning team, but at the time, the fact is borne in on the tennis playing faction in New Zealand that as soon as they desire to challenge, their players will gain the opportunity of International competition.

Experience matures players faster than anything else and I am sure that the move that will place a team of New Zealand players in the field in the Davis Cup will be the first and biggest step forward to real world power in tennis. New Zealand produced one Wilding, why should not another appear?

I was tremendously impressed by the interest existing among the New Zealand boys in tennis. I met a great number during my few weeks in Auckland and seldom have seen such a magnificent physical type coupled with mental keenness. These boys, given the opportunity to play under adequate supervision and coaching, should produce tennis players of the highest class.