Tilden Explodes

The tennis sovereigns are becoming solicitous over their subject's literary activities. Amateur tennis players, they aver, should not gain from the game by authorship. Ceteris verbis, tennis players will probably be forbidden the right of contributing to magazines for money. So swollen is the trade apparently that certain of the stars are supporting themselves thereby. They are commercial athletes if not professional.

Will Tilden immediately exploded. Said he: "Writing is my chosen career. The committee may not know that I began working for newspapers while in my junior year at college and have been identified with the writing game since then. I hadn't even won a State title during my early years in the newspaper game, so my work was not dependent upon my ability as a tennis player. Neither was the fact that I have done dramatic and music reviews for metropolitan papers, nor that I have had eight fiction stories accepted by magazines in the last 18 months.

"You can't sell fiction with a tennis racquet, nor can you sit at a city desk, as I have done, unless you are a practical newspaperman of real experience and initiative.

"Frankly, I cannot see that the interpretation applies to me, although it is barely possible that I am the man at whom it is directed.

"I am heart and soul an amateur and have refused five offers to turn pro. If the executive committee thinks the player-writers are getting by on their tennis reputation, let the committee pass a rule forbidding players to use their titles in signing articles. My name is my own, however, given to me by my father, and not by the United States Tennis Association."

There promises to develop a literature-lawn tennis controversy which will live long in literary and sporting annals. The interesting point, of course, and the one which will never be proved is the attitude magazine editors might take toward Mr. Tilden's fiction if he should leave the courts permanently in favor of literature.

Coincident with the action of the lawn tennis officials, word came from the Olympic Committee that no athlete competing will be allowed to record for the press the experiences of the American team. Thus far no literary pole vaulters have threatened in righteous indignation to forsake their poles for their pens.