Monday, Aug. 19, 1929

Wightman Cup

Tennis is as tennis does. There was a certain amount of U. S. grumbling last week when the U. S. Wightman cup team permitted five English women, not including able Eileen Bennett,* to come within a few aces of keeping the trophy in the matches played at Forest Hills, L. I. But the fact of the matter was that England, strapped though she is for male players, is a major power on the women's courts.

Helen ("Big Helen") Wills, in crisp white linen, crisply set down Mrs. Phoebe Watson.

Helen ("Little Helen") Jacobs, pulled two deuce sets out of the fire of Betty Nuthall's drives and service.

Then up rose Mrs. Watson and Mrs. Leo R. C. Mitchell to meet Big Helen Wills and Edith Cross. Never was there a clearer demonstration that doubles play is a different game from singles, a game about which Big Helen Wills still has a lot to learn. The English ladies won 6-4, 6-1.

Fog and rain descended the second day. Mrs. Watson took Little Helen Jacobs out to the centre court and gave her a baseline trimming. 6-3, 6-2. Mrs. Mitchell took Edith Cross out and almost gave her a trimming but Miss Cross finally found the chalk-lines and won, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3. Mrs. B. C. Covell and Mrs. Dorothy Shepherd-Barron, runners-up at Wimbledon, continued the visitors' lessons in doubles play for Little Helen's benefit. The latter's partner, Mrs. Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman. 25 times a champion, needed no such instruction, but the final score was 6-2, 6-1 in favor of England.

Came the climax, bouncing Betty Nuthall v. Big Helen Wills. At Wimbledon the English girl had won only three games in a similar two-set match. Now she won twelve, with a whamming overhead serve, a flashing forehand drive that made her look at least twice the Betty Nuthall that played in the U. S. two years ago. Twelve games against Big Helen Wills takes good tennis, even if Big Helen Wills takes 16 games from you meantime and wins match and cup 8-6. 8-6. "The modern forehand drive . . . means Helen Wills," laughed sporting Betty Nuthall.

Californians all were the three youngest members of the U. S. team, and California-born was the fourth member, their coach and leader, donor of the Wightman cup, patriarch of U. S. tennis for women. As Helen Hotchkiss she first won the U. S. championship in 1909 before Betty Nuthall and Helen Jacobs were born and when Helen Wills was a tot. She kept the title until 1912 and then, though "they never come back," rewon it in 1919. Her score of other national titles were amassed in doubles courts and indoors. She gave the Wightman cup six years ago. The next year her husband, George W. Wightman, an able player himself, was elected President of the U. S. Lawn Tennis Association. Mother of four, brown, firm, skillful, she it was who coached Helen Wills to win the singles title from Molla Bjurstedt Mallory in 1923. "Calm, quiet, generous and sporting," as Helen Wills calls her, she it is who deserves credit for the Wills-Wightman doubles championships of 1924 and 1928. Playing together, wise Mrs. Wightman and Big Helen Wills have never been beaten.

* She stayed home with a new fiance (TIME, Aug. 5).