Jubilee

In 1874, a lively girl named Mary Ewing Outerbridge paid a visit to Bermuda. There British Army officers taught her a game which was becoming a polite fad in England. When she returned to the U. S., Mary Outerbridge brought with her a net suitable for minnow-fishing, several strange-looking, gut-strung bats and a rule book. She had her net pegged up on the grounds of the Staten Island Cricket & Baseball Club, set about teaching her family how to play tennis. Seven years later, when the game was being played at 33 U. S. clubs, her brother, Eugenius H. Outerbridge, helped form the U. S. Lawn Tennis Association which drafted rules and held the first national tournament at Newport, R. I. The winner was a spry young Bostonian with a fierce eye and an underhand serve, Richard Dudley Sears. He too could lay claim to being one of the very first U. S. lawn tennis players. In 1874 his brother had brought a set and a rule book from England, set up the net on an hourglass shaped court on their uncle's place at Nahant, Mass.

While tennis was spreading over the U. S. and about the world, Richard Dudley Sears, waving his thick-framed racket at Newport and on the smooth lawns of the Longwood Cricket Club, near Boston, held the championship for seven years. He might have held it longer had he not hurt himself, so seriously that he was compelled to retire, by colliding with his partner during a doubles match. The injury was still noticeable, in the form of a slight limp, when Richard Dudley Sears went to Forest Hills. N. Y. last week to attend a Golden Jubilee Ceremony, the 50th U. S. Lawn Tennis Championship.

The ceremony was ridiculous but impressive. In a long box erected in the curve of the horseshoe stadium, sat grey-haired Mr. Sears, Henry Ward Slocum and some 30 other onetime champions and proxies for a few, among them Maurice E. ("Comet") McLoughlin of California. Across the three stadium courts stood a small table. Behind the table stood Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams (who likes sailing better than tennis) and three members of the U. S. Lawn Tennis Association.

Presently four lady trumpeters began to play "The Star Spangled Banner" followed by other national anthems. The onetime champions marched slowly across the courts to the table where each received a medal from Secretary Adams, a spasm of applause from 4,000 spectators. There was some confusion about the medal, for the name of Molla Bjursted Mallory, eight-time Woman's Champion, and of Mary K. Browne had unaccountably been left off the list. Richard Dudley Sears, in a loud burst of applause, shook hands four times, received his medal with patrician politeness. He made no great show of liking the ceremony but said he was glad he had come, against his doctor's advice, because "they only hold these things every 50 years and I may not be here for the next one."

First U. S. women's tennis championship was won in 1887 by tall, slim Ellen F. Hansell. Today she is grey-haired, sixtyish. Married to Taylor Allderdice, onetime president of National Tube Co., she is the mother of four daughters, two sons. Preferring the social column to the sport page, she plays the piano, sings, is seen on the tennis court only about once a year.

When Richard Dudley Sears was champion he dominated the game. One man or at most two have dominated U. S. tennis ever since, until William Tatem Tilden retired to become a professional last year. Last week's jubilee tournament, on the West Side Tennis Club's disgracefully frayed turf, was a young-blooded tournament and one which suggested that tennis has now become so standardized that all the promising young players are almost equally good. Only one oldtime player made a showing--Richard Norris Williams II, champion in 1914 and 1916. No one was too much surprised when Sidney Wood Jr., boastful but erratic young Wimbledon champion, was beaten by an unseeded player in the third round nor when Berkeley Bell showed annoyance at having to finish his match with Wilmer Allison on a court outside the stadium. There are at least one upset and one squabble in every tournament.

In the quarterfinals, four fair-haired young players played four black-haired ones. Three of the fair-haireds--Henry Ellsworth Vines Jr., John Hope Doeg and George Martin Lott Jr.--beat Bell, Francis Xavier Shields and John Van Ryn, respectively. The only dark-haired player in the semi-finals was also the only Englishman in the tournament, Frederick J. Perry, onetime ping-pong champion and No. 2 singles player on the British Davis Cup team. His semi-final match with Vines was generally regarded as the one which would decide the championship. Vines won, after losing the first two sets and breaking two rackets with a smash that is now considered the fastest shot in U. S. amateur tennis.

Vines's opponent in the final was Lott. The latter had beaten round-faced Doeg, the defending champion, who got as far as the semi-final on his courage rather than on his imperfect, left-handed shots. Lott, in the first ten for the last five years, had never reached the final before. In his match with Vines, who was a flash-in-the-pan a year ago but who had won three out of this year's four important invitation tournaments, Lott controlled his temper and his shots in the first set, which he won, after two narrow escapes on his serve, 9-7. Vines won the next set 6-3. In the third, Lott lost his serve at 7-all, let the next game go without trying.

In the tenth game of the fourth set, Lott gave signs of having lost part of his temper, with good reason. He had had Vines 5-2; then Vines had won his own serve, broken through on Lett's, was winning his own again to tie the score. Lott beat his leg with his racket, lay on the court for a full minute after falling down. He dusted off his trousers with a towel, whacked a ball high into the grandstand when he missed a point, yelped when he missed another. When Vines won the tenth game, Lott, Vines and 10,000 spectators knew the match was over. A few seconds later it was: 7-9, 6-3, 9-7, 7-5.

Vines, 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Southern California, youngest champion in the history of U. S. tennis, shook hands with Lott, wrapped a towel around his neck while Lott put on a blazer, moved over to a microphone in his slow pigeon-toed shuffle. Theorists wondered whether Vines would, like Doeg, slump after becoming champion; or whether, which seemed a shade more likely, he would improve enough to dominate U. S. tennis like Tilden, McLoughlin, Larned, Wrenn, and Richard D. Sears.

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