National Doubles

Last week the summer circus of traveling tennis players gave its show in Brookline, Mass. The event was the National Doubles Tournament at the Longwood Cricket Club.

Champion William Tilden gave a lesson to his partner, 17-year old "Sandy" Weiner. Griffin and Johnston profited by the lesson, took the match, 7-9, 6-1, 5-7, 6-4, 6-1.

The Kinsey brothers, defending titleholders, bowed in straight sets to the superior daring of Vincent Richards and R. Norris Williams. Next day a cloud of witnesses saw these two put out Johnston and Griffin, 6-2, 8-10, 6-4, 11-9, in the semifinal, to face, Gerald Patterson and John Hawkes of Australia.

Big Patterson was wild. He slammed balls into the net, he slammed them out--not out by one or two inches, but by many yards. Hawkes was slow. Williams and Richards winked at each other. "What, the crowd wondered, gives these Australians the impression they can play tennis?" Patterson himself was beginning: to wonder. He had hit the ball hard before. It had gone out. He hit it twice as hard. It went in. His Partner picked up heart, and assisted by the errors of erratic Williams, they ran out the set 8-6 added the next to their score at 6-4...

There are sporting gentlemen who loudly affirm that Williams is the most brilliant player in tennis. Others question this, declaring that it is only because he is capable of Arising from puerilities to superlatives, that his best seems better than another man's. The truth can never be known, but assuredly, in the third set of this match, he became what his supporters say he is--the pale resistless nonpareil of tennis. So it fell out that he and Richards took the next three sets, 6-3, 6-2, 6-2, the match, the National Doubles title.

Hawkes, paired with Miss Kathleen McKane of England, defeated Richards and Miss E. H. Harvey of England for the mixed doubles championship in a languid exhibition match, 6-2, 6-4.