At Wimbledon

(See front cover)

Even the most ardent U. S. devotees of tennis have had a hard time keeping things straight for the last three or four years. Before that, William Tatem Tilden II and William Johnston were the two great U. S. players. A grade below were other famous names, easily distinguishable from each other--Richard Norris Williams II, the most brilliant half-volleyer in history, Wallace Johnson, a sporting-goods salesman who seemed always trying to compensate for his plebeian occupation by the languidly patrician gestures of his chop-strokes, Vincent Richards, who remained almost perpetually the boy wonder of U. S. tennis. When Johnston retired, Richards turned professional, Williams grew too veteran to be brilliant for more than a day at a time, there appeared on the scene a great second-growth of younger players. These--George Lott, John Van Ryn, Berkeley Bell, Gregory Mangin, Wilmer Allison, John Hennessey; John Doeg--were the ones who caused the difficulty. All were young collegians, and they looked as much alike as so many agitated and disobliging Chinamen. One or two of them, it was first supposed, would emerge from the rest and become champions, but this never seemed to happen. U. S. tennis devotees had become reconciled to speaking of "the younger players" by last summer when the situation finally showed signs of changing.

The changes were two. First, John Hope Doeg, lefthanded, 22, nephew of famed May Sutton Bundy, youngest of the younger players, emerged and won the National Championship at Forest Hills. Second, three new players, younger than the "younger players" and with normal personal differentiation, made their appearance. These were Frank Shields, im- mensely tall, convivial and handsome, Roxbury graduate; Sidney Wood, a yellow-haired, wiry, California youth, with a delicate physique but strong wrists and forearms; and Clifford Sutler, a cherub-faced collegian from New Orleans, with self-consciously graceful but effective ground strokes.

After winning the National championship, Doeg married, set to work on his father-in-law's Newark, N. J. Evening News, announced that he would probably play little tennis in 1931 except to defend his title at Forest Hills. Clifford Sutter last week was winning the Tri-State Tour- nament in Memphis, Tennessee. The other two, Shields and Wood, together with Henri Cochet; John Van Ryn; Jean Borotra, who airplaned back to Paris for business between matches; Bunny Austin, balloon-trousered British Davis Cup player; George Lyttleton Rogers, a big Irishman with a hooked nose; Jiro Satoh, the champion of Japan; and Gregory Mangin and George Lott were last week playing in the greatest single event of the tennis year, "the world's championship"at Wimbledon.

Cochet, drawn and listless after an attack of influenza, lost his first match in straight sets to an obscure English player named Nigel Sharpe; Mangin lost to Rogers and Rogers lost to Satoh; George Lott was beaten by Harold Lee. Shields, who had never played at Wimbledon be- fore, and Wood were the gallery's favorites. Wood beat the champion of Spain, Eduard Maier, in a straight-set match watched by onetime King Alfonso. Shields, whose resemblance to Wimbledon's favorite William Tatem Tilden II and the fact that he was the first seeded U. S. player, made him the centre of centre-court attention, won his first three matches losing only one set.

As was expected, when the semi-finals were reached, Shields and Wood were the only Americans left in the tournament. Their opponents, respectively, were Jean Borotra, who had made Queen Mary laugh by returning a volley while sitting on his haunches, and England's Frederick J. Perry, who, playing an erratic but brilliant game, had eliminated John Van Ryn in the fifth round.

Because, 1) she is the U. S. women's champion, and 2) Helen Wills Moody decided that she would not "have time" to defend her title at Wimbledon last week, Betty Nuthall was the favorite to win the British Women's Championship. Her chief competitors were Helen Jacobs of Santa Monica, Calif., second ranking U. S. woman player in 1929; cocktail-drinking, tango-dancing Senorita Elia ("Lili") de Alvarez, who twice lost to Helen Wills in the Wimbledon finals; and Mrs. Lawrence A. Harper, first ranking U. S. woman player, a Californian with a hard left-handed drive, who lost to Betty Nuthall in the finals of the U. S. championships at Forest Hills last summer.

Senorita Elia de Alvarez, wearing a split skirt which resembled a pair of abbreviated pajamas, won her first match and lost her next to a coolheaded, methodical British girl named Dorothy Round.

When Betty Nuthall came up against Mrs. Harper their match was almost a repetition of the one Betty Nuthall had won at Forest Hills. The Californian got a lead of 3-1 in the first set, thereafter was outplayed and lost 6-4, 6-2 Waiting to play her quarter-final match against Helen Jacobs, who had beaten Mrs. Kathleen McKane Godfree the same day, Betty Nuthall reiterated her intention of coming to the U. S. this summer to defend her U. S. championship. When they played, three days later, Betty Nuthall lost 6-2, 6-3.

Popular sporting figures fall into two categories: those who are popular because they are eccentric and those who are popular because they are not. It would be easy to explain the immense popularity of Betty Nuthall by pointing out how neatly she fits the public conception of the Average British Girl. Her face, pleasant enough to be pretty, is large, reddish, blue-eyed, friendly. Buxom and fair-haired, she speaks in an accent which is neither aristocratic nor cockney, almost giggles when she smiles. Not noisily exotic, like Lili de Alvarez, nor glumly beautiful, like Mrs. Moody, she is described by her friends with indefinite adjectives--"attractive," "unspoiled," "girlish."

Her father, a good but not famous tennis player, taught her how to play, died being operated on for tennis elbow six years ago. Her mother continued ably to run & expand the Nuthall chain of small suburban hotels in and near London, to coach Betty's tennis.

Two years ago, Betty visited Los Angeles with the Wightman Cup team, went to parties (where Charlie Chaplin made funny faces, obliged her by trying to look like Napoleon) while the other ladies went to bed. Original, she liked honeydew melons better than anything else in the U. S., found Park Avenue the most beautiful street in the world, observed that everyone called her Betty except Mrs. Hoover. She trains for a match by skipping rope 700 times every morning, going to bed at ten, practicing rarely against her three sisters, more often against her two brothers of whom the oldest, now, sits behind her at important matches, as her father used to, advising her how to play.

Reputedly the most photographed woman in England, Betty Nuthall is less an Average Girl than one who, partly by charm, partly by shrewdness, has been able to preserve the character of an average girl in circumstances which no average girl would be likely to experience. She likes to sew, squeals when she drives a car, says she hopes to help her mother in the hotel business. But, when playing tennis, winning or losing, she follows the shrewd advice of her mother: "Smile, smile and keep on smiling . . . first, because it gets the crowd. . . ."

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