Perry v. Vines

Into New York's Madison Square Garden last week trouped the biggest crowd (17,200) that has ever watched a tennis match in the U. S. The attraction was California's long, ambling Ellsworth Vines, world's ablest professional since 1933, against England's sleek, light-footed Frederick John Perry, world's ablest amateur since 1933, making his professional debut.

Off the canvas-covered court an hour and a half later staggered Vines and Perry. Recuperating from grippe before the match, both were so ill that by the time reporters reached it, the locker-room looked like a clinic. Vines had a fever of 102DEG. Said Perry: "I'm going to be sick. . . ." Score of the match, in which neither played anything like as ably as he can, was 7-5, 3-6, 6-3, 6-4 for Perry.

Last week's match between Perry & Vines was by no means their first. In 1931, when both were amateurs, they played four. Vines won them all. In a Davis Cup match in 1933 Perry beat Vines by default when Vines fainted at the match point in the fifth set. Vines became a professional later in 1933. Until last week, the closest thing to a contemporary showdown between Perry and Vines was an afternoon of informal practice when Perry was playing in and Vines reporting the U. S. Amateur Championship at Forest Hills last summer. At Forest Hills, Vines won every set they played. Last week, he was a top-heavy favorite to put his superiority on record.

Actually, though the match was far from a conclusive test, it caused most of the tennis experts who saw it to revise their judgments. Vines had announced that he had no intention of "letting Perry down easily" to improve gate receipts for their later meetings. He lived up to his promise by winning the first game in four straight points. Thereafter Perry's ability to play the ball on the rising bounce drew the sting from the speedy ground strokes for which Vines likes plenty of time to get into position. A match between two expert tennists is always a tactical battle in which the man who plays well enough to impose his method on the other is the winner. After the first set, the only time when Vines really looked as if he had a chance was when he took the first three games of the fourth set. Perry won six of the next seven and the match. Two nights later, they played again in Cleveland. Perry won in straight sets, 13-11, 6-3. In Chicago Perry won again and Vines entered a hospital.

Professional tennis, as a major sport, really began when William Tatem Tilden --who got $ 1,000 last week for two sets of exhibition doubles as an added attraction to the first Perry-Vines match--made his first tour in 1931. Major promoter of the game until this year has been a onetime boxing trainer named Bill O'Brien. Last week's match marked the first time that the balance of power among the world's ablest tennists was indisputably on the side of the professionals. As such it was an important milestone in the game's history.

Credit for the milestone went not to Promoter O'Brien but to a new and extraordinary group of backers headed by Tilden's onetime doubles partner, Francis Townsend Hunter.

When he retired from amateur tennis in 1931, Hunter, a onetime White Plains, N. Y. newspaper publisher, went into the liquor business. Currently, he is president of 21 Brands Inc. which supplies Manhattan's most famed ex-speakeasy, Jack & Charlie's "21," run by Jack Kriendler and Charlie Berus. That Perry, son of a Labor Member of Parliament, who learned tennis on London's public courts, would eventually become a professional was obvious long before he actually did so. Last autumn Perry chose the offer of onetime Tennist Hunter in preference to three from professional promoters. Last November Promoter Hunter gave a luncheon at "21" to announce it to the Press, revealed his partners in the venture. They were Jack Kriendler, Hunter's friend, one-time Tennist Howard Voshell; Tea Merchant William Seaman, and "21's" friend and customer, Song Writer Buddy De Sylva, another of whose sidelines is producing Shirley Temple cinemas for Twentieth Century-Fox. The Perry-Vines tour will last 18 weeks, play 45 U. S. cities. Perry's 371% share should reach $100,000. Like the crowd, last week's Madison Square Garden receipts of $58,000, with seats priced up to $9.90, was an all-time U. S. tennis record. Encouraged by the success of Jack Kriendler's venture into sports, "21's" proprietors were last week forwarding a professional basketball league.

Main defect of professional tennis is the fact that, with only a few topnotch players, it cannot yet produce as interesting tournaments as amateur tennis. Value of professional tennis as the culmination of a crack amateur's career was neatly summed up last week by Tennist Perry, in a compliment to Vines which might also have been construed as a delicate explanation of why Perry had become professional: "... I have known both 'Mr. Vines' and 'Vines' and I say without hesitation that the latter is a much more rounded, steady and reliable personality and friend than 'Mr. Vines' ever was or could ever hope to be. . . ."

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