Too Much Fuss

The Seabright Lawn Tennis and Cricket* Club, the oldest tennis club in the U.S. (founded 1877), has always prided itself on doing things right. Because the best turf came from England, the founding fathers imported Seabright's first sod from across the Atlantic. Over the years, they also imported the best amateurs in the world to play in their invitation tournaments at Rumson, along the North Jersey shore. Since 1903, when Beals C. Wright won Seabright's Achelis Cup, the annual tournament has been a midsummer tradition on the Eastern tennis circuit, a pleasant prelude to the national championships at Boston's Longwood and New York's Forest Hills.

Seabright has also stood for lack of fuss. It built no permanent stands, kept its roomy, shingled clubhouse modest. Since Rumson is short of hotels for transients, touring amateurs such as Big Bill Tilden, Little Bill Johnston, Vincent Richards, Molla Mallory, Helen Wills and Helen Jacobs were customarily put up in the sprawling seashore-gothic palaces of the members. Seabright was quiet, too. If a visitor happened to ask for a highball, he was gently reminded that the club has never served liquor. Nor, for 73 years, did the club allow Sunday-morning tennis, though that rule was repealed this year.

Seabright's members made another decision this year. For the first time in its history (except for a three-year wartime lapse), the Seabright Bowl will not be placed in competition this summer. It was not a matter of money; last year's tournament, won by San Francisco's Earl Cochell, easily cleared expenses. The members simply decided that the tournament was becoming too much fuss.

Many of the old-fashioned mansions had been torn down, to make room for smaller seashore moderns. It was getting too difficult to put up a flock of visiting amateur stars. Moreover, there was the tournament's "wear & tear on the courts." All in all, Seabright decided, it was more fun to play tennis than to watch it, even when it was good.

* Seabright's original objects: "The practice of Lawn Tennis, of Cricket, and of Baseball, by the members of the Club, and the encouragement of the practice among others in the the State of New Jersey." Seabright soon left the encouragement of of baseball and cricket to others.

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