REALLY Ancient History

[Henry Hub]

Hobart is the next to fall, choking at 4-0 up in the fifth against Eddie Hall.

Two of the remaining second rank, Chase and Stevens, are beaten by Hall and an imperious Hovey, respectively.

The two semifinals are Hovey against Wrenn and Hall against Larned. Whitney picks Hovey and Hall as the winners, with Hall to win the All Comers’.

Harper’s tennis man is more than half right. It’s one match too many for Bob Wrenn, who can’t mount much opposition against Fred Hovey this time. However, Hall and Larned stage one of the great early US matches.

https://imgur.com/a/aPtajWg

Larned is famously mercurial in his early tennis career, his game veering wildly between magisterial and mediocre, often within single sets.

He starts poorly, though Hall has opened with his A game firing well. In the second, though, the young Cornell man obliterates his opponent with trademark aggressive and accurate ball-striking. This form continues into the third, which he also takes despite a late wobble. Hall adopts a lobbing game in the fourth and takes it with some ease, exploiting growing inconsistency from Larned.

Hall builds a 5-3 lead in the fifth, his steady game surely making him odds-on to win. Hall’s level does not drop an iota but Larned hits another unplayable streak. To the excitement of the crowd, he red-lines his game once again, his groundstrokes blasting through Hall’s defences and any lobs dispatched violently.

He wrestles the score back to parity, successfully serves to stay in the match at 5-6 down and then puts the pedal down and finds yet another level to get across the line 8-6.

 

[Henry Hub]

Larned is the toast of Newport. However the hopes of his legions of new fans are dashed, as they will be year after promising year, when his game deserts him in the ACF. Hovey must not believe his luck as he wins 6-0 6-2 7-5 without ever approaching top form. The match breakdown below gives an indication of the younger man’s inconsistency:

https://imgur.com/a/vmiYx5Q

Still, Larned can be more than satisfied with his week’s work. This is not least because, as a Cornell contemporary recalls on Larned’s untimely death, Bill could have been playing baseball instead of tennis.

https://imgur.com/a/d9pRMv9

 

[Henry Hub]

The challenge round appears close but the sense is that Campbell never has to over-exert himself against Hovey. He wins in four sets for his third consecutive title and permanent possession of the enormous silver loving cup. Perhaps it still has the faint whiff of the champagne that filled it on Slocum’s first win in 1888.

https://imgur.com/a/ceIAYzx

This is Ollie’s second championship of the meeting, he and Robert Huntington Jr having won the national men’s doubles title against Eddie and Valentine Hall. The Halls earlier had a walkover against the Western champions Carver and Ryerson. The latter pair can’t make it to Newport and, in an extraordinary turn of events, suggest that the California pair Hubbard and Tobin play in their place. This proposal is roundly rejected by the USNLTA Executive Committee.

Here is a photo of the men at the business end of the singles - Hovey, Campbell and Larned.

https://imgur.com/a/O5zmkTl

 

[Henry Hub]

Just to wrap up Newport 1892, here is a photo of the Challenge Round match between Campbell and Hovey.

https://imgur.com/a/rsMQNqa

There’s one or two details in the photo that might be of interest. First, I think it’s Hovey at the net and Campbell at the baseline. I don’t think Campbell played in a cap and the volleyer seems a bit stockier than the baseline man, which would be consistent with the photo of the players above.

Second, the “eyesore” of a grandstand that Outing complained about at the start of the year has been built, butting up against the Casino wall. There are still a row of men perched on the wall at the back of the court though!

Third, the elaborate and otiose kit and caboodle that featured on the tops of US net posts have disappeared by this point - Meers suggested these were pretty ubiquitous just 3 years before. However I think I can spot a guy-rope coming off the right hand post, which suggests that this anachronism is still in use at top US events.

Fourth, the crowd. There’s quite a contrast between the Newport and Aigburth crowds when it comes to their clothes:

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-18430040

The ladies’s dresses seem, to my untutored eye, to be similar except in colour. The Liverpudlians go in for darker hues, consistent with their menfolk, while the society ladies of Rhode Island embrace the lighter summer dress. Even one or two men in the Newport photo are wearing tan or lighter suits - see the three in the foreground of the picture.

The hats sported by the men are also different on each side of the Atlantic. The Americans go in for the boater in a big way, with an occasional sprinkling of fedoras. The English, meanwhile, are full Merchant Ivory, with top hats almost to a man.

Finally, it’s a curious comparison with the US Open today that there are no American flags anywhere in any of the photos I’ve seen from Newport, at least up to 1900.

 

[Henry Hub]

Oh, one more thing. Anticipating that 19th century tennis-mad teeny-boppers will be craving more information on dreamboat Malcolm Chace, Harper’s Young People publishes this article with a photo that can be stuck into a scrap book and covered in love hearts.

https://imgur.com/a/7mAT9rZ

A photo is included of a Newport match. It doesn’t seem to be of the challenge round as I can’t make out a grandstand next to the photographer and there’s no umpire’s chair on the far end of the net (contrast the photo above). If it hadn’t been for those points, I would have persuaded myself that the player on the right was Campbell.

The match has clearly just finished - the ball boys and line judges are on the move and the spectators at the far baseline are in the process of decamping to another court. My question about this photo is whether this is a singles match. I don’t think it is a doubles contest purely because I can’t spot any players on the far court.

If it is a singles match, which has just ended, I think that this is the first time I’ve seen a player coming around the net to congratulate his opponent - the two men seem to be shaking hands. Certainly there’s nothing I’ve seen in writing to suggest this was a custom at this time - handshakes at the end of matches, you might recall, are a comparatively recent innovation, being introduced (in England at least) by Dod and Hillyard at the end of their Wimbledon final in 1887.

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-18022748

 

[Henry Hub]

Harper’s also caters for those tennis fans who are not practising writing “Mrs Malcolm Chace” in loopy writing in the margins of their school textbooks.

J. Parmly Paret, tennis theorist, pens an article on groundstroke swing variations for the magazine under the title of “Scientific Tennis”.

https://imgur.com/a/VkvhEGV

We’ve seen before that US tennis adopted Herbert Lawford’s surname when referring to any topspin forehand, much to the bemusement of the English tennis press. However, Paret uses this as a mere jumping off point in this article. Unfortunately he rather undercuts the authority of the piece by referring to the old warhorse as “Henry Lawford”.

Taking the “Lawford” as the genus, this budding tennis Darwin invents a range of familial sub-categories, namely the “forehand Lawford”, the “forehand half-Lawford”, the “backhand Lawford”; and the “backhand half-Lawford”. For good measure, he throws in the “straight lift” and the “Lansdown”.

In shades of “Mornington Crescent”, Paret also wonderfully, just wonderfully suggests that the “Lansdown” could also be referred to as the “forehand backhand half-Lawford”. Could? Should, more like!

My interpretation of the article is that the “forehand Lawford” is a stiff-armed forehand uppercut after Herbert’s style, while the “forehand half-Lawford” is like Nadal’s banana whipped forehand.

Paret appears to consider the “backhand Lawford” and the “backhand half-Lawford” as the reverse of the forehand shots and, to all intents and purposes, technically impossible. When it comes to the “backhand half-Lawford”, I’d be inclined to agree with him. Note that the “backhand Lawford” would be played with a stiff arm so may require the high elbow mechanics that Lawford adopted.

The “straight lift” seems to involve a pancake-tossing motion, with the wrist being held out in front of the body and the topspin being imparted with a flick of the wrist and upwards propulsion of the body.

The “Lansdown” seems to be a right to left underhanded cut of the ball on the forehand side, maybe with the racket being flourished up past the left shoulder?

All these terms are lost to tennis and, frankly, I reckon the sport is all the poorer for it.

Who among us would not love to hear French commentators enthuse about Nadal’s “fore’and back’and ‘Alf Lawfourd”?

 

[Henry Hub]

Before we head back over to England to catch the debut victory of another future legend of the sport, let’s take a California road trip.

Pacific coast tennis flies largely under the radar even in the US tennis pages of this era.

Everyone has recognised since the early 1880s that the California weather lends itself perfectly to the game and the sport is every bit as popular on the West Coast as it is further East.

However, in a time when Chicago is classed a western city and the Northwestern championships are held not in Oregon or somewhere but in Minnesota, California is just too remote to keep a close eye on.

Hence why there is precious little reporting on California tennis in the early 1890s, other than the odd update on the championships at San Rafael. It’s revealing that Hubbard and Tobin are treated like visitors from another planet when they arrive from the west coast at Newport this year.

Which is why this article from Overland Monthly in October 1892 is so unusual. Our last glimpse of tennis out West was back in 1890:

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-18269011

This article gives us an update on Pacific Coast tennis for 1892 and is so lengthy that I’ve split it in two.

https://imgur.com/a/mWvTIiw

https://imgur.com/a/oI9I75r

 

[Henry Hub]

There’s so much to enjoy in James Archibald’s article. I’ve set out my highlights below but there’s so much more:

• Tennis crowds are much more boisterous in California. The supporters of players from San Francisco’s California Club rival Lleyton Hewitt’s Fanatics in the volume and simplicity of their chants.
• The West Coast game has been played on asphalt courts since the 1880s. The weather simply doesn’t support grass or dirt courts. Californian players deal with the higher bounce of the ball by either slicing on both sides (Elizabeth Ryan being the most celebrated later purveyor of the so-called “chop” shot) or by adopting Western grips on the forehand. May Sutton and Billy Johnston are two examples of early players who won Wimbledon titles with this grip, Johnston hitting his forehands and backhands with the same face of the racket by flipping the wrist over, Berasetegui-style.
• There’s a reference to a Joe Daly (aka Daily) in the article. He seems to be the Californian equivalent of Tom Fleming of the Maida Vale and Hyde Park LTCs - a no-nonsense working class type who hangs around tennis clubs and somehow becomes a celebrated coach. This is his obituary in 1926, with a sketch of the “Professor” himself.

https://imgur.com/a/TeSWHej

• There’s a bit more detail on the main Bay Area and Southern California clubs and their facilities, supplementing the 1890 article. The California LTC has quite the menagerie on its walls from the looks of the reading room. The California LTC is, as now, located at the corner of Bush and Scott Streets in San Francisco: https://maps.app.goo.gl/wABFZDhCWqhfkgnz9?g_st=ic
• William H. Taylor is the alpha dog of men’s tennis in California at this point in time. There is a photo above of his title-winning final at the San Rafael Pacific Coast Championships and some illustrations of his shot-making. By way of reminder, this is now the entrance to what were the San Rafael Hotel grounds:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

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• Charles Hubbard of the Oakland LTC is Taylor’s unsuccessful challenger in 1892. There is a photo of him above. He is a big unit and bears a really uncanny resemblance to Karen Khachanov. His rather more energetic strokes are the subject of the illustrations at the start of the second batch of slides above.
• There’s a round-up of the next rank of male players. Although the name of Alec Wilberforce is eye-catching, being the émigré brother of HWW, he really is most prominent as a referee and umpire rather than a player. Of much more significance are the brothers Neel (Sam and Carr) and Hardy (Samuel and Sumner, or Sam and Sum). We will be back to them soon but Sam and Sum splash onto the scene as 16 and 17 year-olds, winning the Pacific Coast doubles championship of 1892 at San Rafael.
• There’s a brief mention of the leading contenders among the ladies, focussed mainly on the champion, Miss Susan Morgan of the California Club. None of the players singled out in the article go on to prominence at a national or international level unfortunately.
• Archibald remarks upon the lady umpires and linespersons at the Oakland LTC tournament, which I can’t recall reading about at other US clubs.

 

[Henry Hub]

Shifting our gaze back across the Atlantic and it’s hard to believe the same sport is being played on the asphalt courts of California and the boggy grass courts of Buxton. However, as we know, one of the greatest charms is that each surface has its specialists.

Clay courts have Nadal and Evert. Grass courts have Federer and Navratilova. Hard courts have Djokovic and Serena.

Swamp of Sadness out of Neverending Story? Step forward, Grainger Chaytor, 1892 Buxton winner.

The All England Ladies’ Doubles is held each year at Buxton. This year’s winners are Misses Jackson and Crofton. The standard of play does not approach that of previous years, if the reactions of one ex-champion in the crowd are to be believed.

https://imgur.com/a/FxTSfv3

 

[Henry Hub]

To canter through some of the other odds and sods going on:

• William Renshaw wins a society singles handicap in Homburg from an owe 40 start (ie he has to win 3 points just to get to love). The opposition is not exactly fearsome.
• While we are in the area, here are Robert von Fichard’s insights into Austrian tennis, as supplied to the keen ears of Pastime’s Varia desk.

https://imgur.com/a/28EDy8U

• Eaves wins Teignmouth, with determined resistance put up by future star Frank Riseley along the way. Ernest Renshaw gets to the final of the mixed doubles, although his first partner, Miss A. Arbuthnot, is so tired out with her efforts in other competitions that she taps out in the last 2 rounds, replaced by Miss V. Pinckney.
• The Colchester tournament has a guest star at the prize-giving, the new local MP. He turns out to be one Captain (Sir Herbert Scarisbrick) Naylor-Leyland who, to the general astonishment of the gathered onlookers, recounts a string of anecdotes about Major Walter Clopton Wingfield. If you recall, we came across an Albert Naylor-Leyland way back in December 1873. He hosted Wingfield and the rest of his troupe of amateur actors at Nantclwyd Hall, where Wingfield likely gave his new game a dry run. The event is commemorated in Wingfield’s first Sphairistike pamphlet. Albert was Herbert’s dad.

https://imgur.com/a/g53alKO

• MJG Ritchie, future Davis Cup winner and Wimbledon finalist (losing via a choke for the ages), plays the odd club match for Norwood down in South London.

https://imgur.com/a/bsmF3Sn

• The Scheveningen tournament is a roaring success, particularly when there’s a home winner in the ladies’ singles.

 

[Henry Hub]

The North of England championships in the coastal holiday town of Scarborough has a proud history of offering titles for almost every conceivable category of the game.

In 1892, the committee holds a men’s singles (won by Barlow), ladies’ singles (by Mrs Draffen), men’s doubles (Ernest Renshaw and Grainger Chaytor) and many many more.

William Renshaw has donated a cup for one competition, namely the Boys’ Singles for under 17s. The winner, a future true legend of the game, is one Hugh Laurie Doherty.

https://imgur.com/a/t0ToAQP

Laurie recalls this win in an interview with Pastime in 1898.

https://imgur.com/a/nVsWRNw

 

[Henry Hub]

The holiday tournaments continue around the UK, with practically every coastal town and beauty spot holding an event. There is no sign of Lottie Dod (unless she was the ex-champion watching the ladies’ doubles at Buxton?) or Wilfred Baddeley (he’s probably well behind on his time recording for the year).

The East of Scotland championship at St Andrews is a great success, with thrills and spills on the court. The eventual champion, Miss Corder, is so up for the fight that no opponent, weather or inconveniently-located linesman is going to get in her way.

https://imgur.com/a/SqCm7E9

The most talented Scottish player among the men is Richard Millar (“D ick”) Watson. This Doppelgänger of Ethan Hawke is probably the most prominent Scottish male player before Andy Murray. Like the Dunblane legend, Watson has experienced his share of disappointments in the big finals, at this time having failed in every tilt at the Scottish Championships. Never fear, Watson’s own personal 2013 is on its way.

https://imgur.com/a/jST476m

Despite being only 5ft 10 and 10st (140lbs), Watson’s first love was rugby. He sustains too many breaks to the schnozz and, in the delightful words of Pastime, “having ceased to expend energy in trying to rearrange his feature”, he eventually gives tennis a go instead.

He founds the Whitehouse LTC, a Scottish powerhouse that wins the LTA Cup and is a talent conveyor belt.

A stockbroker like Herbert Lawford, he and his wife are some of the most popular characters on the British tour.

 

[Henry Hub]

The Southwestern swing runs on, the steam trains well populated by the cream of British and Irish players.

We’ve seen some shocking weather this year already but Bournemouth even outdoes Leamington. The poor committee would probably rather be mucking out the Augean stables or sneaking off with Hippolyta’s belt than having to see through their full complement of events in the face of weather that might have had Noah looking for the proverbial bigger boat.

In the end, every final that they manage to arrange is halved, everyone throwing in a by now thoroughly sodden towel.

Which is rather a shame, as Charlotte Cooper is having a week to remember. The future great racks up a fantastic run that culminates in a big upset against Miss EC Pinckney in the All Comers’. The Challenge Round, against a Miss Pinckney who was probably rolling up her sleeves to avenge her sister’s defeat, is a victim of the weather.

Of possibly even more note is the mixed doubles, which features the debut of the wildly successful Mahony-Cooper partnership. The final was to be against another future great, Frank Riseley and his sister. After the final is abandoned, in a ne plus Victorian moment, the players agree that the two ladies will take the winners’ prizes and the men the losers’.

 

[Henry Hub]

The Brighton committee may have sighed with relief that Bournemouth had taken the brunt of the bad conditions. Unfortunately the “Clerk of the Weather” (in Pastime’s wonderfully florid lexicon) has not yet had his fill. It absolutely pisses it down on the south coast.

Bournemouth has an indoor facility at the Mont Dore hotel but unaccountably elected not to use it during tournament week. The Brighton committee on the other hand beat a hasty path to the doors of the drill hall on Church Street as soon as they read the barometers.

More than half the matches end up being played indoors, the financial backers of the event taking a pretty substantial haircut on the gate.

In terms of the play itself, the two main players on the men’s side are Harry Barlow and Wilberforce Eaves. The two meet in the All Comers’ final (the de facto final as the holder Grainger Chaytor is absent).

There is one slight hitch. Barlow has lost his Slazenger rackets. Worse, this isn’t even the first time it’s happened.

https://imgur.com/a/YnD6jT7

Something that hadn’t come to light in reporting of Wimbledon 1890 (so bloody hell I am going to have to go back and edit an old post) is that Barlow had misplaced his rackets before playing Grainger Chaytor. Chaytor, in another Victorian gesture of sportsmanship, lent Barlow one of his sticks and Harry promptly repays his generosity by beating him with his own racket.

I don’t recall another incident like this at Wimbledon but, after a mid-final string break, Mahony definitely lends Clarence Hobart one of his Slazenger EGMs later in the 1890s at Homburg, which the American then uses to defeat the Irishman for the European Championship title.

Anyway, sorry, mind is wandering - Barlow uses Carlton’s racket for a bit before he needs it for the doubles. Various other rackets are put before Harry, with the Hampstead man trying each in turn then throwing them aside. It’s not exactly Nadal-like OCD.

Eaves wins in straight sets. Unsurprisingly.

 

[Henry Hub]

Here’s the bio of Wilberforce Eaves and his blue steel photo. His moustache game is pretty meek compared to RM Watson’s, while our next subject, Herbert Chipp, is in another league entirely.

https://imgur.com/a/ysqMhYh

Eaves is 25 at this point - a veteran by US standards but a man just starting his tennis career in Britain. He is a surgeon by profession so there must have been plenty of shop-talk between Eaves and Lewis on rainy tournament days.

Although he achieved high tennis honours over his year in Australia in 1891, he hasn’t yet taken the next step to the highest level in England. Pastime are on the money though when they identify him as one of the most promising players on the men’s tour. Eaves is easily the best player of the 1890s not to win Wimbledon (spoiler) but, as we will see, he comes so agonisingly close. He does win just about everything else, though.

A player without any glaring weaknesses, where he really excels is in his half-volleying, his quick reactions and skilful hands allowing him to dominate from no-man’s land.

The “Doctor” serves in a medical capacity in the Boer War and, despite being posted to Johannesburg, still finds himself in the pages of Pastime.

https://imgur.com/a/Yf7nCxD

 

[Henry Hub]

Eaves is yet another of the 19th century tennis men to die early. He passes away at 53 in 1920 after complications from blood poisoning picked up while operating on injured soldiers at Woolwich Arsenal.

Bob Wrenn recalls the Doctor with considerable respect and fondness. The two played each other on a few occasions in 1897 on an American tour, the Australian winning their first encounter at the St George’s Cricket Club in Hoboken.

Wrenn recalls a cracking anecdote in the lead-up to the rematch.

https://imgur.com/a/2ci2Yg5

A. Wallis Myers also has warm memories of Eaves and notes his influence on his fellow Antipodeans, Norman Brookes (whom the Doctor instructed to jettison his back-court game and develop his volleying) and Tony Wilding (fixing his backhand).

Again, anecdotes abound about Eaves, this time featuring his bluntness on the subject of sub-par players and facilities.

https://imgur.com/a/HulAyfR

Anyway, lucky us as we still have the whole of this great man’s career ahead of us.

 

[Henry Hub]

Herbert Chipp is, on the other hand, at the very end of his tennis playing days. A mainstay of the 1880s game, his monotonous ambidextrous baseline style now seems as hopelessly outdated to the next generation of players as his enormous facial topiary.

https://imgur.com/a/zwYgHcw

Chipp is, by now, much more of an administrator than a player, serving with all his energy and diligence as Hon Sec of the LTA. He is also possibly starting to gather materials for his terrific 1898 book, “Lawn Tennis Recollections”. He lives at 26 Loudoun Road, St John’s Wood, which is just up the road from the old Maida Vale LTC and around the corner from The Clifton, a cracking pub that would have recently opened in 1889.

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

maps.app.goo.gl

 

[Henry Hub]

Shifting forward 11 years to July 1903 and Herbert Chipp, by now living in West Hampstead/Brondesbury, is refereeing the Redhill tournament down in Surrey and has taken the opportunity to stay nearby with an old tennis friend, Dr H.S Stone, in Reigate.

This is said Stone on the “brickdust” court at his home.

https://imgur.com/a/8cgmuNM

Stone and Chipp were clearly good friends. Although Stone never troubled tournament referees with his involvement past the first round or two, let alone challenged for first class titles, Chipp includes a lengthy account of his powerful, raking baseline game in his “Lawn Tennis Recollections”. Maybe the two old baseliners just enjoyed spending time on court together, exchanging interminable rallies.

This is the concluding passage on Stone.

https://imgur.com/a/HLHDBz4

 

[Henry Hub]

Chipp is cycling from Dr Stone’s house to the Redhill courts when he comes off his bicycle, lands heavily and is knocked out. He is helped back to Stone’s but is slow to recover.

https://imgur.com/a/AsgfE6O

Chipp, ever the loyal servant of the game, regretfully cancels a number of refereeing gigs but is back the following month, handicapping and running the East of England championship at Felixstowe.

https://imgur.com/a/Op4dIqI

The event finishes on 15 August, with Lawn Tennis and Croquet speaking for all lovers of the game when it gives thanks for Chipp’s full recovery.

 

[Henry Hub]

The Felixstowe tournament report appears on p.413 of LT&C. The above passage must have stuck out like a sore thumb to the reader, because pages 411 and 412 contain Chipp’s obituary.

https://imgur.com/a/DbG5dLv

Chipp kept that moustache and beard to the end, though it looks like a bottle of Just For Men was kept within easy reach at all times.

He dies of pneumonia and, astonishingly, laryngitis, apparently a complication from his bike accident. As an ex-editor of Lawn Tennis and Croquet, he would have been spinning in his grave at the typo in Dr Dwight’s name.

 

[Sanglier]

So Herbert Chipp's untimely demise occurred just two short years before Harold Mohony's equally avoidable fatal crash? Given that both were solo accidents, something tells me neither was accustomed to cruising at a leisurely pace. It's really quite astonishing that despite the well understood correlation between speed and kinetic energy, routine head protection for those who are exposed to high-speed impacts would not become a "thing" for many more decades to come. My daughter is a surgical resident, some of the carnage she witnesses daily would be a lot less gruesome if people took a little more time to get from point A to point B.

 

[Henry Hub]

The South of England Championship at Devonshire Park in Eastbourne is the last big tournament in the British season.

Faced with a whole winter without competitive tennis, players travel from all ends of the country for this last hurrah of 1892. In 1891 there were 367 entries, a colossal number by 19th century standards. In 1892, this number is dwarfed, a total of 464 entries being received by the tournament committee.

Even with four new courts added to the usual 8 in order to try to cope with these numbers, running an event of this size is an enormous undertaking. Wimbledon referee BC Evelegh is the man for the job but Pastime remarks that this is the worst time to be working alongside the dreaded “ornamental committee”.

https://imgur.com/a/gG3isBp

At least the changing room facilities have finally been improved…

https://imgur.com/a/GeTPi2C

One of the frequent complaints about Eastbourne is that players having a knock-up before their matches on unused courts get collared by the park authorities and charged the usual court fee.

Pastime fulminates on this subject most years but it gives it a break this year as warming up is getting a little out of hand.

This example may not be from Eastbourne itself but it’s fair to assume Evelegh would have given equally short shrift to his precious courts being used for a spot of casual hitting.

https://imgur.com/a/eEB0WJB

By the way, the phrase “knocks-up” instead of the modern “knock-ups” is among my favourite early tennis plural phrases, alongside “walks-over” instead of “walk-overs”.

It’s a niche category, admittedly.

 

[Henry Hub]

On the court, the results of Brighton are reversed, Barlow beating Eaves in the finals of the men’s singles and Blanche Hillyard defeating her surprise conqueror of the previous week, Miss Steedman.

There’s every format of tennis under Evelegh’s management at Devonshire Park - singles, doubles, open events and handicaps.

An event that doesn’t figure on the programme but is at least as entertaining and well-attended as any other is the latest Battle of the Sexes.

On the final day of the meeting, Ernest Renshaw locks horns with Blanche Hillyard once again. You may remember that the two played at Penarth around the edges of the 1888 Welsh Championships.

On that previous occasion, Renshaw gave Hillyard odds of half 40 (Hillyard starting 40-0 and 30-0 up in alternate games) and had to save 12 match points before winning. The fact that the match was paused so Blanche could go and play another event probably didn’t help her cause.

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-18073982

Well, revenge must be sweet indeed for the lady from Thorpe Satchville. The odds seems to be the same (half-40) although it’s unclear whether Renshaw is giving or owing them (if owed, Renshaw would start 3 and 2 points behind 0 in alternative games rather than giving Blanche the 3 or 2 point head start as at Penarth).

Blanche loses the first before taking a close second and running away with the match in the third.

https://imgur.com/a/p722zDF

 

[Henry Hub]

I won’t bore you more than I already have with the other results of the meeting but it’s safe to say that everyone generally has a splendid time down at Devonshire Park.

However there is some grumbling among the top players. Their complaint is that they have to spend too long kicking their heels on the ground, waiting for some duffers to play out second-class handicaps before they can start their own matches.

Pastime has precious little sympathy for these prima donnas, as can be seen from their next editorial.

https://imgur.com/a/WUelqOn

Pa Jackson, a man who rivals Evelegh and Chipp for the number of tournaments refereed each year, archly critiques the selfishness and entitlement of top players.

The players’ disgust at tournament committees’ inability to influence the weather may have Wimbledon committees nodding sympathetically even today. This puts one rather in mind of the complaint to the Penarth committee in 1888 from one gentleman (in the link above), who protests that he was put off during his match by the somewhat permanent fixture of the Bristol Channel.

It is more of an issue for club tennis today than the professional game but handicapping seems another potential battleground. In Victorian England, the secret of an easy life according to Jackson is to handicap a player’s vanity, not his form.

As so often, when comparing 1890s tennis to the modern pro game, it’s a case of plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose, innit?

 

[Henry Hub]

So Herbert Chipp's untimely demise occurred just two short years before Harold Mohony's equally avoidable fatal crash? Given that both were solo accidents, something tells me neither was accustomed to cruising at a leisurely pace. It's really quite astonishing that despite the well understood correlation between speed and kinetic energy, routine head protection for those who are exposed to high-speed impacts would not become a "thing" for many more decades to come. My daughter is a surgical resident, some of the carnage she witnesses daily would be a lot less gruesome if people took a little more time to get from point A to point B.

“Get a bicycle. You will not regret it, if you live.”

Twain, Mark, “Taming the Bicycle” (1884)

 

[Sanglier]

Twain was brave indeed to learn to ride a penny-farthing at nearly 50. It would be like me trying my hand at parkour right now.

I had attempted exactly one back flip on dry land in my life, forty years ago, off of a bar stool. My only protection came in the form of a spotter buddy, who had agreed to lend a hand in case I landed wrong.

After liftoff, I failed to rotate beyond the vertical and came straight down on the stool, with the top of my head, impacting between two arms of the steel cruciform supporting the seat, causing an explosion of particleboard chips and dust that I identified as bits of my skull and brain matter during that flash of an instant. My buddy, to whom I had entrusted my life and limb, not only made zero effort to come between me and the poor stool, likely due to the presence of a more evolved self-preservation instinct and a total absence of lightning reflex, but was by then collapsing to the floor in a laughing fit, proffering no concern whatsoever for my (evidently rock-like) skull or the shattered stool.

It wasn't until the era of YouTube that I came to appreciate the banality of my stupidity, which I had foolishly assumed to be wholly unique.

 

[Henry Hub]

I would love to have been eavesdropping on the discussion that led up to your explosive misadventure! The rest of the pub must have perked up from their boozy haze as they saw you uncertainly scale Mount Barstool for your Bar-cour.

I presume there was a ripple of applause around the boozer as you saluted the judges before your five-pint salto?

 

[Sanglier]

You might be surprised (or not) to learn that I was completely sober, and of no less sound mind than usual, when I decided to scratch this nagging itch on that particular occasion, as my latest brush with a very different reality did not occur at a venue for communal expurgation of excess brain and liver cells, but a sparsely appointed village gym, in which the lone barstool was a featured exercise equipment (one that was not explicitly endorsed for experimental acrobatics by untalented boobs with nary a soupçon of spatial awareness).

I did not dare to survey the room for reactions after righting myself. As soon as I ascertained that all the beige bits on the floor did not emanate from my skull, my useless accomplice and I hightailed for the exit, hoping that no witness could have positively identified us (mainly me) to the equipment manager. As a lifelong generator of shame and regret, I am grateful for having experienced the tail end of the 4.5 billion year era before the proliferation of surveillance cameras and video recording devices!

 

[Henry Hub]

Let’s rattle through a couple more biographies, courtesy of Nicholas Jackson and his hard-working Pastime team.

Like Eaves and Chipp, we have subjects respectively at the dusk and dawn of their careers.

https://imgur.com/a/aFxbC9c

The first is Harry Grove. Grove needs no introduction to anyone who has had the dubious pleasure of slogging through this thread. A contemporary of the Renshaws and Lawford, on his day Grove was every bit as feared as any of these illustrious names. This is borne out by his impressive list of titles over the mid-1880s.

The only trouble for Grove was that, when it wasn’t his day, he could be beaten by someone who’d never previously wielded a racket. High winds were fatal to his game, the mercurial Tulse Hill man never truly figuring out how to deal with blustery conditions.

He was also unlucky with illness, with the 1888 and 1890 seasons written off due to blood poisoning and influenza, respectively.

He is an seasoned racket-bearing traveller, winning the Southern India championships twice as part of hunting trips and, according to a later aside from AB Wilberforce, playing exhibition matches at the California Club in San Francisco.

The bio is a bit light on detail about Grove’s game, for which we need to turn to the aforementioned Chipp’s “Lawn Tennis Recollections”.

Grove seems to have been a conundrum of an all-court player, as he doesn’t seem really to have been 100% convincing either at the baseline or the net. At the baseline, his groundstrokes are powerful but have so little margin for error that you can’t really see him grinding out rallies. At the net, he seems to have all the tricks in the book - it’s just that he has all sorts of problems getting up there.

https://imgur.com/a/p7CLBy1

Being so frustratingly inconsistent, Grove unsurprisingly featured in any number of edge-of-your-seat encounters. His epic comeback against a young Baddeley was his best, while somehow losing against his brother-in-law Harry Barlow at Wimbledon 1889 from match point up was his nadir.

According to this bio, foot-faulting players veritably boiled Harry’s blood. From the looks of the photo, he’s just spotted someone’s big toe peregrinating across the baseline.

 

[Henry Hub]

The new man is Arthur Wentworth Gore. The term “new man” is used advisedly, as Gore is 26 at this point.

However, it’s certainly early in his epically protracted tennis career. Gore goes on to play singles at Wimbledon for another 30 years until 1922. He also enters the doubles there until 1926, when he and his perennial doubles partner, Herbert Roper Barrett beat Wing Commander Greig and the Duke of York (the future King George VI of “The King’s Speech” fame). Here are the doubles partners in 1926.

https://imgur.com/a/tscgKrB

https://imgur.com/a/ine5xkw

Unlike most of his contemporaries, Gore is not a public schoolboy and works for a living. He therefore plays wherever he can, usually around London, though he does win the Scottish Championships in 1892 (defeating the unlucky RM Watson).

The one fixture in Gore’s diary is the Dinard tournament at the end of September each year. This is because the young Arthur grew up there, learning the game on the local courts. He and his friend Chapman have by 1892 established quite the Edberg-Becker tradition of consecutive finals against each other.

Gore is later viewed as a one shot player, his forehand from the baseline being an imposing weapon for such a small man. He takes it low and gives it a classic rising drive. He must have had more to his game though, given that he goes on to win 3 Wimbledon singles titles and plays Davis Cup.

Upon his death in December 1928, the UK’s “Lawn Tennis and Badminton” pushes back on the narrative that “Baby” Gore was a one dimensional player.

https://imgur.com/a/BbSyMYo

 

[Henry Hub]

At Dinard in 1892, Gore successfully defends his title on the gravel courts. He defeats Archdale Palmer in 5 sets, having thrown away a 2 set lead.

He doesn’t get to enjoy the spoils of victory for very long, literally coming down with a bump as he is thrown by his horse at Dinard. Thankfully he is on the mend by October.

https://imgur.com/a/TVmlSaS

There are a couple of other anecdotes. The first is almost certainly apocryphal.

https://imgur.com/a/fwjdiYA

 

[Henry Hub]

The second is rather more intriguing. Harold Nisbet (or as Pastime has it, Nisbett) makes his competitive debut at Dinard and overachieves, winning the handicap.

https://imgur.com/a/QlYMtex

Nisbet is later a contender for top honours, reaching the latter stages at Wimbledon and being the surprise package of a US tour in 1897. He’s sitting second from the right below. He is in the most rarified of company, with Richard Sears, Larned, Whitman, the brothers Wrenn and his teammates Eaves and Mahony.

https://imgur.com/a/0ZVax2e

The other reason why this is intriguing is that Nisbet is described as being ambidextrous when playing lawn tennis. He is presumably like Maud Shackle or Herbert Chipp, being one-handed on both sides. My eyes lit up at this, seeing the prospect of a new entrant to the exceedingly skinny list of ambidextrous players at Wimbledon.

Disappointingly, there’s no reference to Nisbet being ambidextrous after this aside, so I suspect he eventually plumped for one hand over the other.

 

[Henry Hub]

Staying in France and, just up the coast, Lady Wood, the doughty organiser of the Boulogne-sur-Mer tournament, has good reason to be put out by her fellow émigrés in Dinard. The latter have rescheduled their event for the same week as her pride and joy.

To compound Wood’s woes, the weather in Boulogne is initially wretched. Heavy rain ends up pooling on the asphalt courts, wrecking any number of balls and rackets in the process.

Where Lady Wood has the edge over her Dinard rivals is her superlative marketing of the tournament. Year after year she succeeds in attracting a good field for her events, at least on the men’s side (the Arbuthnot sisters must, like Gore, have some connection with Dinard as the family plays it each year). This year she gets the returning Allen twins and Wilberforce Eaves.

Eaves duly wins the singles and doubles, playing one or both of the Allens in both finals. All in all, it’s another triumph for Lady Wood.

 

[Henry Hub]

Let’s do a quick grand tour of a few other European events while we are here.

A correspondent to Pastime gives us a whistle stop tour of play in Ostend and Spa.

Ostend has some courts in the Parc but these are so bumpy that our correspondent prefers the impromptu ones drawn out on the beach.

Meanwhile, an extract from the Spa tournament programme is provided. Although there was mention in The Field above of the prizes at Spa being artworks, the event programme does not suggest this is the case.

https://imgur.com/a/23Dgoo8

 

[Henry Hub]

While English events have had their fair share of problems in 1892, what with the foul weather in August and the gargantuan fields for other meetings, the prize for most unfortunate tournament committee goes to German shores.

The Hamburg tournament (Hamburg and German championships) starts on 27 August but the final ball is not struck until 20 September. While the committee lay on a number of events, they don’t go crazy with different formats like we’ve seen up at Scarborough. So why is the event so protracted?

Well, for good reason as it turns out.

https://imgur.com/a/76ZTc0M

The cholera outbreak in Hamburg results in an exodus from the city.

Doggedly, the committee don’t give up the meeting as a bad thing but instead order the players to reconvene in September. Despite a record of 27 walk-overs (walks-over?), the committee bring the tournament in for as smooth a landing as they could in the circumstances.

 

[Henry Hub]

Back in England and there’s a reminder of much happier times in this photo that was taken at Exmouth just before Ollie Campbell left English shores.

https://imgur.com/a/2lcO56Z

I’ve mentioned before that this is probably my favourite tennis photo from the early days of tennis.

Yes, it is entirely staged and most of the players are trying to maintain dignified countenances, as if perching in a row on a ladder were akin to witnessing the reading of a will.

The exceptions are Ernest Renshaw, who seems be having a whale of a time, and Charles Lacy-Sweet, who has a mischievous look in his eyes.

https://imgur.com/a/anoJLqN

This picture provides the rarest of glimpses into the messing around that must have been going on behind the scenes at most of these holiday events.

It is so easy to get carried away with the historical significance of these characters’ achievements on the courts and to forget that ultimately this is a bunch of young men and women who are enjoying spending summers travelling around with their friends, while somehow attracting celebrity status for playing a garden party game.

 

[Henry Hub]

All of which makes it so sobering when we get another reminder of the mortality rate among these young men.

With Donald Stewart, CE Farrer, TS Campion, Arthur Ashe and Otway Woodhouse having already joined the majority since 1874, this is like us losing a top 20 player every 4 years today.

Only 3 months after the above photo is taken, Charles Lacy Sweet is dead.

https://imgur.com/a/XmoWeav

https://imgur.com/a/vRM8EuS

 

[Henry Hub]

We are on the home straight to the end of 1892 now - all light hearted stuff from here onwards.

You might recall that Manliffe Goodbody went on a little one-man US tour over autumn. Well, the Irishman is back in October, having had by all accounts a splendid time.

https://imgur.com/a/OrthSH5

To the general disappointment of US tennis enthusiasts and journalists, he only plays two events while on his jolly. The first is at East Orange NJ, where he wins the mixed with fellow countrywoman Mabel Cahill and reaches the singles final. In the latter, he wins the first two sets against WV Johnson but subsequently retires due to “indisposition”.

Indisposition, by the way, is a wonderfully nebulous Victorian euphemism that I have seen trotted out countless times as a pretext for a defeat or retirement. I suspect it covers everything from muscle twinges and stomach upsets to hangovers and a pressing need to catch the last train home.

https://imgur.com/a/vPH8Ao7

Outing takes what it can from Goodbody’s brief competitive cameo, praising his backhand and short cut stroke (whatever that might be).

https://imgur.com/a/73KR65u

 

[Henry Hub]

Goodbody also makes time to stop by the Ladies’ Club for Outdoors Sports at the Staten Island Cricket and Baseball Club.

Their club tournament is in progress, Eleanor Roosevelt winning the title in a highly-touted four set match against Miss Burdette (Staten Island following Wissahickon’s example in making their final a best of 5 affair).

Manliffe gets to the final of the mixed doubles with one Mrs Badgely and, in a brief report to Pastime, gives us a bit more detail about the club. I had assumed that ladies would officiate at the matches but I hadn’t expected the demand for bouillon, or broth, among the members.

https://imgur.com/a/XBtXZbW

Most enjoyably, Caspar Whitney in Harper’s Weekly paints a very different picture of Goodbody’s visit to Staten Island. He suggests that the Irishman is a frightful hog at the net and that English play is less impressive than previously thought, if Goodbody’s game is anything to go by.

https://imgur.com/a/6KYy7tI

 

[Henry Hub]

Over in Australia, there’s some good news for New South Wales tennis fans as the Victorian tennis authorities confirm that Melbourne intercolonial and championship matches will be played in future on grass rather than, as has been the case, on asphalt.

https://imgur.com/a/4s5p3Fg

This not only gives NSW a fighting chance in their away matches against Victoria (NSW matches being played on grass) but also will be a blessed relief to spectators who have til now paid a high price to watch their favourite sport.

There must have been some subterranean revolutions in Sydney when the Australian Open moved from the grass courts of Kooyong back to the Rebound Ace of Flinders Park…

 

[Henry Hub]

Another news item from Down Under that catches the Varia’s team’s eyes is an evening match under lights. I believe that this takes place at the Elite Skating Rink in South Yarra, at the corner of Acland and Barkly Streets:

Google Maps

Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.

maps.app.goo.gl

https://imgur.com/a/1R1V8nG

Although Pastime has a good laugh at the stop-start nature of the event, a competitor subsequently writes in to sing its praises.

https://imgur.com/a/1RFcwPy

 

[Henry Hub]

Circling back to where we began 1892, Pastime looks to understand the antipathy towards handicap events over in America.

In the UK and Ireland, according to Pastime, a well-handicapped meeting drives participation at all levels. Handicaps allow top players to enter tournaments without being accused of pot-hunting and those of a more recreational standard to try their hands against the best.

Pastime suggests that American players are not interested in anything other than open combat.

However, Pastime hopes that a recent handicap event at New York’s Knickerbocker Tennis Club may indicate a change of heart. Spoiler: it does not.

James Dwight is a rare supporter of the handicap event and outlines the old real tennis and new quarters systems to his readers.

https://imgur.com/a/tph10At

In some candlelit corner of a schoolroom, WH Collins is scribbling away at mathematical formulae and tables of differential odds. Pastime excitedly announces in December that a new handicap system is in the offing, this one based on sixths, rather than quarters, of 15.

https://imgur.com/a/YzLVXLi

 

[Henry Hub]

The final tournament of the year is the covered courts event in the Drill Hall in Brighton.

Miss E Lane pulls off a surprising win, beating Maud Shackle in the final. In the men’s final, Ernest Renshaw and the powerful baseliner Chapman reach two sets all before the latter taps out.

With the season all wrapped up, Ernest Renshaw heads off to Cannes.

Tennis players are no strangers to the stage - in fact William Renshaw performed up north over one winter - and this year it is the turn of the ladies.

May and Beatrice Langrishe exchange the courts of Wimbledon for the bright(ish) lights of Surbiton, just down the road. They star(?) in a play by the name of “Pauline Up-to-date”.

You may not have heard of this magnum opus, but don’t feel too bad about it, as apparently neither has Google.

https://imgur.com/a/a8SGHeZ

 

[Henry Hub]

And there we bring the curtain down on 1892.

On court, we started and ended the year with Ernest Renshaw at the forefront of the men’s game, his Irish championship title being the greatest of his career. Wilfred Baddeley defended his honours at Wimbledon, once more denying Joshua Pim in an event where 3 of the 4 semi-finalists used Slazenger rackets.

Ireland won the first international tennis fixture, played against England in Ballsbridge as a fundraiser for the Masonic Female Orphan School’s centenary celebrations.

Pim and Harry Barlow took the lion’s share of the other titles on offer both in singles and doubles, while Barlow and Lewis’s Wimbledon doubles title must have been one of the highlights of the year. Meers achieved another popular win at the age of 44, becoming Covered Courts champion after many disappointments at the Hyde Park indoor courts. William Renshaw played a single event and is not anywhere near his best.

We said farewell to Charles Lacy Sweet but had a glimpse of the future in the shape of Eaves and the youngest two Doherty brothers up in Scarborough.

Ollie Campbell’s European tour was underwhelming but he was finally finding form when he left, form that he took into Newport to the dismay of his countrymen. At the Casino, Wrenn and Knapp played out what proved to be the longest match at the US Championships for exactly 100 years. There was a reappearance by a familiar old name, Grinstead, in Florida while new ones, Bill Larned and Bob Wrenn, shone in Rhode Island.

Lottie Dod still proved to be facile princeps in the European ladies’ game, her stunning reversal against Louisa Martin in Fitzwilliam Square only galvanising her performances at Aigburth and Worple Road. Blanche Hillyard was on inconsistent form, scoring many of her victories through sheer grit. Martin faded a little after her Irish triumph. Maud Shackle, Mrs Pine Coffin and Edith Austin all flourished in the absence of the main contenders. May Langrishe was out of practice, playing and losing in only two late season tournaments. She took to the stage in December and effectively retired from the game at that point.

The best player in America was Mabel Cahill, although the 16-year old Bessie Moore is one for the future and a rematch with Eleanor Roosevelt is long overdue. Charlotte Cooper made an eyecatching debut on the British circuit and was immediately pressed into mixed doubles service by Harold Mahony.

Off the court, the North vs South handicap saga raged on. The wretched English weather caused havoc with tournament schedules and referees’ equanimity in committee tents around the country.

The game itself, though, is in rude health - a great sign for 1893.

Back in a tick.

 

[Sanglier]

I like how Spa L.T.C. is in Liège, yet the description of the club says it was "worked by a committee, consisting partly of Englishmen, partly of foreigners". I don't suppose some of these "foreigners" were Walloons?

Let’s do a quick grand tour of a few other European events while we are here.

A correspondent to Pastime gives us a whistle stop tour of play in Ostend and Spa.

Ostend has some courts in the Parc but these are so bumpy that our correspondent prefers the impromptu ones drawn out on the beach.

Meanwhile, an extract from the Spa tournament programme is provided. Although there was mention in The Field above of the prizes at Spa being artworks, the event programme does not suggest this is the case.

https://imgur.com/a/23Dgoo8

 

[Sanglier]

This recently uploaded video is not about tennis, but I think it is nevertheless germane to this discussion, as it gives us some idea of what all of these interesting people that we have now read about actually (or probably) sounded like. What surprises me the most is just how "mid-Atlantic" everyone's pronunciation was in these recordings. No effete upper-class accent or Linguaphone-perfect RP that we expect to hear from today's learned and powerful people, nor any recognizable (present-day) New York (or even American) accent from Gouraud, though by then he had been living in England for a while, and might have picked up some verbal affectations from his hosts like Madonna did a century later.

The one thing we will never be able to experience again is the smell of the era, though I presume a trip to a cigar shop with an attached bar should come close enough?

 

[Henry Hub]

1893. A pretty good tennis year, all in all. There’s plenty of thrills and spills on and off the court and there’s a couple of morsels that I fortuitously stumbled across that (I believe) don’t feature in any other history of the game. More on that later.

Where 1893 does rather let the side down is in the number and quality of the patents registered. There’s only really one of much interest, and that one is about rubber grips.

Perhaps Ralph Slazenger has finally listened to his lawyers’ advice on the limitations of intellectual property law but he elects not to invent a reason to slap a patent on what turns out to be the biggest racket hit of the 1890s.

So we start with T. Stopher, who in the grand tradition of GB patent law, opportunistically takes out protection on an idea that was patented 9 years previously.

https://imgur.com/a/yfZnwb4

Back in 1884, Messrs Trimmings and Knighton successfully patented the proto-Lacoste design of stringing the racket through loops within the face.

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-17844203

 

[Sanglier]

So we start with T. Stopher, who in the grand tradition of GB patent law, opportunistically takes out protection on an idea that was patented 9 years previously.

https://imgur.com/a/yfZnwb4

Back in 1884, Messrs Trimmings and Knighton successfully patented the proto-Lacoste design of stringing the racket through loops within the face.

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-17844203

Ah, but Trimmings and Knighton never mentioned the use of barbed staples! These early UK patent claims (or at least the published portions thereof) are so brief and narrow that it really shouldn't (and didn't) take much effort to circumvent them, unless the patent-holder had both Ralph and Slazenger in his name.

The problem is, if you tug on a staple long and hard enough, it is going to loosen sooner rather than later, especially under repetitive impact; which is certainly the case with tennis. Stopher's idea was not particularly bright, even without the benefit of retrospection.

Also, I cannot believe you have contributed 25 dense pages to this 35 page thread in 10 months! In illustrated-book form, this is at least a 350 page large format book, given that even your illustrations are sometimes more than a dozen pages each.

 

[Henry Hub]

Also, I cannot believe you have contributed 25 dense pages to this 35 page thread in 10 months! In illustrated-book form, this is at least a 350 page large format book, given that even your illustrations are sometimes more than a dozen pages each.

An object lesson in quantity over quality!

 

[Henry Hub]

Proving yet again that some people have more money than sense, one JA Baker burns an application fee on this design.

https://imgur.com/a/mWbBk6S

Aimed squarely at latter day court jesters (ho ho), this curiosity involves a double strung racket (cf the “Surface-Strung” racket and the Blackburne) with jingles slotted in between the layers.

I presume that this was intended as a child’s toy rather than a bold foray into the sphere of high performance sports tambourines.