REALLY Ancient History

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Finally, as we had a grisly intro to how gut strings are made above, let’s have a palate cleanser on racket manufacturing.

First, the Boys’ Own Annual of 1895 gets a tour of the Ayres workshops from what I can tell from the references to the “Union” and “Triplex” models. The fact that these model names are picked out suggests to me that this is an older article that may have been reheated and stuck back in the annual each year.


There is some interesting detail on the manufacture of these laminated frames (“Union” is cane and ash, “Triplex” is ash, cane and ash).

In describing the finishing of the handles, the author notes that some rackets are bound with twine like a cricket bat or wrapped with leather, showing that there were departures from the orthodoxy of the bare wooden grip.

Varnish is used as a finishing touch on the gut strings, which as noted above were largely sourced from France but also Italy (maybe from the Neapolitan sheep that get Calhoun Cragin so misty-eyed?).
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Second, we get a whistle stop trip around Ayres’s archrival’s place down at Cannon Street.

Slazenger’s processes are unsurprisingly similar to those of Ayres. That said, we get a bit more detail about the steam bending operation, the “bodying” or varnishing steps and stringing. Oriental gut gets another kicking.

 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Fittingly, 1895 starts with some consideration of tennis implements. Dr James Dwight, President of the USNLTA, writes to the Official Lawn Tennis Bulletin (OLTB) in January to recognise the issues that seem to have plagued the Wright & Ditson ball in 1894.

Lest it be forgotten, there is a single official ball selected for tournament play each year by the USNLTA - so it is rather embarrassing when that ball turns out to be a bit of a dog.


In case you’ve forgotten what Dwight looks like, this is the diminutive tennis supremo in his late 1880s prime:


It turns out that the issues with the ball were discussed at an urgent meeting at Newport in August and a clear message was communicated to W&D that they would not be reselected in 1895 unless dramatic improvements were made.

As it turns out, the USNLTA’s Executive Committee ends up selecting them again for 1895 but with the proviso that this will be reversed if similar issues arise over the course of the year.

According to Pastime, the reason for the duff ball was that W&D was left without a decent cloth covering for its balls after its supplier’s mill burnt down just when production was ramping up for the season.

 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
The year will be bookended with news relating to indoor tennis. We open in Massachusetts and will end in Paris. Provided I remember, that is.

On 17 January 1895, an indoor tennis court is inaugurated by the newly established “Winter Tennis Club” in Newton Centre, Massachusetts. At this point in time, this is one of the very few indoor tennis facilities in the US - we shall tick off some of the others in the northeast in a moment.

The driving forces behind this new club are two of the leading lights of the Neighborhood Club of West Newton, Fred Hovey (two times US National men’s doubles champion) and Harry Ayer. There is also a hefty shared membership between both clubs, which is understandable given that the two are about 45 minutes walk from one another, according to Google Maps.

We will see more of the Neighborhood Club later in the year - suffice to say for now that they may have a security issue if this street view picture still holds true.


This is a photo from early 1895 of the indoor court of the Winter TC.


You might just be able to make out the green canvas stretched tight across the floor. The court lines are painted onto the cover, which is secured to the walls by dozens of ropes.

The same approach is later used at the St Nicholas Skating Rink in Manhattan - see the final photo in the below.

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-18508940
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
The lighting of the hall is accomplished via the large windows that you can see in the photo above, with 8 arc lamps illuminating play in the evening. In order to provide a more diffuse light, the lamps shine upwards into what one hopes are fireproof sheets draped from the ceiling.

This I believe may be the only permanent court with electric lighting at this time other than Kaiser Wilhelm’s vanity project in Berlin. The new Stockholm indoor courts of the Idrottsparken Club follow suit in 1900.

The formal opening of the court is celebrated with an evening match under the lights between Hovey and Champion Bob Wrenn, followed by dinner and dancing (once the canvas playing surface is rolled away).


According to later reports, the court is in a hall practically opposite the station in Newton Centre. Given the shape and positioning of the upper windows, the lower floor possibly now converted into shops, I think it could be this building:

 
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Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
While on the subject of US indoor tennis, we get a quick spin around the clubs and armouries of Manhattan and Brooklyn.


The eye-poppingly well kitted out Tennis Building stood on the site of what is now the New Amsterdam Theatre at 212 W 41st St in Manhattan.


The 7th Regiment Armory, its 10 courts and copious gallery seating making it the perfect host venue for the US national indoor championships well into the 20th century, is now known as the Park Avenue Armory:


The 12th Regiment Armory, whose members included J. Parmly Paret (making his way onto our scene presently) was pulled down and various Fordham University buildings have taken its place. The entrance was apparently somewhere around where this car park now stands.


The 22nd Regiment Armory is now a cinema on Broadway:


The 23rd Regiment Armory served an occasional tennis purpose when it wasn’t doubling as He-Man’s Castle Grayskull.


This look was clearly all the rage as the 13th Regiment Armory copied it over on Marcus Garvey Blvd:

 
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Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
A round robin invitational tournament is held early in the year under the roof of the 12th Regiment Armory (see above). Calhoun Cragin (see article above on gut strings) takes the spoils, with young upstart Jahail Parmly Paret the runner-up.


Paret and Cragin have spent the winter practising together indoors and the former sets out his thoughts on covered courts tennis in a March edition of Harper’s Weekly.


Paret proves to be quite a perceptive observer of the game over the next 20 years and his views here are illuminating, not least on the subject of indoor illumination.

His opinion is that no perfect solution has been found for lighting of indoor tennis. Unlit courts suffer from patches of shade, while electrically lit courts are a poor substitute for playing outdoors and judging distance is a particular problem at the Winter TC. He seems to suggest that the Tennis Building boasts indoor lighting, which rather cuts across my confident assertion above that this was only to be found in Newton Centre.

He is a fan of the canvas surface at the Winter TC. As we have seen, the approach is copied elsewhere but often to lesser success. One issue is where the canvas is not fixed tightly enough, with players sliding and bunching up the surface under their feet.

His chief complaints about indoor tennis are that it takes time to adjust back to outdoors tennis after a winter playing under the roof and that playing through the winter leaves players “stale”. The latter point is one that he returns to frequently over the years. Here, he points to 7th Regiment Armory regular and National doubles champion Clarence Hobart as his Exhibit A.

I do wonder what court was used as the model for the illustration. I do hope that it is a court in the Tennis Building as I don’t recall seeing another drawing or photo of the interior of that establishment.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Over in Europe, a new indoor tennis facility is apparently opened in Würzburg in Germany, the court being located in the old station, known as the Ludwigshalle. Charles Voigt, soon to enter stage left in our little tale, referees a tournament on the court in 1895.


In case you are interested, this is what the courts look like by February 1914. They have electric lighting and, unusually, a dirt surface.

 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
In the UK, the premier indoor court is that on the land of the Earl of Cavan at Wheathampstead, just north of London.

The cream of British and Irish players graced the well-appointed court with their presence. The court may not be rigged up with electric lighting but the glass roof gives plenty of light, albeit that it may be a greenhouse in warm weather. No wonder there are reports of lady players practising there in their gym outfits instead of corsets and full dresses.


However the big news on the indoor tennis front is that the Covered Courts singles championships for men has transferred from the Hyde Park LTC to the Queen’s Club.

It has become painfully obvious over the 1890s that the Hyde Park court suffers in comparison to the more modern and better appointed Queen’s. The size of the field has reflected this disenchantment with the old Pickering Place hall, only 3 players entering for the championship in 1894.

These are the Queen’s Club’s East and West courts around this time.


The transition is accomplished with the minimum of fuss, the holder of the event since 1885 seeing the writing on the wall. Sadly, that’s about it for indoor tennis at Porchester Square. Tennis is wound down there pretty soon after it loses the championship and it ends up hosting cycling classes by the end of the 1890s.

This is a photo of the last match held on the court. It’s also the first photo we’ve seen of the old court, appearing just as the last connection with the Maida Vale LTC and its denizens is broken.


Note in the photo Old Tom Fleming on the far left, the caretaker of the MVLTC and then Hyde Park LTC, whose son (also Tom) becomes one of the leading coaches in the UK and Europe. Old Tom, you may recall, is one of the least celebrated but most legendary figures of early tennis - transforming himself into a respected coach who couldn’t play a stroke himself. He was also the owner of a tubby mongrel named Tyke, the infamous scourge of London tramps and figure of fun to all things feline.
 
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Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Queen’s gets a great field for its first hosting of the men’s covered courts singles - the holder, Mahony, is joined by such illustrious names as William Renshaw, the five time winner Ernest Lewis, Harry Barlow, veteran Ernest Meers and the young in-form Wilberforce Eaves.

Lewis and Renshaw oppose each other in R1 in a hard-hitting encounter that the young doctor takes in straight sets. Meers beats Barlow but is then taken down by Eaves. The ACF between Eaves and Lewis is won, again in straight sets, by Lewis.

Mahony has been out of sorts for weeks and asks for a postponement of the challenge round until he is better. This is a rather unsatisfactory situation that drags on in the press for a few weeks until the title is summarily awarded on the grounds of Mahony’s absence to Lewis.

The field for the ladies’ event would fit in a phone box, 3 players entering the lists. Chattie Cooper makes heavy weather of beating Mrs Horncastle and then gets one of her first victories over Edith Austin, winning in 3. This match-up is one of early tennis’s most reliably scheduled, with each lady having won 13 of their heads-to-head by the close of the century.

In the doubles, the old firm of William Renshaw and Harry Barlow are installed as favourites after their win over the scratch pairing of Lewis and Wilfred Baddeley. Expectations are left unmet, though, as they lose the final in 4 sets against Eaves and CH Martin.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
While on the subject of Mahony, one imagines that he would muster the energy to rise from his sickbed to learn the outcome of the LTA AGM’s discussions on his favourite pet topic, namely whether a net cord that then drops in should count as a let even when it occurs during the point itself. The Irishman strongly supports this change and evangelises on the point for the rest of his playing career.

The discussion in the meeting is finely balanced. The proponents of the change want to eradicate the “fluke” from the game, the opponents see the restart of the point as needlessly extending matches. Isner-Mahut would probably still be going now if this proposal had been adopted…

Eventually, the question is asked whether the server would get his first serve again if the rally was restarted. This causes a schism among the supporters of the resolution, which duly fails but is pushed to a sub-committee for further consideration.

The other main topic is how to fix the serve. A new footfault rule is proposed (both feet behind the line when serving) and, in doubles, a ban on volleying back the return of serve. Despite having trialled various solutions in 1894, including this one, there is still no consensus and the matter is likewise referred for further testing.

In fact, after all of the potential changes that come before the AGM, the only one that is implemented is the resignation of Herbert Chipp as Honorary Secretary of the LTA, replaced by WH Collins.

A couple of details to be treasured on each of these men are set out in the pages of the LTA’s Lawn Tennis Handbook for the year.

First, there’s old “Windmill” himself.


His successor, Collins, is an administrator rather than a player and perhaps the thoughtfully-worded compliment in the first sentence gives us an insight into his character.

 
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Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Unfortunately, the stay of execution for the serving team in doubles, much like the “man at the net” controversy of the early 1880s (see posts way, way above), is not acceptable to some of Pastime’s correspondents.

The general sense is that the “no volleying the return” rule, if enacted, would flip the balance of power firmly in the direction of the receiving team, both server and returner necessarily having park themselves behind the baseline.

The usual alternative solutions therefore emerge, as they will repeatedly do on this topic until presumably the end of time. No second serve is a popular suggestion, as is grasping the nettle and having another look at the distance of the service line from the net.

This is an example of the kind of thing being floated. It’s refreshing to see the writer having the courage of his convictions and refusing to hide behind a silly pseudonym.


Into this discussion our old acquaintance OR Coote, a man never short of an opinion and Purple Heart veteran of the “man at the net” war of words, sticks with relish his tessarakonteres-sized oar.


To give him his due, Coote is at least consistent in his views. This is him riding this exact same hobby horse through another letters page in 1920.

 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
One person who is staunchly opposed to any change in the laws is Baron Robert von Fichard. He is in the process of founding the German LTA and doesn’t want anyone to rock das Boot before it’s up and running.


Another name over in Germany that catches Pastime’s eye is Charles Voigt, who has published a little tennis book under the title “Das Lawn Tennis Spiel”.

Note that Voigt spent some time in England in the past, seemingly passing his days playing cricket or football. He often complained of an old football injury, possibly what drove him into the arms of tennis.

 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Voigt’s masterwork comes in for bit of gentle ribbing at the hands of Nick Jackson and the Pastime editorial team.


Ideally I would have had a copy to proof Pastime’s criticisms of the tome but sadly I couldn’t find it anywhere.

I do enjoy Pastime’s appraisal of the photos in Voigt’s book, in particular the employment of a model who “seems to have been chosen rather for his Apollo-like grace than for any practical acquaintance with the game” and who “is palpably striking not the ball but an attitude”.

Some of the methods portrayed of delivering shots must have caused outright hilarity in Pastime Towers. Jackson, chuckling away to himself over the typewriter, remarks that the violence shown to be about to be imparted to a smash means “the ball-boy […] will do well to prepare for a journey”.

Away from the book and down on the lower slopes of the Taunus mountains, (soon to be Bad) Homburg hosts Kaiser Wilhelm’s new tennis tournament for German army and navy officers, with generous prizes up for grabs.

 
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Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
We are now in the first week of May, the traditional annual dawn of the UK and Irish tennis season, though the weather gods usually roll over and hit snooze until at least June.

Before we see how things actually turned out, let’s see Pastime’s and OLTB’s predictions for the season.

Pastime bemoans the lack of successors in the men’s game to the Renshaws, Baddeley and Pim, ignoring the stage coughs in the wings from Reggie Doherty and Wilberforce Eaves. The return of the Renshaws is still yearned for, William giving a good account of himself at Queen’s and Ernest playing so well in handicaps that Pastime wishes he’d give open singles another go.

Barlow and Meers are thought to be over their respective hills, Doherty, Eaves and Nisbet are thought to be a few years away from being competitive and Chapman is playing more real tennis than it’s outdoor counterpart. All of this means Wilfred Baddeley is left to bear an increasingly heavy burden as the sole defender of England’s reputation against the dominant Irish team.

On the ladies’ side, Pastime is confident that the courts will feature Lottie Dod once more in 1895. This is probably news to Dod, who has spent the winter skating in St Moritz and is by now probably wielding her niblick around Hoylake’s back 9. Hand in hand with Lottie’s name comes of course that of Blanche Hillyard, who is expected to play in any event that Dod enters and not many more.

Aside for these two, the other players to watch are the ambidextrous Maud Shackle, Mrs Pine Coffin, Edith Austin, Charlotte Cooper (whom Pastime singles out as having the greatest potential of all), Misses Jackson and Corder, the Arbuthnot sisters, Miss Templeman (not sure if Ursula or Agatha) and Mrs Pickering (more of whom, or rather of whose husband, below). I can’t find photos for all of the ladies but here’s a selection of some of the less-known players.

 
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Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
It’s important to note once again that the golf and cycling crazes don’t seem to have adversely affected tennis nationally. Yes, some events have fallen by the wayside, Cheltenham being an example. But Pastime observes that other events have promptly stepped up to plug any gap and that the number of players at most tournaments continues to rise.

It’s really only among the veterans that golf has apparently exercised a siren’s call. Jackson gently mocks Chipp’s post-tennis conversion to the links.

 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
In the US there’s no change to the principal dramatis personae.

Bob Wrenn is spending more time playing quarterback for the Harvard team than tennis early in the season.

This is the location of the Harvard University tennis courts in late 1894. They are located at Jarvis Field, which I seem to recall is now occupied by the Littauer Center of Pulic Administration.


Campbell has hung up his boots for good. However, rumours of Fred Hovey and Clarence Hobart having retired from the game are ill-founded, while Bill Larned again promises much for the summer ahead.

The real excitement, though, is generated by the rumours swirling about of possible tennis tourists this year.

In March, reports reach ALTB from Canada that Manliffe Goodbody will be back in 1895, this time with the Hillyards, Ernest Lewis and the champion Joshua Pim in tow.

 
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Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
The ladies’ game is more complex. Much depends on who is playing where, as there are only two top-tier tournaments exclusively for women. These are held at the Philadelphia Cricket Club in Wissahickon Heights and the Staten Island Tennis Club of Livingston, Staten Island.

However, even at these clubs, seasons can go by without the top ladies encountering each other. There seems to be a reluctance on the part of the ladies to play at clubs that are not their own.

The reigning national champion, Helena Hellwig, gives voice in February to her concerns about the ladies’ game in the US. She also treats us to some more detail on ladies’ clubs.


If Google Maps is anything to go by, the geography of the Philadelphia CC grounds are largely the same now as in 1895, the driveway entering from the east and skirting around the top of the cricket pitch. The first photo above is the view from the grandstand, overlooking the championship court.

The second photo is of the Wissahickon ladies’ clubhouse, which I have not (from a Streetview cruise around) successfully matched up with any of the current structures on the PCC grounds.

The Staten Island ladies’ clubhouse is of a different order of magnitude - I have attached photos from 1887 and 1890 below.

 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Let’s sweep through the early season results before diving into the Irish Championships.

Staying in the US, the Tropical Championship is the preserve of the mundane players, Ollie Campbell no longer making the long train journey south.

The national qualifiers for the interscholastic championships are held in spring. I say national but there seems to be one played at Harvard and one at Yale, attracting every talented young tennis player in the US, provided of course that they are boys and live in the north-east.

The Harvard event is won by Leo Ware of the Roxbury Latin School, Boston. The Roxbury seems to be the oldest school in the US and appears to offer some pretty gob-smacking facilities in exchange for the eye-watering fees - so Leo’s victory is a classic riches to riches story.

Here is Leo Ware or, as I prefer to think, the great-great-great grandfather of the Weasley twins. He continues the grand tradition of Bob Wrenn in successfully scaling the tennis ladder from the interscholastic, then intercollegiate events into the big leagues (or at least as big as a a primarily society do in Newport can be said to be).


The Yale event is won by JP Sheldon of the Hotchkiss School of Connecticut. As far as I can tell, there’s no connection with Hazel Hotchkiss, later Wightman of said Cup fame. Anyway, Hotchkiss School looks the kind of place where Philip Seymour Hoffman ruled the roost in Scent of a Woman.

 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Down at the Catonsville Country Club (now the Rolling Road Golf Club, albeit on a nearby site) near Baltimore, the Southern States hold their annual championships.

A. Hamilton Post wins out, beating JP Davidson 9-7 in the 5th after saving 5 match points.

Staying in the warmer weather but jetting off half way around the world, the annual tournament is held by the Singapore Cricket Club. The winner in 3 out of the 4 events is one RW Braddell.

Braddell is an English ex-pat who, before his departure out east, achieved the odd success at the bigger tournaments of the early 1880s. Pastime helpfully gives his playing bio.


However, if Braddell should be famous (possibly infamous?) for anything in tennis history, let it be for his bull-in-a-china-shop, Julian Marshall-baiting contribution to the argy-bargy around the formation of an LTA back in 1882.

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-17817367
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
We find ourselves back in London. Another traveller who has ended up here is AM Driscoll, the men’s tennis champion of San Francisco.

In terms of 1890s tourist must-dos, Paris has the Eiffel Tower, Cape Town has Table Mountain and Chicago its skyscrapers. For tennis tourists in London, it’s all about trying to get a hit with a Renshaw. Luckily for Driscoll, Ernest Renshaw has first dibs on the Queen’s court booking system.


We also see Pastime ruminating on the viability of an England-US tennis fixture, a proto-Davis Cup to follow (and presumably be subordinate to) the annual England-Ireland encounter.

Before we head on to Dublin, there’s just enough time for this ill-fated attempt to see if horses are, indeed, for courses.

 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
As was the case in 1894, there is every prospect of a top-notch entry at Dublin. The Irish contingent is all present and correct, Pim, Stoker, Tommy Chaytor, Mahony and Ball-Greene all throwing their names into the hat.

Among the probable English entrants are the brothers Renshaw and Allen, Barlow, Eaves, CH Martin and Chattie Cooper.

Blanche Hillyard (no chance of a Dod match-up) and Wilfred Baddeley (has to do some honest work at some point) are the notable absentees from this early line-up.

They are joined on the sidelines by the Renshaws, neither of whom make the journey, Stoker, who drops out of the singles through work, and Tommy Chaytor, who withdraws with flu. He is the second Irish player to have been struck down in the ongoing epidemic, Mahony losing his covered courts titles after his own slow recovery.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
The tournament opens in blisteringly hot conditions. A new name to Northern Hemisphere players is JM (Joy) Marshall, New Zealand men’s singles in 1890 and the tennis mentor to Harry Parker of extreme topspin forehand fame. Marshall wins a round, putting out the Dublin university champion, but gets his clock cleaned by Mahony.

The weather stays glorious as the week goes on, each successive day setting a new attendance record and making a mockery of claims of tennis’s demise. The semifinals are set between Mahony and Barlow and between Eaves and Grainger Chaytor in the men’s and between Chattie Cooper and Miss Corder and between Miss Paterson and Mrs Draffen.

Although Barlow takes the first set, Mahony races through the next three, the players never both playing well at the same time. Eaves defeats expectations as well as Chaytor, his accuracy wearing down Chaytor’s power.

Cooper dismisses Corder’s challenge without fuss while Paterson successfully navigates her topsy-turvy encounter with Draffen.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Cooper has little difficulty dispensing with Miss Paterson in the final, the latter lady by now thoroughly exhausted after a week of three setters in singles and doubles.

The Scottish lady receives a great deal of sympathy from the crowd, many of whom may have read that Paterson fainted in the tent after a gruelling earlier round against Miss Dyas.

The men’s All Comers’ Final is between Mahony and Eaves. These two are well matched, both being all-out attackers with excellent net games. The capacity crowd expects a good match and that’s largely what they get, though the result isn’t the one they’d prefer.

Eaves ends up winning in 4 close sets. The day of the match starts with rain, the only time it falls all week. The courts have up to then been hard and high bouncing, a return to the tracks of 1893 that so favoured the serve and volley club. Mahony, practically the founder member of said club, has profited from these “fiery” (in the words of The Field) courts. The rain slows them down a little, which plays into Eaves’s hands.

The Australian is another man who wants to put as much distance between himself and the baseline as possible. Unlike Mahony, he doesn’t have a particularly fast serve and, being a good few inches shorter than the Irishman, can’t match the vertiginous angles that his opponent gets off his delivery. But Eaves is a clever player who dominates the net and runs his man around the court. He also has excellent hands, a master of the half-volley, which he and Caridia transform into a legitimate attacking stroke.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
By 3pm on the Saturday, the well-heeled crowds have squeezed themselves inside the fences of a sunbathed Fitzwilliam Square for the Challenge Round of the men’s singles.

As well as Wilberforce Eaves is playing, I doubt there is a man, woman or child who has paid their entry fee to see him. They are all here for one man alone, the two-time champion Joshua Pim.

Pim is the local hero, a repeat Wimbledon singles champion who plays a Federer-like game that delights and enthrals. He never seems to run hard but he is always in the right place. His shots on both wings are played with no margin for error, the ball barely clearing the net, and with great variety and imagination. His volleying and smashing is peerless, a product of his doubles prowess. On serve, he hits both deliveries equally hard. Above all, he has a winner’s mentality and never stops going for his shots.

This year, there are two additional reasons for his supporters to come out in force.

First, if Pim wins he will win three Irish Championships on the trot and take possession of the trophy, the first Irishman to do so.

Second, at some point in the days before the Challenge Round, Pim lets it be known that this will be his final match. He is retiring from the game to focus on his medical career at the Jervis Street Hospital.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Given that they won’t see his like again, the crowd may have wanted a long match so they could properly appreciate what they would be missing.

Well, Pim doesn’t play ball. He gives Fitzwilliam Square quite the send-off, dishing up tennis of the gods that Saturday afternoon. Eaves tries to impose his net-rushing game but Pim just curiously regards the figure bustling up towards him and lashes untouchable passes down the wings or at steep angles across the court.

Eaves decides to change tack and sticks to the baseline, looking for the chance to come in. Unfortunately for Pim’s medical compatriot, his back court game is nowhere near the level of the Irishman’s. Pim adjusts his length and hits his searching drives deep into the corners, pushing Eaves further and further back and then sending him running hither and thither.

In no time, Pim has taken the first two sets 6-1, 6-1. Eaves makes more of a fist of it in the third but he’s never really in the running, Pim cruising to the title with a 6-3 set. The whole encounter has lasted 39 minutes.

However that match ends up looking like Nadal-Djokovic in Melbourne 2012 after Pim and Stoker then thrash the Allen twins in 33 minutes (best of 5 remember) for their third doubles title and possession of that trophy too.


Pastime pays its respects.

 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
As Mahony wraps up a thoroughly successful championship for the Irish with a run to the mixed doubles title with Chattie Cooper and as Colonel Courtenay thoughtfully surveys the empty ballrooms so recently packed with tournament guests, the tennis pages cast around for something to cover.

Amazingly, there is still the odd person lurking around the fringes of tennis to whom Pastime has not devoted a biography. So here are Messrs Hough and Heard. These two men share an affection for the Craigside Covered Court at Llandudno.



Hough is one of the few bucking the 1890s trend by transitioning from cycling to tennis, exchanging the dreaded velocipede for the racket.

Both men sport excellent facial topiary - and doesn’t Hough know it.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
International tennis is becoming all the rage. After the UK-Ireland contests and the suggestions that equivalent events be held for women and between the US and UK comes the second international club fixture. The first such event was between the Folkestone LTC and the Boulogne LTC in 1887.

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-18028927

In 1895, a London-Paris fixture is being arranged. The English contestant is the Winchester House Cricket and Lawn Tennis Club, a club formed of City businessmen and named after an office building on Old Broad Street. The very next year, the club will merge with the South Hampstead C&LTC but the disaffected tennis players will hive themselves off and join the North Kensington LTC instead. The latter has an abundance of courts on its grounds in what is now the Kensington Memorial Park.

The French side is of much more interest. A representative side is formed from various Paris clubs by the French sporting body, the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques.

The venue for the encounter is to be the Ile de Puteaux club in Paris. The club possesses a large collection of clay courts on its site in the middle of the Seine. This is a later photo of the clubhouse.


Vicomte Léon de Janzé (another name to note) is the President of the club, which hosts its own annual tournament by the turn of the decade.

This tournament attracts an enormous field of Englishmen partly due to the quality of the courts and clubhouse and partly because of the better weather but, one suspects, mainly due to a prize list that is carefully tailored to inhabitants of a country in the grips of a temperance movement.

 
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Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
The fixture takes place over the first weekend in June in front of a crowd of 600.

The English team wins the open events without much difficulty, winning all 15 of the matches for the loss of only 2 sets. The handicap events the following day are much more even, the English being harshly treated by both the handicapper and their thunderous hangovers.

The Winchester House players are Lewis, Caridia, GM and CF Simond, Orme and Bailey.

The French team is composed of Jean Schopffer, Aymé, Brosselin, Vacherot and Riboulet.

Here is a photo of the players and some detail on who is who:


This is a little contemporary synopsis on the old champion Schopffer:


And here is another photo of the clubhouse.

 
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Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
You might well ask why a match between a soon-to-be-defunct London tennis club and a ragtag bunch of Parisian players thrown together by their sporting union deserves any attention.

Well, first, you probably know by now to your eternal disappointment that I can’t leave the smallest event unreported, so apologies for that.

Second, a local man by the name of Monsieur Armand Masson comes to watch the action. Armand Masson became pretty much the prime mover of tennis in France outside the Côte d’Azur and was often called the father of French lawn tennis. He recognises the gulf in talent between the English and French teams and resolves to do something about it.


Along with Messrs Hetley and Lecaron, Masson founds the Tennis Club de Paris (“TCP”) later in 1895, its indoor and outdoor courts located at 91 Boulevard Exelmans. This building was a 10 minute stroll from where the Roland Garros complex now stands.


Pretty much every decent French player up to WW1 serves their apprenticeship at the TCP. Thomas Burke, the Lansdowne Club professional who taught Pim and Victor Voß the game, is engaged by Masson to work with the young domestic talent. Hough (see above) and Masson are like peas in the pod, the two of them umpiring and refereeing at all of the big northern French and Swiss events.

Masson goes on to restore the annual London-Paris fixture, which turns out to be a financial success and, as representative of France on the English LTA’s council, reinforces the links between the LTAs of the two countries.

Incidentally, there is an early 20th century French racket company which was celebrated for its technical ingenuity called “Mass & Co”. This was shorthand for the original name, which was “Masson et Gondolo”. I suspect that the namesake of the former was either Armand or his son Willy Masson.

Masson’s character is a key part of his success. According to his obituaries, he is an indefatigably hard worker (probably contributing to his 1904 nervous breakdown), a thoroughly hospitable and warm-hearted man and someone who is deeply beloved on both sides of La Manche.

Masson dies on the eve of WW1, during which conflict the TCP becomes a hospital, with his daughter (a champion French player who scoops up titles for fun across Europe before the war) acting as nurse, quartermaster and fundraiser. Fittingly, one of the first organised tennis events in France following the Armistice is the Inter-Allied tournament in December 1918, held at Masson’s Tennis Club de Paris.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
I mentioned Count Victor Voß above and elsewhere. This young aristocrat from small-town Mecklenburg learnt the game from an American neighbour and subsequently became a pupil of the Renshaws and then Thomas Burke, the great Irish professional, at the Beau Site courts in Cannes.

Voß becomes a familiar name to tennis tournament goers around Europe during the late 1890s to the early 1910s. He is for a number of years the only man from Continental Europe in the same class as the top English and Irish players.


Voß has a powerful serve, frequently throwing in a sidesliced underarm delivery as a change-up (again, Kygrios was just reviving a once-proud component of the game). He gives the ball a good bash off the ground on the forehand side and is unerring overhead.

Although he adopts a rakishly-angled hat above, he is rarely to be seen on court without a rather different sort of headwear. I refer you to the photo on his Wikipedia page:


Whenever the mercury shoots up, Voß takes a white towel, soaks it and wraps it round his head like a sopping turban. This apparently prevents his glasses from fogging up. Voß may have started a fashion that leads to Suzanne’s bandeau headscarf and the headbands of today but many observers just apparently thought he had a bad headache.

Anyway, Victor won the Championship of Germany on the sand / clay courts at Hamburg in 1894 and he repeats the trick in 1895. This event is open to German players only and the Count is Kopf und Schultern above any of his compatriots. Much more impressively, he sweeps through the field to win the Hamburg Championships, which features a host of English players, albeit none of the first rank, the holder Nisbet not making an appearance.

HIH the Grand Duchess Anastasia of Mecklenburg dishes out the prizes so she must be delighted with the success of another Mecklenburger.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Pastime sees a bandwagon (“Bandwagen” perchance?) and jumps straight on it.


We are treated to some commentary on the state of the game in Germany. The only player named is Voß but Pastime clearly sees great potential in the nascent enthusiasm for sport and tennis in particular that is growing around Germany and Austro-Hungary.

If this tourism ad is anything to go by, Bad Homburg is transforming itself into some kind of Bollettieri academy - 36 courts is not a number to be sniffed at.
 
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Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
One more from Hamburg and then it’s back to the somewhat less glamorous surroundings of Chiswick.

A journal by the name of The Album does its bit for the Hamburger Tourist Board with this report on the tournament at the Uhlenhorst LTC.


There’s some detail on the courts (14 in number, all clay as noted above), the clubhouse and the general milieu around the grounds.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
There is a smattering of tournaments littered across the valley between the peaks of the Irish and Northern events.

Chiswick Park is a homecoming event for Chattie Cooper after her triumphs in Fitzwilliam Square. Her home club is a little further along the District Line in Ealing so one imagines she has half the club out to support her in Chiswick. To their delight, she marches to the title, the final being another close match against Edith Austin.

In the men’s singles, a relative newcomer by the name of George Greville upsets the odds by making the final at the expense of Harold Mahony. The latter has the offest of off days and goes down in 3 straight sets to the dark horse. In the challenge round Barlow makes mincemeat of Greville, although as ever he coughs up a set.

Maybe the two losers drown their sorrows together that evening in the Old Pack Horse on Chiswick High Road. Cupid’s arrow is more accurate than their respective groundstrokes - George and Edith are soon married.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Perhaps Barlow feels that he hasn’t given Greville value for money. The two have a rematch in the ACF at Beckenham, the contest going the distance. Barlow is his usual mercurial self but eventually knuckles down at 5-5 in the fifth to take the win.

A crowd of 3000-4000 watch the Challenge Round between Barlow and Horace Chapman, thus proving that, if the end is indeed nigh for tennis, there’s certainly plenty of people who want to watch the curtain fall.

Barlow goes on to knock off the holder, Chapman, thereby regaining the title he had lost the previous year.

Staying in the Garden of England and, a few weeks earlier, the Kent Championships are held at the Blackheath LTC. Harold Nisbet wins at a canter, his opponent in the final being the future star MJG Ritchie.

Another player who has great things ahead of him is ED Black (of Sykes’s “EDB” racket fame). Black serves notice of his potential with a run to the final at Sheffield, where he and Charlie Allen play out an exhausting final that ultimately falls in favour of the less illustrious of the tennis twins.
 

Henry Hub

Hall of Fame
Around this time, Pastime devotes its editorial columns to the relative merits of trophies that can be won outright and those which are held for a year and then returned.


The editorial suggests that there have been geological eras of prizewinning in tennis. First, there was the distaste for “pot-hunting” (or being seen to strategically enter for tournaments based on the chances of success and value of the prizes, rather than for amateur glory).

This was followed by an over-correction where the value of trophies was ostentatiously denigrated by careless ownership (the Renshaws being the main culprits) or excessive chivalry (players doing no all they can to ensure that titleholders would take possession of the trophy).

Finally, we now find ourselves in an age where the champion gets possession of the trophy until the following year. Unfortunately, as the editorial points out, trophies tend to be perfectly formed for the acquisitive hands of England’s criminal underclass.
 
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