REALLY Ancient History

Another R2 encounter is that between Edith Morgan and Hilda Hitchings. The umpire’s scoresheet records a 6-1 6-1 win for Morgan but that’s not telling the whole story. We’ll be back to Edith in a second as she has a further role to play in this Wimbledon.

Hilda Hitchings, as you will doubtless recall, is the 1895 New Zealand champion who has moved to London, joining the Chiswick Park LTC. She also just happens to be one-armed.

https://imgur.com/a/6GmWpJ7

This is, as far as I can tell, the only time Hitchings enters Wimbledon. It is also the only time that I know of that a one-armed player competes in a main draw event at The Championships. Unfortunately she has a bye in the first round, so she did not win a match to set up the Morgan tie.

[Edit: Robert McNicol at Wimbledon has informed me that I have overlooked Hans Redl of Austria, who competed in a grand total of 10 Wimbledons (don’t I look stupid!) after WW2, after having his left arm amputated at Stalingrad. Also, I’ve just noticed that Hilda above uses a racket with a grooved handle - maybe she belongs to the select group of “Demon” players.]
 
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Now, there is another instance of a single limbed player entering the lists at Wimbledon.

Allow me to introduce you to the indefatigably cheerful Hope Crisp.

https://imgur.com/a/l18U2Aa

A bipedal Crisp captains the Cambridge University team in 1913 as a (mature) student and captures the inaugural mixed doubles title at Wimbledon the same year with Agnes Tuckey.

It is definitely one of the more unusual championship wins. Their opponents, the Irish great JC Parke and Wimbledon champ Ethel Larcombe, are a set up and contesting a tight second when Larcombe is hit in the eye by a Parke smash.

Larcombe, the reigning singles champion, retires from the match and subsequently cannot defend her title against Lambert Chambers. Parke must have wanted the ground to swallow him up.

Crisp is in the background of this 1913 photo of one of their Wimbledon matches.

https://imgur.com/a/XcB78jg

With the All England mixed championship still being held at the Northern, this was categorised as the “World’s Championships on Grass” of mixed doubles, adopting the shortlived and self-bestowed accolade that the club had to drop in exchange for the US joining the ITF.
 
https://imgur.com/a/2kO6doz

Crisp is headmaster of the school of baseline plodding in the early 1910s, the forecourt being very much marked on his map as “There Be Dragons”. His graceless technique is deceptive, however, masking a reliable and effective game.

https://imgur.com/a/rkS8k6K

Crisp is a famously good humoured player, drawing crowds like the Allen twins with the promise of some cheerily self-deprecating comments. He is fully aware of his own on-court shortcomings, as can be seen from this brief paragraph on his favourite shot.

https://imgur.com/a/iO6j1oA
 
A sporting polymath who also excels at football (earning an England call-up against France) and cricket (a teammate of the Australian “demon bowler” Spofforth at the Hampstead Cricket Club), Crisp is at the forefront of the players shaping up to represent GB in the late 1910s. However the small matter of the Great War puts an end to that.

He follows his brother, talented artist Francis EF Crisp, into the army. His brother is killed at the front line shortly after the 1914 Christmas Day armistice. Serving as a Lieutenant in the 3rd Duke of Wellington’s Regiment (subsequently promoted to Captain), Crisp is sent over to the 2nd battalion for the fateful assault on Hill 60 as part of the Second Battle of Ypres in summer 1915. His parents must have feared the worst.

It sounds a horrific engagement, control of the battlefield switching first one way and then the other. It also marks the advent of gas warfare in WW1. Crisp is shot in the thigh and is immediately evacuated to a hospital in Boulogne. Although expected to make a full recovery, his right leg ends up being amputated above the knee.
 
The loss of a limb does not seem to dampen his spirits, though.

https://imgur.com/a/xaH3itA

Back in the north of England, Crisp cheerfully sends an update on his recuperation to Lawn Tennis and Badminton, more concerned about the injury to Parke’s hand than his own maiming.

https://imgur.com/a/Jv3zWGR

He’s misinformed about Parke’s injury, by the way. It was actually a shrapnel wound, sustained when hunkered down on a Gallipoli hillside, under fire from the Turkish army - but the net effect is the same: the cutting short of what could have been a tennis career every bit as great as Brookes or Wilding.
 
Amazingly, it is not long before the irrepressible Crisp is back on the tennis court and the golf course.

https://imgur.com/a/93GrQHh

He plays tennis wearing a succession of wooden legs, naming them Mary, Grace and Gwen (maybe the last after Mrs Lamplough - see below?). His movement is compromised to the point that he has to abandon his singles ambitions but he still plays a decent game of doubles. On the golf course, the Northumberland man prefers to play one-legged.

https://imgur.com/a/fzBkulj

https://imgur.com/a/uetS9xe
 
Without a doubt one of the most popular men doing the rounds of the British tennis circuit, Crisp continues to delight crowds with his cheerful running commentary on his own play. Now, though, the crowd is not just there to enjoy the badinage - Crisp has naturally become a sentimental favourite, but his indomitable spirit also commands universal respect.

Wild celebrations therefore follow Crisp’s doubles win in the North Northumberland Championship in Berwick-on-Tweed in 1922. It is the veteran’s first victory in an open competition since his injury and an extraordinary effort against all the odds.
 
But it is to 1919 that we turn our gaze.

Hope Crisp teams up with Mrs Perrett and enters the Wimbledon mixed doubles event. The All England committee are no sentimentalists and don’t cook the draw, the old soldier and his partner facing the daunting rhyming couplet of Gladys Lamplough and Arthur Lowe in their first match.

Lamplough (known as Gwendoline Eastlake Smith before getting hitched) is a serial indoor courts champion, including winning an Olympic gold at the London indoor event. Arthur Lowe is a top class player who is somewhat overshadowed by his more successful brother, Gordon.

The match goes pretty much as expected, Lamplough and Lowe taking it 6-1 6-2. However, to Crisp belongs the distinction of being the only player to compete with a wooden leg in a main draw event at Wimbledon.

Crisp weans himself off tennis by the mid-1920s and concentrates on his golf instead. He is evacuated from London at the end of 1939 as another World War kicks off, Crisp taking his family north. For the next few years, Fleetwood papers report frequent sightings of a tall, grey-haired, one-legged man battling the gales with clubs in hand at the Cleveleys Hydro links near Blackpool.

Crisp dies in 1950 at the age of 66, having spent the previous 35 years living a one-legged life to the full and having had a damn good time so doing.
 
Eight women remain in the draw at the third round stage of Wimbledon 1898.

Miss Legh beats Miss C. Morgan, while the latter’s sister Edith falls against Louisa Martin for the loss of just 2 games. After losing the first set 6-4 to Irishwoman Ruth Dyas, Edith Austin takes the next two 3&4. Locked in an eternal pas de deux with Austin, Chattie Cooper follows the men’s ACF onto court and racks up exactly the same score against Miss Steedman.

The first semifinal is a walkover, Miss Legh failing to put in an appearance. The second match is the latest in the list of Cooper-Austin showdowns. Bewilderingly, this one does not go the distance, Cooper winning 6-4 6-1. Spectators would have wanted a refund. Lawn Tennis commends the ferocity of the two players’ groundstrokes, a performance that puts the Mahony-Doherty match in the shade.
 
The ACF is, as mentioned above, the championship round due to Blanche Hillyard’s absence. Louisa Martin beat up on Cooper a few weeks previously at the Northern in a closely fought 10-8 6-4 contest.

The rematch is played on Monday 27 June under heavy skies, interspersed with occasional bright spells. Martin gets going immediately, winning the first two games. Not a great sign for Coops.

https://imgur.com/a/xoTkG9z

The above is a photo of the final between Martin and Cooper, snapped by our trusty 1898 correspondent, J. Parmly Paret. He gives it to Stephen Wallis Merrihew, who publishes it in a 1927 issue of ALT.

Chattie is on our side of the court, Louisa at the far end. The final is not exactly well-attended but this may be a case of spectators having a well-earned cuppa after the marathon fifth set of the Mahony-Doherty match.
 
Cooper knuckles down at 0-2, squares the score up and then breaks a 4-4 deadlock with a break and a hold of serve for the set. The severity of her backhands is revelatory, while that wing proves unreliable for Martin, who also finds her usually strong and reliable serve elusive all afternoon.

The second set finds Cooper surging to a 4-2 lead before Martin stages her own recovery. At 4-4, Martin has a game point and an easy short ball to whip away for a winner. She elects at the last moment to throw in a drop shot instead and watches in horror as the ball barely makes the middle of the net.

The chance is gone. Chattie takes the game and then the next too for the match.

Here are photos of the newly crowned three-time champion, Chattie Cooper, and her opponent.

https://imgur.com/a/kLcIdjd

https://imgur.com/a/jA2y43n
 
The question of who will be the challengers to the Dohertys in the men’s doubles is chewed over in parallel to the women’s singles.

The form pairs are Greville & Mahony, Hillyard & Smith and Nisbet & Hobart. The first two combinations come head to head in the quarters (R3) and it is Hillyard and Smith who prevail 8-6 in the 5th.

The ACF though is a bridge too far for the Leicestershire-Gloucestershire combo as they are dismissed fairly easily by the Anglo-American partnership of Nisbet and Hobart. Nisbet hits one of his unplayable purple patches that Larned would know only too well from Newport in 1897. Hobart recognises he’s onto a good thing here and provides solid support. The contemporary reports suggest that the big hitters Hillyard and Smith were reluctant to come forward much, playing a baseline game against two players who were prepared to make inroads to the net.

The challenge round between the Dohertys and Nisbet & Hobart is chiefly notable for being the first Wimbledon final featuring an American. Otherwise, it’s pretty unremarkable, the brothers taking a straightforward win.

https://imgur.com/a/9tzddGX

Hobart is mentioned in dispatches for his pounding forehand and for trying to drag up his partner Nisbet’s game. Sadly for them, the Dohertys are ruthless and exploit the young solicitor’s inconsistency. It is a straight sets defence of their title.
 
With the Dohertys’ victory, the curtain falls on another Wimbledon. But one topic we should touch on briefly before we take our leave of Worple Road is that of umpires.

Umpiring is, to put it mildly, not a popular pastime in the 19th century. Players will go to extremes to avoid serving their time in the high chair, their efforts not going unnoticed.

https://imgur.com/a/zIZ6mUX

Others shirk the role by being awful, some might say deliberately so, at their work.

https://imgur.com/a/tN7h7fN

Tournament committees go to some lengths to persuade umpires to serve. The carrot approach is to offer prizes for the best umpire at the meeting, a practice observed well into the early 20th century. The stick approach is for the referee to send “umpire catchers” out around the grounds like his personal flying monkeys, press-ganging victims into service.

This is my favourite description of the role. According to the author, the three most thankless of positions in life are trustee, hangman and tennis umpire.

https://imgur.com/a/GxfD1Y0

Free tickets to the Championships are on offer to an umpire’s lady friend provided he takes the high chair for 2 out of the first 3 days.
 
But there are willing and able umpires out there. And one of them is Miss Edith Morgan, the conqueror of one-armed Hilda Hitchings earlier in the tournament.

https://imgur.com/a/O0nqWZ0

Here is Edith.

https://imgur.com/a/FtggpdR

Edith Morgan follows in the footsteps of Blanche Williams, who umpired the Blanche Bingley-Miss Watson (Maud’s sister) semifinal of the 1884 inaugural ladies’ singles at Wimbledon. There are definitely other “lady umpires” at Worple
Road and Church Road in the early days, Miss Winifred Knocker and (possibly - she was certainly selected to umpire there) Mrs Evers being two examples.

Taking advantage of the laziness of male tennis players, these women and their contemporaries stick their hands up and, through their performances, gain the kind of responsibility and respect from which they would have been held at arm’s length in other sports in Victorian Britain.
 
Now, before we pop back across the herring pond, our friends Larned and Wrenn having almost completed their tour of duty, let’s clear the back markers over in England.

Around the time of the LTA AGM, a mischievous character pens a letter to Lawn Tennis to suggest that the LTA take over the running of Wimbledon.

https://imgur.com/a/whZm1Nc

The editor rejects the very notion. However, this is closely related to a proposal that is raised formally in an LTA meeting in 1906 (suggesting that representatives of the LTA and the club meet to discuss how the LTA could take a greater role in the event, including by selecting the balls and the referee).

That 1906 proposal causes an absolute bun-fight, which is most revealing and utterly hilarious to observe. We will come to it in due course but the rights of selection above set off klaxons down Worple Road (and no doubt in Laurence Pountney Hill too, Slazengers having a vested interest in preserving their newfound position as ball suppliers to the Championships). What complicates the whole thing is the overlap between administrators of the LTA and of Wimbledon. An example of this is HWW Wilberforce, whose robust defence of the status quo sets the cats among the pigeons.

It remains an aberration among the Grand Slams that Wimbledon is not organised under the aegis of the LTA. Yes, the LTA has a say in the Championships, but the club’s role is far more important than at Roland Garros or the other Grand Slams. The closest equivalents would be the Newport Casino or the West Side Tennis Club, hosts of the early US National Championships, but even then the USNLTA was charged with selecting the venue.

Try finding the LTA’s offices at Wimbledon today and you get a sense of the pecking order. Clue: try down at the lower level around court 1.
 
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The LTA mandarins congregate at the Freemasons’ Tavern on Queen Street on 11 July.

maps.app.goo.gl

Street View of De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms · Google Maps

61-65 Great Queen St, London WC2B 5DA, United Kingdom
maps.app.goo.gl maps.app.goo.gl

There is not much on the agenda this year in terms of law. They do pass an agreeable evening on other matters, though, authorising the LTA Council to prohibit “any act or practice, which, in the opinion of the council, is contrary to the interests of the game”. This is prompted by the Truth article we saw at the end of 1897.

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-18784020

The AGM also allows clubs to shorten the centre line at the baseline so that it does not stretch all the way to the service box (a hangover from the old days where one handicap would be to play the ball into only one side of the court). Already by 1898 the line generally only projects a few feet from the baseline. However this rule change means that only the little nub remains, an outcome with which we are familiar today.
 
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Of the post-Wimbledon tournaments there is little to be said. At the Gipsy event in Stamford Hill, Arthur Gore defeats the holder,Herbert Roper Barrett, to take the men’s title while Edith Austin defends the women’s.

Up at Newcastle, Smith wins the singles with some ease, never losing a set. He has a right set-to with Harold Mahony in the semis before disposing of George Hillyard (previous victor over Eaves) in the final.

Muriel Robb attracts some attention as she wins the local event, the Novocastrian sweeping through the field. In the open women’s singles, she comes close to an upset of 2-time defending champion Blanche Hillyard in the semis, taking the first set.

Hillyard’s miserable run continues as the hot favourite loses to Ruth Dyas in the final. The score is a thumping 6-2 6-2, which includes an 8 game streak from the Irishwoman.
 
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The metropolitan circuit winds down with the London Championships at Queen’s, with Laurie Doherty and Chattie Cooper the defending champions. This event does not permit the holders to stand out so they must both work their ways again through the field.

And good fields are entered. Among the women, we see Cooper, Austin, Mrs Kirby, Miss Bloxsome and the young Dorothea Douglass (to be Lambert Chambers). On the men’s side, Harold Mahony has made the short journey from his house to Queen’s, while the rest of the roster looks like a tournament call sheet from 5 years on - Ritchie, Dixon, HL Doherty (Reggie playing the doubles), Arthur Gore, Durlacher and Payn.

Harry Barlow pops along too, though only after practising his new passion, croquet. His wife is a seasonal member of the All England Club at this stage, probably to join him at the more sedate lawn game.

https://imgur.com/a/7x7x8u3

Haggett the groundsman (you might remember his son, Charles, the international tennis professional) does a sterling job with the courts despite the baking conditions. There doesn’t appear to be as much attention paid by the executive to the segregation of the courts, though - spectators wandering to and fro near the baselines to the annoyance of the players.

https://imgur.com/a/hOv6CXj
 
The tournament itself provides much entertainment. Doherty minor beats Pearson after coming back from 1-3 down in the fifth. Another rearguard action is fought by Gore as he shrugs off the loss to force a fifth against Mahony. Sadly for the former, he is well beaten in the final set - but the match is an intriguing, well-balanced contest of serve and volleying against baseline play. Gore does particularly well, given how the dry, hard courts favour net play; his tactic of serving from just inside the tramlines to drive Mahony out wide pay off admirably, setting the server up for his big forehand drive into the open court.

The final between Doherty and Mahony is a cakewalk for the holder, Laurie winning in straight sets. Reports suggest that Doherty is superior in every facet of the game - admittedly it’s almost impossible to have a worse ground game than the lanky Kerryman but Doherty is even the pick when it comes to volleying and smashing.

The best match in the women’s open singles is the regulation three-setter between Cooper and Austin in the final. It’s time to get yet another therapist for Austin, who goes up 5-4 and 40-0 in the third and yet still contrives to lose the set 8-6, the poor lady over hitting on each of her match points.

Cooper plays the handicap singles at the not inconsiderable penalty of owe 40 (needing to win 3 points just to get to love in each game) and comes a cropper again at the hands of Dorothea Douglass, who was beaten 2&0 by Austin in R2 of the open event.

The Dohertys withdraw from the doubles after an injury to Reggie’s hand.
 
Despite his historic successes at the All England Club, William Renshaw seems in the 1890s to have become more of a habitué of the Queen’s Club than Worple Road. According to the 1901 census, he is living in the St James’s Park area of Westminster so Baron’s Court station would have been more accessible on the District Line than Wimbledon.

Renshaw plays plenty of friendly matches against top players who swing by the club - the opportunity to cross swords with the old master must have been tremendously exciting to the younger set.

He also uses some of his not inconsiderable wealth to subsidise trophies for junior events - he donated a trophy for a boys’ competition at Scarborough and throws another one in the committee’s direction here.

The winner of this inaugural Boys’ Championship of London has but a single match to play for the title. This he duly wins and the name of Max Decugis is inscribed upon the honours wall. Decugis, described as having a “promising style”, is (I seem to recall) at boarding school in England at this point. He becomes the successor to the Vacherot brothers as the foremost torchbearer for French men’s tennis on the international stage and lives all the way through to the mid-1970s.
 
Giving her a few moments to catch her breath after her victory over Austin, Lawn Tennis grabs the London and Wimbledon champion Chattie Cooper for a, well, for a chat.

https://imgur.com/a/iUaCTOT

As ever, there’s some good stuff in the interview. It was Mahony who persuaded the doyenne of volleyers to play at the net at Bournemouth in 1892 and now it is second nature. Her high forehand volley is her best shot, while she abhors high bouncing courts because she plays the ball low on her groundstrokes.

She has had success with a change to her serving action, moving from underarm, like Dod, to overhead, after the modern style.

She always rated Helen Jackson highly because of her retrieving ability. However, Louisa Martin is the player she considers the best - Blanche Hillyard must have pointed this paragraph out to George over their Thorpe Satchville breakfast table.

Her sliced backhand, ever the target of tennis writers for its lack of pace, is apparently a natural stroke rather than a deliberate tactic and the interviewer has the good grace to note that it is an integral part of her “drop shot then lob” strategy.

Cooper is famously good-humoured (though generally sour-faced in photos, this one is an exception) and a great favourite at tournaments. I occasionally play tennis against one of her great-great-god knows whats and he continues that family trait.
 
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A small tournament is started up at Bishop’s Stortford, a town north of London which now has Stansted Airport on its doorstep. Arthur Gore is the first name on the trophy, the much improved baseliner getting the better of Roy Allen in R2 then strolling to the title via a succession of walkovers and easy matches.

The event is notable for being the first tournament outside Wimbledon to have tarpaulins on hand to cover their courts - and good job too, as it lashes down.

Another idiosyncrasy of the tournament is that the umpires’ chairs are mounted on top of empty wine barrels. Tennis wag TH Oyler (http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-18718326 ) helpfully suggests some improvements for 1899:

https://imgur.com/a/RAYx0qd

This prompts another correspondent to write in, suggesting some newfound enthusiasm for the meeting:

https://imgur.com/a/9gAufMO
 
Amazingly, it does appear that there is a vineyard outside the town - namely, the Hazel End Vineyard that churns out a mix of white and sparkling plonk! Sadly they’ve only been on the scene for 30 years, much too late to have the Allens licking their lips at the thought of a bit of bubbly while taking educated guesses at close line calls. Still, if Wimbledon can miss a call like the Pavlyuchenkova one, it’s open season on dodgy decisions.

Speaking of wine (and god knows this is a stretch), let’s take a momentary trip Down Under to check out the latest Intercolonial matches at Sydney. Any grapes still on the vine up at the Hunter Valley would have had a rough ride of it as a hurricane greets the arrival of the Victorians to the ACG, where the fixtures are to be played.

The Australasian appears to have a strong Victorian bias and delights in criticising the organisation of this sodden event, the poor efforts of the New South Welsh to send decent teams to Melbourne and the absolute dismantling of the home team.

https://imgur.com/a/abE4kv8

Another thing to note is the lack of Norman Brookes on the Victorian team. Glassford was below him on the Australasian’s rankings and yet plays here (for completeness’s sake Irving was above Brookes but is not in Sydney either).

Brookes may be sitting, dry and warm, in Melbourne. Alternatively, this could be the summer he takes a trip over to the UK. This 1906 bio of the great Australian master has him coming over in 1898 and playing for Peebles against the Dean Club up in Edinburgh in front of a thin crowd.

https://imgur.com/a/PiaFddn

His British debut is not reported in any newspaper I could find. However this may be the trip on which he popped by Ayres on Aldersgate Street to have his first Excalibur manufactured:

http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-18379225
 
The venerable Edgbaston tournament wends its way to a close, Mahony beating ED Black (later of “EDB” racket fame) in the open final, Sydney Smith downing George Hillyard in 5 in the Midlands Championships event and Blanche Hillyard winning the inaugural women’s open singles against Miss Garfit.

There’s a strong field but it does not include the American contingent, Hobart, Paret, Wylie Grant and Bessie Moore not making their way up to Brum. Instead, Paret and Grant take a quick trip to the Emerald Isle, enlisting at a small regional event at Banagher in County Offaly. They are there for a warm-up before the South of Ireland Championships in Limerick. Heavily handicapped in Banagher, neither American makes the final.

At the open event in Limerick, it is a different story. Wylie Grant loses in the first round but Paret wins the whole thing, beating the nigh-on homonymic St George Perrott, a 6’4” Irishman in the challenge round.

While Hobart is sight-seeing and Paret heads home, Grant stays in Ireland, playing a succession of tournaments. His most notable achievement, as previously mentioned, was a win at the King’s County tournament against an extremely heavily handicapped mystery man by the name of “No Better”. This was none other than Dr Joshua Pim.
 
Paret may not have exactly set the world on fire on the English courts like Larned or Hobart but he opens our eyes to the tennis scene in the Old World with this article that comes out in the October 1898 issue of Outing.

A worthy successor to James Dwight, Paret provides a keen-eyed commentary on the idiosyncrasies of British & Irish tennis for his US readers. Unlike the USNLTA President, whose “Lawn Tennis” does have a tendency to idolise the British game, Paret is critical of some of the practices that go on over the other side of the pond.

I have broken this into 2 parts as it is a lengthy read.

https://imgur.com/a/xYAh3cd

A few highlights of Pt 1:
  • Annoyingly, I can’t work out who the players are in front of the packed pavilion at Aigburth on the first slide. If the photo is of a final, it must have been a previous year as we saw that it heaved it down throughout the Hobart/ HL Doherty match in 1898.
  • Bonham Carter Evelegh, one of the handful of paid referees, is singled out by Paret for particular praise for his astute handicapping. Because there is no such thing as a UTR or LTA general rating system in 1898, you could turn up at one tournament, be handicapped to the tune of 15.3 and then find you are playing off a 30.1 start at the next tournament - even if you didn’t hit a ball the first week. The players are entirely at the mercy of the handicapper of each tournament.
  • As EGM and other British and Irish tourists commented, US grass courts are softer and lower bouncing than their home courts, resulting in the perpendicular groundstroke technique having a prolonged popularity in America outside dirt court play and the asphalt surfaces of California.
  • Paret sees little difference of significance when it comes to balls, which is frankly surprising given the fussiness of players even between Ayres and Slazenger products. Maybe the Harburg rubber doesn’t change much in transit to the US?
  • Paret (or the Outing editor) seems to have a blind spot when it comes to George Hillyard’s surname, the future Wimbledon head honcho being consistently renamed “Hilliard” (which may give an indication as to how the man pronounced his name, I suppose). What is remarkable is George’s height or, maybe, Laurie Doherty’s lack thereof - see slide 6. Also in that photo, we get a rare decent look at a Tate racket, said stick being tucked under the arm of George’s “Owe 40” blanket coat (which definitely seems to have become all the rage by Wimbledon 1898).
  • Sydney Smith (slide 7) is hardly a dedicated follower of fashion, preferring the blazer to the blanket coat. I can’t make out much about his racket other than it has dark bindings around the shoulders, possibly whipped cord. This is a design for rackets that really becomes popular after the turn of the century so is a bit of a curiosity in 1898 - it doesn’t help me work out what model he’s using though…
  • Slide 9 depicts Reggie Doherty and Harold Mahony beside one of the centre court stands at Wimbledon. Mahony is in playing kit, topped and tailed with blazer and boater hat. Reggie, despite his Travolta-esque white suit, is in civvies, as can be told by his black shoes (among the cracks, only Americans and certain women play in black shoes at this point).
  • Paret flies the flag for the US game when it comes to the weather, the hospitality around tournaments, value of prizes and, unsurprisingly given his Wimbledon experience, the umpiring ( http://tt.tennis-warehouse.com/index.php?threads/really-ancient-history.246089/post-18841033).
  • The weather comes in for as much scrutiny as the previous year, when it was blamed for some performances of the tourists in the US. While he assures his readers that the cooler weather means they won’t feel the absence of the rest between sets, Paret says he wore winter clothes throughout the summer in England and Ireland, which is, frankly, entirely relatable. He also notes that play continues on grass courts at even the top tier events during the rain. He describes the tarpaulin protection at Wimbledon, which must be such a novelty to his readers that he even includes a photo (slide 46 - I am guessing this is caught in the process of removal).
  • A long overdue broadside is aimed at the lack of umpires at English events, even those of the prestige of Wimbledon, with a single official often having to call every line. Somewhat blotting his copybook, Paret complains about umpires footfaulting servers from their chairs, clearly having the Simond match in mind.
  • Paret is of the Mahony school of thought on replaying all net cords irrespective of when they occur in the point. It doesn’t stop him slating the ex-champion for his footfaulting, though.
 
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Part 2:

https://imgur.com/a/ruWwGm3

Some points of note about the English game:
  • Paret feels that Wrenn and Larned could cross swords with the top players in England and Ireland but home conditions will sway the balance. When it comes to the second class, the US is leagues behind.
  • There are great descriptions of the Doherty brothers - Reggie a showy player who goes for the flashy winner, Laurie the consistent, accurate wall.
  • There is an aerial photo of Smith vs Laurie at Aigburth which I don’t think I have seen before.
  • There is a rich description of the set-up at Eastbourne, Edgbaston and Leamington.
  • There is a general reflexive instinct to apologise among doubles teams and between opponents. Again, some things never change in British tennis.
  • Again, it cannot be stressed enough that on any close call a player can bellow out “How?!” to encourage the line judge to give a decision. One view could be that it is licensed intimidation of officials, another is that the player is just waking him up from his slumber.
One extra point that you may have spotted is that British players do not shake hands after the match. Instead, the winner invites their bested opponent for a drink and the latter gets to name their poison (although women exclusively - supposedly - go for tea). If you are playing 4 or 5 matches a day, winning could become an expensive habit.

You might dimly recall that the handshake between Dod and Hillyard in the 1887 Wimbledon final was so unusual that it was not only remarked upon but even illustrated.

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

The earliest reference I have seen to someone vaulting the net is in the Beeckman-Sears Newport challenge round of 1886 (courtesy of a 1915 recollection). Hopping the net is definitely an American thing…

https://imgur.com/a/M42AXyg

That said, surely the Javier Sotomayor of tennis is Katie Gillou of France, later Mme Fenwick, who wins the Dinard Challenge Cup then vaults the net to kiss her opponent.

Just imagine the clearance she must get to drag that dress over. If Dinard had a WNBA team, Fenwick would have been a shoo-in.

https://imgur.com/a/tpMVlee
 
It's interesting that Olympedia has more to say about Katie's sister Antoinette than Katie, even though Katie was the more successful player, and their brother Pierre played a significant role in French tennis development as well.

Perhaps it's mostly due to Antoinette's rumored link to Oscar Wilde's niece, which had nothing to do with tennis, or the Olympics, or indeed Oscar Wilde?

https://www.olympedia.org/athletes/2452
 
Great find! Amazing that Antoinette hogs the spotlight - Katie was a quality player from the age of 14 and became French champion.

Your post had me scrambling to run a search for Pierre. He was associated with the Racing Club and had a major part to play in the project to build Roland Garros in 1928. He was manager of the French Davis Cup team during the glory days of the Mousquetaires and was responsible for the “charming clubhouse, ordinary locker room, impossible food” comment about the Germantown Cricket Club in 1926.
 
Paret’s tennis season is far from over. He plans to play the end of the US season and contributes this article to Outing in early August on Longwood, Newport and other tournaments.

https://imgur.com/a/lCu4y4R

Some highlights:
  • Longwood has 10 grass courts, all surrounded by green canvas walls. The walls were lowered on Eaves’s court when he played, the Australian tourist finding the backdrop somehow off-putting.
  • Matches start at 10am at the club - an unimaginably early hour for European players - but there is a slap-up buffet table on offer after the contest, with roast beef, ale and doubtless other performance foodstuffs on offer.
  • Newport has a different vibe, the spectators being there as much for the social occasion as the sporting. Not being tennis fans in the strictest sense, the crowds make their favourites known. Once they cheered for Ollie Campbell, then it was Malcolm Chace and now Bob Wrenn gets their support.
  • The matches commence at 11am on the Casino’s 12 courts, still an obscenely early hour for British players.
  • The American players work out their playing schedule early in the year, interspersing the serious events with some hotel tournaments where they can have a smoke, a drink and a dance. Sorrento in Maine and the Hotel Wentworth tournament in New Hampshire are two such events (photos of both are provided) but the most famous are the Canadian Championships at Niagara-on-the-Lake.
  • At Niagara, the players (presumably only the men) are housed in a separate building to the hotel, which only encourages bad behaviour. The players fight it out on the 5 courts from dawn to dusk. Once they are finished, there’s just time for a splash in Lake Ontario before the fun really starts in the evening, dutifully recorded in the pages of in-house fanzine the “Lark”.
 
By the end of July, Malcolm Whitman and Leo Ware have installed themselves as the hot favourites for Newport glory.

As we saw (quite a way) above, Ware took down Whitman in 4 sets at the Canadian Championships. Whitman then snaffles the New York Championship title against Beals Wright at Sedgwick Farm. Ware is on the grounds but only plays doubles, teaming up with the luckless Wright in a finals loss against Whitman and RH Carleton.

So it is with some interest that the tennis fraternity makes its way to Longwood. Absentees are rife, Holcombe Ward, Dwight Davis, Edwin Fischer and Forbes all staying in Chicago after the Western to play an exhibition. However, the Whitman-Ware rivalry has another instalment.

Whitman starts at 100mph, going up 4-0 before Ware creeps back into the set. Undaunted, Malcolm caps out the set 8-6 and follows up with a 6-3 second. Ware is unplayable in the third, taking it 6-0 before the underdog Whitman takes a well-fought fourth, again at 6-3.

With Larned in Cuba, Whitman wins the challenge round by default. Whitman is in rare form, also capturing the Eastern doubles title with George Wrenn against Carleton and Beals Wright.

If the Eastern champions beat their Western counterparts, fellow young tyros Holcombe Ward and Dwight Davis, Whitman will face Ware once again in the challenge round.
 
1898 Newport is wide open. The bottom half is marginally harder than the top, the former featuring both Whitman and Ware plus George Wrenn and Clarence Budlong. The top half is no pushover though, Bond, Forbes, Ward, Hackett, Stevens and Dwight Davis. The field is so broad that the last name is not even mentioned by American Lawn Tennis.

In the doubles, the smart money is on Whitman and Wrenn getting though to the challenge round.

All of which would suggest plentiful tennis material for the official Newport programme publishers. Not that you’d know it, though - the programme is instead rammed with photos of local millionaires’ piles like some supermarket gossip mag.

https://imgur.com/a/QAdbIzj
 
Of course, the two names most prominent in their absence from the lists are those of defending champion Bob Wrenn and the mercurial Billy Larned.

General disappointment is felt among spectators and organisers that the two main attractions in the singles draw will not be competing due to their military service. There is, however, no question about the Championships still being held, war or no war.

Contrast this with the situation in 1917, when the US joins the fray of WW1. Seeking to strike a balance between offering outlets for physical exercise and not providing a distraction from enlisting, the USNLTA in 1917 decreed that tournaments would continue to be held but not be called “championships” (except for junior events), nor would there be any “First Ten” rankings. The 1917 National Championships become the National Patriotic Tournament.

https://imgur.com/a/iIPXkS7

There is dissatisfaction in some quarters that any tournament is being played on the basis that it is not a true open event, given that enlisted players could be deprived of a chance to compete. The fact that the event ran in 1898 against the backdrop of the Spanish-American War is mentioned in favour of holding a 1917 tournament. However there is still pushback:

https://imgur.com/a/YO0cFWY

The standard at the Patriotic Tournament is poor, most of the top 10 being out of practice (the event is brought forward to fit into the week between military training camp blocs) or abroad (either being mobilised for active service or, in the case of Shimidzu, having returned home to Japan). Veterans such as Holcombe Ward and Malcolm Whitman enter to spice up the event, though the latter defaults due to business demands.

All in all, it’s a strange old event. The programme for this one is probably worth a pretty penny as a result - it’s a bit like the Covid US Open. Anywhere, here’s the cover of the programme for this curate’s egg of a tournament.

https://imgur.com/a/UNeEfwm
 
https://imgur.com/a/xoy7EUF

The first match of note at Newport is the doubles final between the Eastern and Western champions. Making a mockery of the competition, according to new Harper’s Weekly tennis correspondent, the mysterious WG van TS, the Western champions are devout Easterners, Harvard men Dwight Davis and Holcombe Ward. The Eastern champions, as indicated above, are Malcolm Whitman and George Wrenn.

Heavily favoured as the latter may be, they are no match for the Davis-Ward combination that terrorise English lawns over the next few years, losing in 4 sets. There is still no mention of the devastating employment of the kick serve by either of the winners.

The photo above has Wrenn and Whitman on our side of the net (Wrenn on the left), while Ward looks like he is about to pop up a lob that will meet Felix Baumgartner on his way down. Leftie Davis observes the action, perhaps daydreaming about trophy designs.

Leo Ware and George Sheldon are the defending champions. However they have only teamed up twice over the 1898 season, neither time with any semblance of success. Davis and Ward have good reason to be confident and they burn through the first set 6-1. After peering over the brink at 4-5 in the second, the holders edge it then grind their way to the third 6-4. The fourth they probably would have won too, had it not been for Sheldon starting to snatch at his shots.

The fifth set is nip and tuck, neither side ever really shaking the other loose. At 4-5, the holders find themselves Championship point down on three occasions. Slack play by the challengers gets them off the hook on each occasion. Having safely paddled across the Rubicon, Ware and Sheldon concede only one more point as they take the set and title 7-5.
 
The opening rounds of the singles are pretty flat in comparison. Two eagerly awaited contests turn out to be one-way traffic, namely Ware-Fischer and Whitman-G Wrenn. In both cases, the first named player wins easily, the erstwhile classmates at the Roxbury Latin School firmly to the fore.

The South of Ireland champion is the next to fall, Paret losing in five exhausting sets against two handed volleyer, Clarence Budlong of Rhode Island.

The dogged baseline veteran, Richard Stevens meets his match in a strategic battle against Dwight Davis, the future eponymous Cup donor winning a straight sets victory that is anything but straightforward.
 
Whitman is at his angina-inducing worst against Budlong in the next round. One minute sublime, the next sub-par, Big Mal’s tennis has manicurists clapping their hands with glee as nails are nibbled around the court.

https://imgur.com/a/PPv8mLS

Just take a look at the ground clearance of the net towards the posts.

The first set is a marathon, Whitman winning it 11-9. And bloody good job he did, too, as Budlong takes the next two each by 6-4. Budlong’s good form continues as he goes up 2-0 in the fourth. By this point, Whitman’s supporters are probably checking out the queues at the bar in the Casino and wondering if they can still catch Happy Hour.

Whitman is not done yet, though. He flips into “Good Goran” mode and wins 6 games on the trot, only losing 4 points in the process. The final set is one of those that is protracted but never really that tense apart from a Whitman Wobble (I will be trademarking that) at 6-6. The Harvard man takes the fifth 8-6.

The match lasts a smidge under 4 hours, which suggests my suggested modernisation of match times (19th century actual time * 150%) does not really hold water - 6 hours seems a little punchy.
 
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The semifinals bring Ware and Whitman together once more. They grew up in the same town, went to the same school, are members of the same club and use the same model of racket (Slazenger - Whitman uses a “Pim” and I suspect Leo does likewise). Great friends off-court, they are ferocious rivals on the green sward.

https://imgur.com/a/ePacnek

https://imgur.com/a/TccQ3dS

The cognoscenti view Ware as marginally the more likely to win. Quite apart from the fact that he wears his collar proudly popped like a public school fresher at a Russell Group uni, Ware’s level doesn’t really waver, whereas Whitman’s is up and down like a winter cruise across the Tasman Sea.

The form book is not so much ripped up as fed through the woodchipper. Whitman absolutely pulverises Ware, winning 2, 0 & 2. His second set ledge reads 24 points for and 5 against.

Whitman goes into the final as the man to beat.
 
The other side of the draw sees the continued breakout performance of Dwight Davis. After beating Stevens, Dwight’s semi-final opponent is Bond, William Bond - no, it doesn’t work, does it?

https://imgur.com/a/fdW75sl

https://imgur.com/a/hMfYi8u

Bond, a dyed-in-the-wool net-rusher and a big fan of the running service motion, is possibly hampered by the new footfault law passed by the USNLTA. Whatever the reason, he is well beaten by the accurate baseline game that Davis purveys. Though Bond takes a 13-11 marathon second set, he makes little impact on the other three.
 
The All Comers’ Final of the Newport singles is the championship round with no sign of Bob Wrenn parachuting in at the last minute.

Malcolm Whitman is the odds-on favourite against the millionaire up-and-comer Dwight Davis.

And the bookies’ money seems safe as Whitman makes all of the early money, racing to a 3-0 lead for the loss of only 4 points. So far, so Anisimova (poor, poor girl). But then Davis roars back. He takes 6 games on the spin, with Whitman’s level apparently not dropping an iota. It is a fearsome performance.

But it also signifies the high point of the match for Davis. Whitman plugs away, spurning chances for his usual high-risk play and making sensible tactical decisions for once. His consistency quickly wears down the flashier Davis, winning him sets 2-4 by 6-2, 6-2, 6-1.

https://imgur.com/a/WY0guh4

This photo captures the extraordinary scenes once the final ball is hit in the final, spectators thronging their way across the courts back to the Casino. You wouldn’t have seen this at Worple Road, let alone Church Road.

https://imgur.com/a/rr8LFk9
 
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I mentioned above that Whitman and Ware played with Slazenger rackets in 1898. There’s ample supporting evidence for this, this 1899 ad being one of them (note the “Championships abroad” section). Whitman of course is the US champion, while Ware won the Canadian championship.

https://imgur.com/a/U3xsEeO

Unlike the winners of the English, Irish and Scottish (getting to the last named shortly) titles, all of whom use the “EGM”, Whitman uses a “Pim”.

How do we know this? Well, slightly spoiling things for those without access to Wikipedia, Whitman does win a few more of these titles. And, according to Stephen Merrihew of ALT in 1918, he uses a “Pim” for each of his championships. To be more specific, Whitman uses the same “Pim” for all of them.

https://imgur.com/a/16eeoPz
 
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After the end of Newport, J. Parmly Paret receives a letter, praising him for his article on English and Irish tournaments and tennis and remarking on the success of Davis, whose first steps on the big stage the writer had seen at Newport the previous year.

The author of the letter, in another sign of the transatlantic camaraderie that so characterised early tennis, is the great Australian, Wilberforce Eaves. He writes from St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Rochester, where he is engaged as a surgeon.

As with much of the rest of Paret’s tennis hoard, he hands this letter over to Merrihew, who pops a salient extract into a 1927 issue of ALT.

https://imgur.com/a/DEtRCWf

The reference to “first article” one imagines is a victim of sloppy editing and should read “finest article”.
 
In the background to the men’s national championships, the New York Herald reports that Bob Wrenn has returned from the Spanish-American War. Although Wrenn has gone to get “cleaned up”, the paper daydreams about a last minute cameo of the champion at Newport.

https://imgur.com/a/8z2r6ab

As we have seen above, this appearance fails to materialise. Let’s however use this as an opportunity to see what exactly Bob got up to in Cuba.

He and Billy Larned were of course members of Roosevelt’s Rough Riders or, more formally, the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry. This cavalry division was notably under-equined and spent most of its time wearing out shoe leather trudging around Cuba.

On 25 June 1898, Wrenn finds a spare moment to scratch out this letter to, somewhat inexplicably, Lawn Tennis of London - it’s not entirely clear why he didn’t send this to American Lawn Tennis instead.

https://imgur.com/a/N56zmlC

As the article concludes, Wrenn is in Troop A of the Rough Riders and the engagement he describes in his letter is the Battle of Las Guasimas, fought out the day before Wrenn puts pen to paper.

This skirmish was part of the US advance on Santiago and is dealt with at length in: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Las_Guasimas

Troop A of the Rough Riders is, as Wrenn advises, positioned on the right flank of the advancing party with the 1st and 10th Regular Cavalry divisions, the latter consisting of Afro-American soldiers. I am no military historian but the whole thing looks a total fiasco.

Wrenn thankfully confirms that both he and Billy Larned got through the unpleasantness unscathed.
 
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Do keep an eye out in post-1898 photos of Wrenn and Larned for their Rough Roders belts. Larned would wear this belt habitually in matches and Bob wasn’t averse to strapping it on for important occasions. The belt, according to American Lawn Tennis in 1927 was particularly wide and was noteworthy for the discs at the front.

I wonder if it is this belt.

https://imgur.com/a/7wNl0KA

A belt buckle is unfortunately not the only thing Bob Wrenn has brought back from Cuba. We are still in the age of disease outstripping bullets as the main cause of death in warfare and Bob has picked up an unwelcome souvenir of his time in the Caribbean.

https://imgur.com/a/jEYZY18
 
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Bob has contracted a malarial infection, which essentially puts paid to his tennis career, in singles at least. Never again does he figure among the top ranks, though we will see him gallantly answering his country’s call for the Davis Cup in Part 2.

Much later, American Lawn Tennis sends out a circular form to top players past and present, asking for biographical information that Stephen Merrihew stashes away in his office Filofax.

This is Bob’s response.

https://imgur.com/a/Y4stAv6

For those who find Bob’s handwriting to be as hard to decipher as I, please find below my attempt to transcribe this 1914 bio - please do note the “Remarks” section in the context of the above:

Full name: Robert Duffield Wrenn

Present address: 24 [?] Street New York [Residence [?] Park [N?]]

Place of birth: Highland Park Illinois

Date: 1873 Sept 20

Weight in tennis garb: About 162 [lbs]

Height in tennis shoes: 5ft 10 inches

Began playing tennis: [?] tournament 1891

First tournament: Interscholastic championship 1891 [which he won, btw]

Important victories: National Single Championship 1893-94 96-97 Double championship with MG Chace 1895

Remarks: [Severely] ill after Cuban Campaign in 1898. Typhoid-malaria - and a long time [?] later I fully recovered my strength.

If anyone can improve my interpretation above, please do let me know and I will update the record.
 
Before we leave the Rough Riders (and I think I speak for all of us when I say it was a shame they couldn’t have shoehorned Wrenn or Larned into the Tom Berenger 1990s miniseries on the troupe), another word on the leader of the Tennis Cabinet himself, Teddy Roosevelt.

So it’s common knowledge that Teddy loved his tennis. However, he gets sufficiently het up about it that it makes the news. In 1907, there’s a kerfuffle when Roosevelt is reported as having hit the roof about US players not being prepared to represent their country for the Davis Cup (time being as ever a flat circle, I suspect all of us from our respective countries could tell tales of similar absentee issues).

https://imgur.com/a/qAEt7w6
 
I thon lee have already covered the Pacific Coast men’s singles championships for 1898 at San Rafael- if not. Sumner Hardy won it after beating his brother in an early round.

Anyway, the gang reassembles at the Hotel Rafael in early September to play the doubles championships of the Pacific Coast as well as, for the first time in 3 years, the women’s championship.

The Hardys dominate the doubles, as expected. There is representation from Hawaii, with Roth and Wight of Honolulu remarking on the speed of the asphalt courts in contrast to the dirt courts with which they are familiar.

Marion Jones of course steamrollers the competition in the women’s singles, the runner-up at Wissahickon being several classes above her opposition. Her baseline game is singled out for praise, Jones being equally adept on forehand and backhand wings. The ACF is played on a best of 5 set basis but Jones only loses 5 games. Bee Hooper does not defend her title so no challenge round is required.
 
Later in September, the latest example of tennis's attempt to unite across continents hits California.

After a tour by Eastern players out West was rumoured in 1897, it becomes a reality in 1898. The youthfulness of the new crop of Eastern stars plays a role in the tour coming together, the university students happily bunking off class to make the trip to the Pacific Coast.

George Wright of Wright & Ditson is the prime mover behind the tour and organises a round robin event at the Del Monte courts in Del Monte.

https://imgur.com/a/JkCe9Rj

George is 5th from left. The Eastern players amass on the left of the frame - Whitman, Beals Wright, Dwight Davis and Holcombe Ward, a fearsome line-up if ever there was one. The Western players line up on the right - Sum and Sam Hardy, Robert and George Whitney.

This W&D account of the tour doesn’t tell us who won the singles, it’s at pains to stress that the Hardy brothers win the doubles.

https://imgur.com/a/FIajTeE

This tour ends up being crucial in pushing up the standard of West Coast tennis and remains well into the first decades of the 1900s one of the few occasions on which there is competitive tennis between the coasts.
 
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Meanwhile, Juliette Atkinson is on quite the tear. Having already pocketed the National title at Wissahickon and the Canadian championship at Niagara-on-the-Lake, the Brooklynite returns to the latter location to win the annual International Tournament (Canada and US). Miss Wimer of Washington gives her a hell of a scare though, the final score in the best of 5 set contest being 10-8 7-9 6-4 6-3. For what it’s worth, William Bond springs an upset by defeating Leo Ware in straight sets in the men’s.

Not bothering to hang around for the golf tournament, Juliette then heads west to Chicago for the Western ladies’ tournament at the Kenwood Country Club.

The reporter on the Western event gets, shall we say, a little carried away.

https://imgur.com/a/EM6ndkb

Atkinson does the double as she beats Carrie Neely in a tight one and then holder Louise Pound. Pound defeated Atkinson for her 1897 title in a wake-up call to Eastern tennis. This time round she is given a rude lesson by the Brooklynite, Atkinson exploiting the weak backhand of the champion from Lincoln, Nebraska.
 
William Dana Orcutt devotes his September editorial columns in American Lawn Tennis to Juliette Atkinson’s achievements and to the growing popularity of tennis among American women.

https://imgur.com/a/d6I4tSL

Evidence for this trend is provided by a new women’s tournament that is organised by an all-women committee at the Longwood Cricket Club in October. With decent entry numbers and a fairly good standard of play, this looks to become an annual event.

Orcutt is only to happy to pen an update to his September editorial. You might remember correspondence to ALT earlier in 1898 from a female tennis enthusiast, asking for details of women’s tournaments in the Boston area. Longwood has finally answered that query.

https://imgur.com/a/jzE1bN5

Jahail Parmly Paret provides an unofficial ranking of the US women in December’s issue of Outing.

https://imgur.com/a/24OrYO7

Juliette Atkinson is safely lodged in at no.1, with the newcomer (to Eastern tennis fans at least) Marion Jones in second, entirely due to her run at Wissahickon, where she fell one point short of the title.

Louise Pound drops down to third spot, while Carrie Neely and Jennie Craven provide a bit more Western representation in Paret’s top 10.
 
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