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Chapter 4: The Summing Up
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 Tennis Dress Patternmaking Illustration Giclee Print 9 in. x 12 in. Buy at AllPosters.com Framed Mounted  The Coaching JobOne hears a great deal about the proper attitude of the public toward learning, but it is seldom that anyone says very much about what the teacher's approach to his job should be. It seems to me that the success or failure of many pupils rests at least as much in the hands of the teacher as in themselves. Teaching tennis is not an easy job if you want to get results, and anybody who thinks it is has my full permission to try it out for a while. It is hard, serious work, physically, mentally, and nervously, if a person is conscientious about it and gives of his best all the time. Unfortunately, there are no requirements for becoming a tennis professional. All it seems to take is a tennis racquet, tennis clothes, and a desire to make a living. I believe a good teacher must be able to play at least well enough to give any of his pupils practice. He does not have to be a champion, or even a first-rate player, but he does have to be able to play well enough to demonstrate the strokes to his pupils, and then be able to keep the ball going so they can practise. Continue Reading
Legendary Tennis PlayersHalf a century of tennis is over for me, and I hope there are a still a few years of it ahead. It is natural that memory casts a roseate hue over the years that are gone, and the Players that peopled them. Still, if I am to keep abreast of the times, I cannot afford to live in the past. I can hold dear my recollections of such stars as Billy Johnston, Vinnie Richards, Dick Williams, Norman Brookes, Gerald Patterson, J. O. Anderson, Ichiya Kumagae, Zenzo Shimizu, Frank Hunter, Manual Alonso, Henri Cochet, Rene Lacoste, Jean Borotra, and the other greats of my amateur days. I can see those marvelous women, Molla Mallory, Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman, May Sutton Bundy, Mary Kendall Browne, Lili D' Alvarez, Mrs. Lambert Chambers, Suzanne Lenglen, Cilly Aussem, Betty Nuthall, Bobbie Heine Miller, Helen Wills, and Helen Jacobs. Continue Reading
Women's TennisDuring the over one hundred years that women in the United States have played tennis, the sport has changed dramatically. From the court-length dresses with their numerous petticoats of the 1870's to the short, pastel-colored tennis dresses of the 1970's, from patting a ball gently over a high sloping net to attacking baseline or net games, and from the pastime of the leisurely country-club set to a popular professional sport, women's tennis has come a long way. This transition was studied in order to identify and to record the contributions that women players, especially those from America, have made to tennis through their original or perfected styles of play, through their domination of or successes in tournament competition, through their liberation from the traditionalism in tennis attire, or through their enhancement of the popularity of the sport. Continue Reading
The Careers of Women Tennis PlayersMean ages at which a number of events in players’ careers occurred, over the course of the period studied here. All of these series are calculated only for successful players—defined here as all those ever ranked in the top 20. The first series shows that there has been little change over time in the mean age at which successful players first become nationally ranked: this mean was between 17 and 18 in four of six periods, and ranged only from a minimum of 17.1 to a maximum of 19.1.
There was somewhat more variation in the mean age at which women reached their personal best ranking. This mean rose by more than three years during the 1970s then fell by more than two during the early ’80s. These two changes may reflect two effects discussed earlier, with the prolonged careers of many top players produced by the advent of prize money delaying the rise of younger players during the ’70s, and the arrival of the greater number of very talented players in the tennis boom cohort resulting in earlier peak ages in the early ’80s. The mean age at which women last achieved their best ranking closely mirrors the mean age at which they first achieved that rank, as the two series are always less than one year apart. Continue Reading
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