WOMEN IN SPORT

Evening Star, Issue 22457, 30 September 1936, Page 5

WOMEN IN SPORT

RIVALRY WITH MEN OLD ARGUMENT REVIVED Helen Hick’s prospects in the South Australian Centenary open championship never were taken seriously, for although she has an accurate game, women cannot compete with men, says a Melbourne writer. This has been proved time and again in many sports. They lack the physical make-up of the man that gives speed, strength, and stamina. Joyce Wethered has the greatest reputation among women golfers, and when she played Bobby Jones several years ago, at St. Andrews, she did a 72, playing from the men’s tees, but was still below Jones’s class. Man versus woman is always a ripe controversy in tennis. When the Renshaw twins were prominent in the hte ’nineties, T. Renshaw proved the man’s side of the argument by dressing up in the same peculiar garments women used to wear for tennis in those days, used a doubles court to play one of the best-known ' doubles pairs of the time, and beat them with ludicrous ease.

Later, when Suzanne Lenglen was winning her singles so easily that her admirers believed she would win against the best men, Tilden dispelled that theory by beating her without the loss of a game a few hours after an Atlantic crossing. More recently, a protege of Tilden’s, Junior Coen, played and defeated Mrs Helen Wills Moody' in a match in which Coen was not allowed to go to the net unless forced there to retrieve a short ball.