TENNIS STARS SEEK FAME.

Shannon News, 5 August 1924, Page 4

TENNIS STARS SEEK FAME.

THE BRILLIANCE OF ALONZO. Not content with. producing a crop of home-born champions during the past decade, the United States apears, unintentionally of course, to be creating a world's monoply of lawn tennis talent by acquiring either as citizens or residents the pick of the players on the European side, says the London correspondent of the "Manchester Guardian." The business opportunities that the States afford to young men who find it difficult to rise in the old and overcrowded countries of Europe combine with the attraction of American tennis facilities as an enticement to foreign stars to settle there. Less than two year.s ago the-two Alonzos, who had gone to the States as members of the Spanish team in quest of the Davis Cup, succumbed to this magnetic influence and settled in the Eastern States. At the end of last season Brian Norton departed for America, and now comes the news that he has taken up his abode definitely in St. Louis, the capital" of Missouri. He had an offer to enter the real estate business there, th e outcome of meeting the president of the Olive Street Terrace Realty Company at the American championships last September," and after lengthy deliberations decided to accept it. '

Europe thus lost the two most promising players produced on this side since ,the war, for Norton had for several years dominated the English tournaments, while Manuel Alonzo in 1921 and 1922 was the most brilliant, if not the most consistent player ia Europe. A factor in these losses is undoubtedly the lack of opportunities in Europe for meeting the highest-class opposition, which limited their chances of scaling the supreme heights. The results of the change are already manifest in Alonzo, who last year inflicted Tilden's sole defeat and has just repeated th e " feat at Buffalo. It is apt to be forgotten that Mrs. Mallory was yet an earlier example, for she first won the American championship as a Norwegian, and it was only after some years that she marriod an American.