NEW ZEALAND MARCHES ON

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 363, 25 May 1928, Page 10

NEW ZEALAND MARCHES ON

IN the past week an important achievement in New Zealand’s I . sporting history has passed almost unhonoured and unsung. This was the win scored by B. D. Andrews and R. R. T. Young over Portugal in the European eliminating series for the Davis Cup. It was New Zealand’s first victory in the great international tennis event, and as such, is to be hailed with at least moderate enthusiasm.

In the next round New Zealand meets Czecho-Slovakia, the post war Central European republic which produces such elegant glassware and some very proficient athletes. The Czechs and Slovaks, if they may thus be classified, play more than useful tennis, and have a star performer in Kozeluh. Last time New Zealand had the temerity to enter for the Davis Cup, Czechoslovakia brought about her downfall in the opening stanza, when two rather elderly “All Blacks,” in F. M. B. Fisher and J. C. Peacock, crashed before a tennis whirlwind that showed further evidence of Europe’s post-war recovery. As Czecho-Slovakia is likely to have improved, rather than deteriorated, and can now be rated among the leading tennis nations of Europe, it is problematical whether Andrews and T oung will go any further. But they have at least put New Zealand further on than Australia, which emerged defeated from the major tragedy in the first round at Genoa. Meanwhile New Zealanders, while cherishing the satisfaction warranted by the achievements noted, can increase their content by reflecting that it is not her strongest team that is abroad. Ilad Bartleet on the strength of his great display against Borotra, been alongside Andrews at Prague, or wherever the Czecho-Slovakians will be met, then there might have been warrant fox - the belief that this hurdle, too, would be negotiated. Their success perhaps indicates that Andrews and Young are getting more than academic benefit from English University life. One hardly goes to England nowadays to learn tennis, for England was. even constrained to face with trepidation her recent encounter with Finland; but the wider expei'ience, and more play on hard coui'ts, may have helped to qualify Andrews and Young as exponents of bettei' tennis, for which they will be useful ambassadors when they return to New Zealand. —J. G. M.