IN RETROSPECT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 847, 16 December 1929, Page 13

IN RETROSPECT

TILDEN JOINS ILLUSTRIOUS BAND SEVEN TIMES WINNER Only three men have won the singles championship of the United States more than four times—and Robert D. Wrenn was the only additional one to have this number to his credit. The three illustrious champions who have won seven championships are Richard D. Sears, William A. Larned and William T. Tilden, 11., says “American Lawn Tennis.” Sears was the first champion, and his tenure of the premiership was unbroken. Larned and Tilden each lost the championship and regained it—the former after an interim of three years, and the latter after one of two years. There is a curious chronological similarity in the reigning periods of the three men. Twenty years after Sears won his first championship Larned attained his ambition—the years being 1881 and 1901, respectively; and 19 years after Larned’s first win Tilden achieved his first success; the years in this case were 1901 and 1920. It will be apparent that 49 years elapsed between Sears’s first win in 1881 and Tilden’s victory. The first champion is alive and well, and he retains his interest in the game for which he did so much. When Larned first became a contender for the championship—in 1892, the year in which he was Intercolonial champion— Sears had retired from tournament play but he still maintained contact with the game. Larned retired after winning his seventh championship m 1911, but he continued to play, occasionally in tournament doubles, for more than a dozen years after his retirement. Consequently he knew Tilden and his game, as well as Johnston, Murray and Williams and their games; indeed, Larned frequently engaged in practice matches with Johnston until four or five years ago. It will be seen, therefore, how the gap between 1881 and 1929 has been bridged, in one way or another.

Eras have a habit of arranging themselves without the interposition of human hands. The beginning of the present century was the close of one era; and another was ushered in when the war came to an end and a new star of the first magnitude Tilden - appeared in the firmament.

Now Tilden is to retire, the game has assumed new aspects, his school no longer dominates the lawn tennis world. The French school is the new one, and it has impressed itself on the game as firmly and as deeply as did Sears or Larned or Tilden and their contemporaries. There are indications, however, that the dominance of the French will be short-lived. The Four Musketeers are in the position of the original Musketeers of Dumas, as set forth in his “Twenty Tears After”; Cochet is the d’Artagnan of the quartet, and much depends on whether Lacoste, the gain his health and come to the support of France in 1930. In any case, the French school is still to be reckoned with —in the United States most of all—and its lessons learned and understood.