FINE COURTCRAFT

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 887, 3 February 1930, Page 16

FINE COURTCRAFT

ANGAS A REAL TENNIS CHAMPION NOTES ON N.Z. FINALS By WAYFARER. I take off my hat, as do most people who know anything - about the game, to the new tennis champion. Angas thoroughly deserved his win. because he displayed court craft of a very high order, and his stroke production and footwork were both splendid. Don France didn’t play as well on Saturday as he did on Friday. But this only served again to exemplify the old wheeze that a man can only play as well as his opponents lets him. Gone were the panther-like leaps and the anticipations he displayed against Seay, chiefly because Angas kept him guessing where the next stroke was going. Some of Angas’s shots were amazing in their delicacy, while others were equally amazing, and invariably successful, in their daring. A most meritorious performance. Angas will go very far if he keeps his head. ’Tis the day of youth. , Dulcie Nicholls, Isobel Morrison, Cam Malfroy, and Noel Wilson and Drs. Day and Thomson —all were tennis infants. Miss Nicholls clearly played to plan, which was to run Mrs. Melody from side to side, and then finish with a shot cross-court or a deep one to the back-hand. The scores do not quite accurately represent the difference in the players. Miss Nicholls refused to try and drive Mrs. Melody’s cut shots and often the ball looked spheroidal rather than round. A DAY OF HALF-VOLLEYS I don’t think I have ever seen so many beautiful half-volleys, many of them across court within a few feet of the net, as I saw Angas play in his match, and France got many, too. It was a day of half-volleys, as there were many in the doubles and the mixed. And the men’s doubles really were rather mixed at times. Don France and Malfroy slumped badly in the third, and at the beginning of the fourth, set, partly because at times Malfroy seemed to be playing lonehanded; but later in the fourth France was getting away with some wonderful overhead stuff —so, indeed, were they all, for it was a fine game to watch. They all got well into the net, and belted for all they were worth, which is what the public likes. In the mixed doubles, Miss Andrew, and Parker put up a game fight against the ultimate winners, Wilson and Mrs. Thompson. I predicted that the “old firm,” being the only undivided tennis pair, which probably get home, and its win was very popular. But if I may venture a very friendly and mild criticism, I think Miss Andrew makes the mistake of standing at the net with her feet too far apart. She has them just twice as far apart as does Wilson, and this makes her very slow off the mark.