Tar Heel Tennis

The University of North Carolina is noted for being one of the two oldest State universities in the U. S., for having on its faculty George Bernard Shaw's biographer Archibald Henderson, for the leisurely atmosphere of its green old campus at Chapel Hill. Athletically it is notable because the members of its teams, instead of naming themselves after wild animals, are quite content to be called "tar heels'"; and because its tennis team in the last four years has won 62 consecutive matches. When North Carolina's tennists last week completed their fifth tour of Northern colleges they had beaten Navy, Maryland, N. Y. U., Army, Yale, Harvard, Brown. The score of the Army match. 6 to 3, was the closest. This helped to shake the familiar alibi of the Northern colleges --that the Southerners have had two months more practice when they meet. Last week North Carolina's tennists made the alibi seem even more inadequate when they finished their 1933 schedule by winning the Southern Conference championship for the fourth year in a row.

The Conference tournament is really two tournaments, one a round-robin for teams, one a draw tournament for individual champions in singles and doubles. That North Carolina would win the team championship against the three other teams entered was a foregone conclusion. Their score was seven points to one for Duke, one for Virginia, none for V. M. I. Wilmer Hines and Lenoir Wright. No. 1 and No. 2 for North Carolina, won the doubles title together and then played each other in the singles final. It was a match they had played many times before, on the same courts. Hines, steadier and stronger overhead, lost the first set. then used the advantage of Wright's surprise to win the next two easily. After the rest Wright, a Phi Beta Kappa man who prefers brawn to brain on a tennis court, ran up a 3-1 lead. Hines, steady, methodical, clever, whittled down the lead, took the set, match & title 2-6, 6-1, 6-1, 6-4.

One reason for the crack tennis teams at North Carolina is the fact that tennis there has all the earmarks of a major sport. Partly because the climate favors the game almost all year round, partly because a tennis tradition has grown up, there are over 50 courts. North Carolina's tennis competition with Duke is unique. There are 200 players on a side. Another reason is North Carolina's tennis coach, brown little John Kenfield who has been going down to Chapel Hill between seasons at the Lake Shore Country Club at Glencoe, Ill. since 1928. That spring the Tar Heels lost two matches. The next year they lost to Princeton. Since then they have lost to no one. Mild and affable in demeanor, North Carolina's Coach Kenfield is a strict disciplinarian. In 1930 he benched his No. i player for breaking training. Before he turned professional, he played well enough to reach the semi-finals of the national clay court championship in 1920. Now nearing 40, he is spry enough to give any of his proteges a match, beat most of them except Hines and Wright. Without the methodology of Mercer Beasley, who trains New Orleans tennists with special wallboards, scrupulous diets and a set of original aphorisms, Coach Kenfield manages to give his pupils some of the feeling for placement, the sense of anticipation that he had to develop himself because his size made it hard to cover the court. Coach Kenfield is 5 ft. 6 in. His most distinguished protege to date is Bryan ("Bitsy") Grant, 2 in. smaller, who was No. 1 on last year's Tar Heel team. Tireless little Grant was national clay court champion in 1930, Southern singles champion for four years.

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