War: 30-Newport: Love

The grandstand is bare. Its green & white striped roof is streaked and mottled. The gaudy umbrellas are folded and locked away. Inside the arched entrance of Newport's famed Casino, newly installed racks hold a few bicycles, and a sign reads: "Officers Club. For members only." From one or two of the ten still playable courts comes the subdued pock of a quiet game. Ten other courts are overrun by rank grass. Old Tom Pettitt, the Superintendent of Tennis, straw hat on head, still sits on the clubhouse porch. The deserted Championship Court is kept inviolate, awaiting the return of champions.

Next week it will wait in vain. For the second time in 62 years, Newport will have no Tennis Week. World War II has blasted Newport tennis off the courts--as World War I did in 1917.* Also blasted off the big-time summer tennis circuit are Seabright, with its 56 courts flanked by trees, estates; and Longwood, with its box-square stands flanked by bus and trolley lines out of Boston.

Half the circuit--swank Southampton, suburban Rye, businesslike Forest Hills--will still be in the game. But the one player with top-flight memories for the gallery is likely to be 30-year-old veteran Sidney Wood. Two favorites for National Championship honors are the two-hander Francisco Segura of Ecuador and southpaw Seymour Greenberg, graduate of the public parks. At their best, none of these can touch the all-round brilliancy of Big Bill Tilden or Fred Perry, the pyrotechnic power of Ellsworth Vines, the high-gearing of Donald Budge. It will be a season of ghosts and neophytes, with the color and substance on the side of the ghosts.

Gala Ghost. Most luminous ghost will be the Newport scene itself. Since 1881, when the brand-new Casino held the first U.S. national championships, Newport has been queen of the circuit. The first tournament consisted largely of local swells spooning English balls gently over the net for a hundred-odd spectators, be-boatered or be-parasolled. But by 1890 the Casino Governors had transplanted an old Barnum & Bailey grandstand, painted vermilion, to handle the growing crowds. The 1907 season saw the inauguration of a Tennis Ball, to which all players were invited on the generous assumption (long since out of date) that "the fact of being a tennis player is . . . held to be proof that a man is a gentleman."

By 1915 the National Tournament had grown too big for Newport's fancy britches and, though the Championship Court was hastily moved to the Horse-Show ring, the event passed to Forest Hills. But the Newport Invitation carried on, with the best players and the plushiest audience. The manners of that audience have always been notorious. On the dot of the bathing hour, no matter whose the match and what the score, a sizable group of spectators would retire from the stand as if by signal. Jay Gould would stamp through the festive crowds to the court-tennis court without so much as a glance at the lawn-tennis champions. The champions themselves paused between games to sip a Scotch & soda, a conviviality not unwelcome to the youthful Irish shackers (ball boys) in their cocky yachting caps, red sweaters and disreputable trousers.

From the Casino's Horseshoe Piazza, the orchestra annoyed the more serious players (Bill Tilden was not bothered, however, by Die Meistersinger). Every day of Tennis Week ended in cocktail bouts, dinners and dances. Miss Ruth Twombly's "small dinner parties" consisted of 125 people served by twelve footmen.

Undoubtedly tennis will return, with peace, to Newport as to other bygone capitals. One harbinger was already visible last week: London was bullish on Wimbledon bonds, which yield no interest but guarantee choice seats for future Wimbledon matches.

In 1917 the National Championship was replaced by the Red Cross's National Patriotic Tournament. Winner: California's net-rushing lefthander, R. Lindley Murray, who beat beginner Tilden in an early round. Murray beat Tilden again in the finals of the 1918 National.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.