WILLIAMS, AND INTERNATIONAL TENNIS

A Glimpse of the Young Harvard Sophomore Upon Whom Much Will Depend in the Davis Cup Matches

J. Parmly Paret

Winner of the All-Comers Tournament at Newport, 1899

PERHAPS the most interesting figure in American lawn tennis is Richard Norris Williams, 2nd, of Philadelphia. This youth of twenty-three, a sophomore at Harvard, has set the best students of the game to guessing, and they do not find a ready answer to the puzzles he has raised.

The best masters in Europe had a hand in teaching young Williams the game, and they found him an apt pupil from the start. He began very young, and almost as soon as he was big enough to swing a racket he took up tournament play in the Swiss and Riviera handicaps with promising results. When he was barely twenty-one, he started for America with his father to enter Harvard. They selected the ill-fated Titanic for passage, and his father was lost in the disaster. Young Williams himself was saved only after a bitter experience in which he clung for six hours to the wreckage in the icy water before he was picked up by one of the Carpathia's boats.

WILLIAMS sprang into prominence at once on the American tennis courts. From the very start he was a formidable adversary for the best. His American debut came at a time when the Eastern section of the country was denuded of champions and there was plenty of room at the top. The great Larned had just retired and the top rungs of the ladder were occupied almost entirely by Californians.

A friendly rivalry was started at once between Williams and McLoughlin, the then Champion, and although the Californian won almost every time, Williams always played him close, and seemed to hold all of the others safe. At the end of the 1912 season, he was officially rated as the second best player in the country, and was again so rated last year after playing McLoughlin a close four-set match in the finals at Newport for the championship.

So, last year, when the American team was selected to meet the Australians, he was unanimously chosen to play beside McLoughlin in the singles, and he acquitted himself well, winning both of his matches against Doust and Rice. Later in the season, he was sent to England with the team that won the Davis Cup, duplicating the champion's record by beating Dixon and losing to Parke.

HIS play is in many ways the most interesting of all our players, not because he shows the greatest speed, for he doesn't; not because he is the headiest player, for he isn't; not because his service, or his smashing, or his volleying, or his forehand or back-

hand strokes are the best, for they are not, but simply because he plays all strokes well, and plays them in such good form, and with such apparent reserve that one gets the impression that he has never reached his limit or played himself out. I doubt if he ever has shown his best, and I look for far greater skill in the future. He has the groundwork of good form, the youth and enthusiasm, and apparently the opportunity, to carry out his ambition. With experience his fame should climb to higher levels, and I predict for him, before his tennis days are over, a niche in the hall of fame of the real lawn tennis masters, beside H. L. Doherty, Norman Brookes, A. F. Wilding, W. A. Larned, Maurice McLoughlin and a few others.

Williams's service is of the American type, though it does not show as much break or as much length and speed as McLoughlin's; his ground-strokes are all made with a free body-swing and a good follow-through, and his overhead play is sound at all times, though not so severe as the champion's.

IN fact, the most noticeable failing of the young Harvard star is his lack of the fighting aggressiveness or the bull-dog tenacity that make McLoughlin such a consistent winner. The champion is at all times and everlastingly forcing the attack; he allows no breathing spell, and his face shows the intense absorption in big matches that allows room for only one idea, a virulent attack from the start until the match is over.

Williams, on the other hand, has a winning smile that draws to him many friends. Whether winning or losing, he smiles, and his friends often wish that he took matters more seriously when they see a hard match going against him. But his lawn tennis is still a pastime with Williams; he refuses to make a business of it, and the dilettante English ideas he picked up abroad seem odd to some American lovers of the game, who take match play very seriously.

When Williams met Rice, the Australian, in the International matches at the West Side courts a year ago last spring, the Harvard lad's play gave his friends heartburn in the first two sets. Rice, out of date in all his methods, outclassed by McLoughlin in the first day, took the first two sets from Williams through the American's ejrors; Williams never turned a hair as game after game was lost and finally two sets were gone, but came back smiling for the third set, playing right through the match without varying his tactics and finally won out. He seemed satisfied that his regular game must win and kept.at it until it did win. Within a point of losing an important game, he plays the same stroke, risks the same close placing and great length, and his nerves seem wonderfully steady when the crisis comes.

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THE two points where Williams excels McLoughlin are in his splendid length and the timing of his strokes. He has learned abroad what few Americans ever learn, correct use of the half-volley. This is a stroke little known over here and seldom played except for defense. The English and some Continental players (who have learned their tennis from the English) use this stroke for attack, coming forward on a short return for a half-volley to gain time in the attack against an adversary who is out of position. Williams frequently makes this play and times both volleys and ground strokes well, often taking the ball on the rise to gain time in the attack.

His length is also very good at most times. Primarily, length limits attack, and Williams does not earn so many aces on short cross-court strokes as McLoughlin, because his great length does not make them possible, but he takes fewer chances than the champion by keeping his adversary further away from him, and then times his strokes so well as constantly to force the play and gain the net quickly for a kill.

Williams's back-hand stroke has been criticised by P. A. Vaile because it is made in the typical English style with the head of the racket above his wrist, but that in itself does not seem sufficient to condemn his back-hand play. This style limits the attack of the stroke, to be sure, but it strengthens the defense and adds to its certainty by lessening the number of outs and nets. It seems absurd to condemn all players of this type, when we remember that both of the Doherty brothers held the racket in this way, to say nothing of Mahony, Eaves and hosts of other experts. H. L. Doherty probably never made a backhand stroke in any other way, and at his best I believe him to have been the equal of any player.

Williams's back-hand stroke is made with a freer swing, with more follow-through and not so close to his body as that of McLoughlin, who hits the ball with a cramped arm on the back-hand side. Of the two I should select Williams as showing better form in this kind of play.

WITH McLoughlin and Williams in the singles against either the English or Australians in the Davis Cup matches this season, I feel that the Americans have an even chance for success. I believe, too, much reliance has been placed on the record of Brookes, and I would not be surprised to see him this year in the unenviable position of the pitcher that went too often to the well.

Wilding may live up to his great reputation, and, if he does, it would not be surprising to see the whole outcome hang on the doubles. Parke cannot make up a whole team for England, even if he plays as well as last year.

It must be remembered that McLoughlin beat Parke three straight sets in .the English championship last year, and was an odds-on favorite against Wilding in the challenge match. He was beaten by the clever New Zealander, but the general verdict was that he had gone stale and was still off his game in the Davis Cup matches when Parke turned the tables on him a few days later.

IF England should upset all calculations and get into the challenge round, I look for the American team to win with a safe margin, and if the Australians are our opponents I should not be surprised to see McLoughlin win both his matches and Williams beat Brookes.

The doubles seem all in favor of the challengers unless a better team has been developed for America than any seen in the early tournaments. If Wilding should win both his matches, even without help from Brookes, the visitors might still win. The burden of the attack will rest on Brookes, for he has been expected to play in both singles and doubles, and his form will probably settle the fate of the Davis Cup this year. That Brookes was able to defeat Wilding this year in straight sets for the English championship is, to say the least, ominous of what he may do in the Davis Cup matches.

In both of the singles matches, the outcome will be the result of the familiar battle between long experience, craftiness and court generalship, and the fire, speed and endurance of youth.

SO on Brookes and Williams rest the greatest strain. We know what Wilding and McLoughlin can do, but we can only guess what the oldest and youngest members of the two teams will accomplish. Predictions are always hazardous, and doubly so in lawn tennis, a game in which class is always reliable, and form, among players of the same class, very frequently unreliable. If my guess comes true, Williams will improve this year and Brookes may go back, despite his showing at Wimbleden. This may settle the result of the international struggle.