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When Richard Dudley Sears was champion he dominated the game. One man or at most two have dominated U. S. tennis ever since, until William Tatem Tilden retired to become a professional last year. Last week's jubilee tournament, on the West Side Tennis Club's disgracefully frayed turf, was a young-blooded tournament and one which suggested that tennis has now become so standardized that all the promising young players are almost equally good. Only one oldtime player made a showing—Richard Norris Williams II, champion in 1914 and 1916. No one was too much surprised when Sidney Wood Jr., boastful but erratic young Wimbledon champion, was beaten by an unseeded player in the third round nor when Berkeley Bell showed annoyance at having to finish his match with Wilmer Allison on a court outside the stadium. There are at least one upset and one squabble in every tournament.
In the quarterfinals, four fair-haired young players played four black-haired ones. Three of the fair-haireds—Henry Ellsworth Vines Jr., John Hope Doeg and George Martin Lott Jr.—beat Bell, Francis Xavier Shields and John Van Ryn, respectively. The only dark-haired player in the semi-finals was also the only Englishman in the tournament, Frederick J. Perry, onetime ping-pong champion and No. 2 singles player on the British Davis Cup team. His semi-final match with Vines was generally regarded as the one which would decide the championship. Vines won, after losing the first two sets and breaking two rackets with a smash that is now considered the fastest shot in U. S. amateur tennis.
Vines's opponent in the final was Lott. The latter had beaten round-faced Doeg, the defending champion, who got as far as the semi-final on his courage rather than on his imperfect, left-handed shots. Lott, in the first ten for the last five years, had never reached the final before. In his match with Vines, who was a flash-in-the-pan a year ago but who had won three out of this year's four important invitation tournaments, Lott controlled his temper and his shots in the first set, which he won, after two narrow escapes on his serve, 9-7. Vines won the next set 6-3. In the third, Lott lost his serve at 7-all, let the next game go without trying.
In the tenth game of the fourth set, Lott gave signs of having lost part of his temper, with good reason. He had had Vines 5-2; then Vines had won his own serve, broken through on Lett's, was winning his own again to tie the score. Lott beat his leg with his racket, lay on the court for a full minute after falling down. He dusted off his trousers with a towel, whacked a ball high into the grandstand when he missed a point, yelped when he missed another. When Vines won the tenth game, Lott, Vines and 10,000 spectators knew the match was over. A few seconds later it was: 7-9, 6-3, 9-7, 7-5.
Vines, 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Southern California, youngest champion in the history of U. S. tennis, shook hands with Lott, wrapped a towel around his neck while Lott put on a blazer, moved over to a microphone in his slow pigeon-toed shuffle. Theorists wondered whether Vines would, like Doeg, slump after becoming champion; or whether, which seemed a shade more likely, he would improve enough to dominate U. S. tennis like Tilden, McLoughlin, Larned, Wrenn, and Richard D. Sears.