(See front cover)
Even the most ardent U. S. devotees of tennis have had a hard time keeping things straight for the last three or four years. Before that, William Tatem Tilden II and William Johnston were the two great U. S. players. A grade below were other famous names, easily distinguishable from each other—Richard Norris Williams II, the most brilliant half-volleyer in history, Wallace Johnson, a sporting-goods salesman who seemed always trying to compensate for his plebeian occupation by the languidly patrician gestures of his chop-strokes, Vincent Richards, who remained almost perpetually the boy wonder of U. S. tennis. When Johnston retired, Richards turned professional, Williams grew too veteran to be brilliant for more than a day at a time, there appeared on the scene a great second-growth of younger players. These—George Lott, John Van Ryn, Berkeley Bell, Gregory Mangin, Wilmer Allison, John Hennessey; John Doeg—were the ones who caused the difficulty. All were young collegians, and they looked as much alike as so many agitated and disobliging Chinamen. One or two of them, it was first supposed, would emerge from the rest and become champions, but this never seemed to happen. U. S. tennis devotees had become reconciled to speaking of "the younger players" by last summer when the situation finally showed signs of changing.
The changes were two. First, John Hope Doeg, lefthanded, 22, nephew of famed May Sutton Bundy, youngest of the younger players, emerged and won the National Championship at Forest Hills. Second, three new players, younger than the "younger players" and with normal personal differentiation, made their appearance. These were Frank Shields, im- mensely tall, convivial and handsome, Roxbury graduate; Sidney Wood, a yellow-haired, wiry, California youth, with a delicate physique but strong wrists and forearms; and Clifford Sutler, a cherub-faced collegian from New Orleans, with self-consciously graceful but effective ground strokes.
After winning the National championship, Doeg married, set to work on his father-in-law's Newark, N. J. Evening News, announced that he would probably play little tennis in 1931 except to defend his title at Forest Hills. Clifford Sutter last week was winning the Tri-State Tour- nament in Memphis, Tennessee. The other two, Shields and Wood, together with Henri Cochet; John Van Ryn; Jean Borotra, who airplaned back to Paris for business between matches; Bunny Austin, balloon-trousered British Davis Cup player; George Lyttleton Rogers, a big Irishman with a hooked nose; Jiro Satoh, the champion of Japan; and Gregory Mangin and George Lott were last week playing in the greatest single event of the tennis year, "the world's championship"at Wimbledon.