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Cochet, drawn and listless after an attack of influenza, lost his first match in straight sets to an obscure English player named Nigel Sharpe; Mangin lost to Rogers and Rogers lost to Satoh; George Lott was beaten by Harold Lee. Shields, who had never played at Wimbledon be- fore, and Wood were the gallery's favorites. Wood beat the champion of Spain, Eduard Maier, in a straight-set match watched by onetime King Alfonso. Shields, whose resemblance to Wimbledon's favorite William Tatem Tilden II and the fact that he was the first seeded U. S. player, made him the centre of centre-court attention, won his first three matches losing only one set.
As was expected, when the semi-finals were reached, Shields and Wood were the only Americans left in the tournament. Their opponents, respectively, were Jean Borotra, who had made Queen Mary laugh by returning a volley while sitting on his haunches, and England's Frederick J. Perry, who, playing an erratic but brilliant game, had eliminated John Van Ryn in the fifth round.
Because, 1) she is the U. S. women's champion, and 2) Helen Wills Moody decided that she would not "have time" to defend her title at Wimbledon last week, Betty Nuthall was the favorite to win the British Women's Championship. Her chief competitors were Helen Jacobs of Santa Monica, Calif., second ranking U. S. woman player in 1929; cocktail-drinking, tango-dancing Senorita Elia ("Lili") de Alvarez, who twice lost to Helen Wills in the Wimbledon finals; and Mrs. Lawrence A. Harper, first ranking U. S. woman player, a Californian with a hard left-handed drive, who lost to Betty Nuthall in the finals of the U. S. championships at Forest Hills last summer.
Senorita Elia de Alvarez, wearing a split skirt which resembled a pair of abbreviated pajamas, won her first match and lost her next to a coolheaded, methodical British girl named Dorothy Round.
When Betty Nuthall came up against Mrs. Harper their match was almost a repetition of the one Betty Nuthall had won at Forest Hills. The Californian got a lead of 3-1 in the first set, thereafter was outplayed and lost 6-4, 6-2 Waiting to play her quarter-final match against Helen Jacobs, who had beaten Mrs. Kathleen McKane Godfree the same day, Betty Nuthall reiterated her intention of coming to the U. S. this summer to defend her U. S. championship. When they played, three days later, Betty Nuthall lost 6-2, 6-3.
Popular sporting figures fall into two categories: those who are popular because they are eccentric and those who are popular because they are not. It would be easy to explain the immense popularity of Betty Nuthall by pointing out how neatly she fits the public conception of the Average British Girl. Her face, pleasant enough to be pretty, is large, reddish, blue-eyed, friendly. Buxom and fair-haired, she speaks in an accent which is neither aristocratic nor cockney, almost giggles when she smiles. Not noisily exotic, like Lili de Alvarez, nor glumly beautiful, like Mrs. Moody, she is described by her friends with indefinite adjectives—"attractive," "unspoiled," "girlish."