In 1874, a lively girl named Mary Ewing Outerbridge paid a visit to Bermuda. There British Army officers taught her a game which was becoming a polite fad in England. When she returned to the U. S., Mary Outerbridge brought with her a net suitable for minnow-fishing, several strange-looking, gut-strung bats and a rule book. She had her net pegged up on the grounds of the Staten Island Cricket & Baseball Club, set about teaching her family how to play tennis. Seven years later, when the game was being played at 33 U. S. clubs, her brother, Eugenius H. Outerbridge, helped form the U. S. Lawn Tennis Association which drafted rules and held the first national tournament at Newport, R. I. The winner was a spry young Bostonian with a fierce eye and an underhand serve, Richard Dudley Sears. He too could lay claim to being one of the very first U. S. lawn tennis players. In 1874 his brother had brought a set and a rule book from England, set up the net on an hourglass shaped court on their uncle's place at Nahant, Mass.
While tennis was spreading over the U. S. and about the world, Richard Dudley Sears, waving his thick-framed racket at Newport and on the smooth lawns of the Longwood Cricket Club, near Boston, held the championship for seven years. He might have held it longer had he not hurt himself, so seriously that he was compelled to retire, by colliding with his partner during a doubles match. The injury was still noticeable, in the form of a slight limp, when Richard Dudley Sears went to Forest Hills. N. Y. last week to attend a Golden Jubilee Ceremony, the 50th U. S. Lawn Tennis Championship.
The ceremony was ridiculous but impressive. In a long box erected in the curve of the horseshoe stadium, sat grey-haired Mr. Sears, Henry Ward Slocum and some 30 other onetime champions and proxies for a few, among them Maurice E. ("Comet") McLoughlin of California. Across the three stadium courts stood a small table. Behind the table stood Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams (who likes sailing better than tennis) and three members of the U. S. Lawn Tennis Association.
Presently four lady trumpeters began to play "The Star Spangled Banner" followed by other national anthems. The onetime champions marched slowly across the courts to the table where each received a medal from Secretary Adams, a spasm of applause from 4,000 spectators. There was some confusion about the medal, for the name of Molla Bjursted Mallory, eight-time Woman's Champion, and of Mary K. Browne had unaccountably been left off the list. Richard Dudley Sears, in a loud burst of applause, shook hands four times, received his medal with patrician politeness. He made no great show of liking the ceremony but said he was glad he had come, against his doctor's advice, because "they only hold these things every 50 years and I may not be here for the next one."
First U. S. women's tennis championship was won in 1887 by tall, slim Ellen F. Hansell. Today she is grey-haired, sixtyish. Married to Taylor Allderdice, onetime president of National Tube Co., she is the mother of four daughters, two sons. Preferring the social column to the sport page, she plays the piano, sings, is seen on the tennis court only about once a year.