Badminton, modern version of the ancient game of battledore & shuttlecock, takes its name from the county seat of the Duke of Beaufort. Legend says it started there in 1873 when the guests at a dinner party stuck goose quills in champagne corks, began batting them across the table.
For the next 25 years, badminton led a double life. In England it enjoyed a mild vogue as a socialite amusement for which the proper uniform was evening dress. In garrisons and officers' clubs in India where it was called poona, badminton was played more violently, took firmer root. Badminton's renaissance in England started soon after the War. In the U. S., where socialites had been playing dignified badminton for years, strenuous badminton did not put in an appearance until about ten years ago. About 1931, badminton began to boom. Currently it is the fastest growing game in the U. S. Last week in Chicago, the cream of the U. S. crop of 40,000 badminton addicts played the first national championship tournament.
Tradition, and the fact that the only requirements for a court are a flat surface and plenty of headroom, make armories the appropriate place for badminton. Last week's tournament was held in that of the Naval Reserve. Before the tournament started, officials debated whether or not to accept the entry of Hock Sim Ong, Malay post-graduate student at the University of California who learned badminton when he went to Cambridge on a British Government scholarship. Before it was over, four other contestants had good cause to wish the officials had rejected it because Hock Sim Ong had beaten them with discouraging ease. In the final, with a socialite crowd of 5.000 seated around the court, Hock Sim Ong's opponent was tall, 24-year-old Walter Kramer of the Detroit Badminton Club, rated by professionals as the ablest U. S. amateur for the last two years. The first game went to Kramer, 15-10. In the second Sim Ong got a lead of 4-1, then apparently forgot all he knew about the game while his opponent ran out 14 points in a row for match & title. Prettiest girl player in the tournament, slim, brunette Mrs. Del Barkhuff of Seattle, was also the most proficient. Using a skyrocket serve that sometimes nearly hit the roof, she won the women's singles championship, 11-4, ni, against Mrs. Ray Bergman, then paired with Hamilton Law and with Zoe Smith to share both doubles titles. Men's doubles winners were Chester Goss & Don Eversoll of Los Angeles.
What Walter Kramer got for winning the men's badminton championship last week was a silver cup, named for New York socialites Bayard Clarke and E. Langdon Wilks who were the original U. S. badminton pioneers in 1878. Unlike England's "Grand Old Man" of badminton, Sir George Thomas, whose achievement of winning 78 national badminton titles in the British Isles from 1903 to 1928 is rivaled only by his position as England's best chess player, they did not contribute much to the game's later triumph. Badminton's current status on the U. S. scene is largely a tribute to the power of the cinema.