VOL. VL

No. 2.

T is some fourteen years since the game of Lawn Tennis made its appearance. It was invented, or at least put into a practical shape, by Major Wingfield. Many people before his time had stretched a cord between two trees and hit a ball back and forth over it, using rackets, battledores, or whatever other implements chance threw in their way. This, however, we can hardly call Lawn Tennis.

When the game was first introduced it fell into the hands of racket players, as the court-tennis player looked on it with too much contempt to take an interest in it. The result was that the new game was moulded as far as possible on racket. That game has fifteen aces and the server only could score. When the striker-out won a stroke he became the server. The rackets and balls were both very light, and the net was enormously high-about five feet at the posts and four feet six in the middle. After a time a change came over the scene; the net was lowered, and the rackets and balls were made heavier. Of course, with these changes came harder hitting and faster play. The racket method of scoring was given up, and the present system, taken from court tennis, was adopted.

All this time the game was growing more popular, and the number of play

ers was increasing. Everyone, however, had a style of his own. The racket players used a racket stroke, with a long swing of the arm, and with the shoulder-joint free. The tennis players, on the other hand, used the cut, and held the elbow bent and the head of the racket above the wrist. In other words, every player was a law to himself and to himself only.

To a certain extent this state of things exists to-day. As we have seen, the game has no history. Lawn Tennis has not, like court tennis, passed through many generations of players until all its principles have been studied out. Even to-day every Lawn-Tennis player has his own ideas of the proper way to play a stroke. Some, indeed, seem to have no ideas on the subject whatever, and to regard the whole matter as of no importance. There can, however, be no doubt of the great importance of good form. No one must suppose that I hope or wish to see all players using exactly the same style. That is not possible. Every man has his own style, more or less marked. Training will modify it to a certain extent, but it can never make any two players exactly alike. But with all this variety of style the better players always observe certain principles of form.

At the risk of being personal I shall give two or three examples of the best players of the day.

The best form that I have ever seen is that of Mr. W. Renshaw. He plays every ball so easily, and with so little apparent exertion, that he always has

his feet under him. His style is purely natural, and appears in every different stroke. With him comes his brother, Mr. Ernest Renshaw, the present champion. The two brothers are very much alike in build and appearance, and many people may think in style too, and yet I feel sure that I could tell which was playing by watching two or three strokes. Ernest takes the ball lower than his brother, in the ordinary stroke off the ground. In the volley, too, he allows the ball to drop more before he hits it than his brother would. In this way, to my mind, he loses something both of certainty and severity in the volley, while in the ground-stroke he perhaps gains a little. With both the Renshaws the form is so good that criticism by an inferior player seems rather out of place.

Now let us take Mr. Lawford, who has been in the foremost rank of players for many years. His style is in direct contrast to that of the Renshaws, for it is labored, and purely the result of study. He may be said to play but four strokes, but he plays them curiously well. He puts both feet firmly on the ground and fixes himself completely. He takes the ball at the very top of its bound, striking with all his force. His racket is vertical, and is lifted as he strikes, giving a strong over-twist to the ball. The back foot, too, is lifted as the stroke is made, and the whole weight of the body is thrown on to the ball. The elbow and wrist are held perfectly stiff, and the stroke seems to be made almost as much by the forward motion of the body as by the arm.

The backhand stroke is made on the same principle, but not quite so well. The two other strokes are the fore- and back-handed smashes, made exactly like the ground-strokes with the racket the other end up.

The style is awkward and uncouth almost beyond conception, but no one who has not played against him can appreciate the suddenness, the accuracy, and the terrible speed of his strokes.

The weakness of Lawford's game is that he requires time to fix himself for his stroke, and if got on the run is at a greater disadvantage than another player would be.

It is certainly a wonderful example of what patience and hard work can achieve even when there is no natural facility for the game.

Another curious instance is Mr. W. J. Hamilton, the best Irish player. I have not seen him for the last two years, and he may have changed; but at that time he used to take every ball forehanded. He is very quick on his feet, and possessed of endless endurance, so that he can run round a ball and play it forehanded. It was wonderful how well he succeeded; but at the same time it is not good tennis, and there is no reason why the backhanded stroke should not be as strong as the forehanded.

Here are two of the best players who differ entirely from each other and from the Renshaws in style. The contrast between Lawford and Hamilton is very great, as Lawford, a heavy man, moves at a disadvantage, especially on a soft ground, and plays all his best strokes standing still. Hamilton, on the other hand, is always on the run, and seems to prefer to make his strokes while moving. These differences come from the different build and characters of the men, and they could never be made to play alike by any amount of preaching about good form.

Again, when I used to play at Cannes the courts were very hard and the ball bounded very high. The result was that most of us took the ball at the top of its bound with a horizontal racket, something as in court tennis.

In Ireland the courts are apt to be wet, and of course the ball rises very little. Almost all the best Irish players take the ball very low, with the racket perfectly vertical, and with a good deal of swing. Here again are two opposite styles, but one cannot say that either is wrong. Both strokes may be played in good or bad form, as the case may be.

Good form, then, cannot do away with individual peculiarities, nor with the conditions of the ground; and it is not intended that it should. Its object is to teach one how to play any ball to the greatest advantage under the circumstances.

In what, then, does good form consist, and how can it be acquired?

Form is the style in which the player

stroke both feet seldom remain on the ground, and any violent effort will destroy the balance of the body, and thus make the stroke more uncertain, and the recovery slower and more difficult. This preservation of the balance, to me, seems the most important advantage of good form. You can often make a single stroke well enough in bad form, but you place yourself at such a disadvantage in the recovery that you must injure your chances for the next stroke.

It seems clear, then, that good form is worth having; that it can do no

the direct teaching of some player who has a good style himself, or at least knows thoroughly what it consists in.

"But," it has often been said to me, "we live where there are no good players; we see no good play; we have to trust to books for instruction, and books cannot show how a player looks when he makes a stroke." All this is true, and I could think of no answer to it until the idea occurred to me that a number of instantaneous photographs of the best players might be taken, so that the exact position of the feet and hands might