Crimson Thrashes Yale In Court Tennis Match

In two days of play at New York's Racquet and Tennis Club over the weekend, Harvard again demonstrated its dominance of collegiate court tennis. Eliminating all other competitors in the early rounds, the Crimson players won both the team and individual championships for the fifth consecutive year.

The oldest bat and ball game in the world, court tennis originated in the monasteries of mediaeval France, and in America is confined to seven courts. It is played indoors on a wooden court similar in size to a lawn tennis court and the ball is played off the irregular, sloping walls which surround the court.

Due to academic pressures, Princeton was not represented, and the championship was confined to competition between Harvard and Yale. In this situation Yale was able to win but one match. At the number one position in team competition, Captain Roger Tuckerman efficiently defeated Yale's Roy Plum 6-2, 6-1. Brothers Dwight and John Davis also won for the Crimson, defeating Eli hopefuls Dinny Phipps and Richard Collier.

Playing number four for the Crimson, James W. B. Benkard turned in one of the contest's outstanding performances by playing and winning two singles and one doubles match in one day. In singles, he defeated Eli three-letter-man Gene Scott 6-4, 6-3. He then whipped Swing Meyer in the extra quarter-finals match. The only player to lose for Harvard was William Post, Jr., who after taking the first set, lost the last two to Meyer, 6-0, 6-1. The doubles pairs of Dwight Davis and Tuckerman, and Benkard and John Davis, won quickly, losing no more than two games in any set.

Besides winning the James H. Van Alen cup for the intercollegiate team championship, the Crimson also retained the John Hay Whitney Cup in the singles tournament, which was played off Sunday.

The singles competition was again dominated by the brilliant play of Tuckerman, who for the third year emerged as intercollegiate champion. He first trounced teammate Benkard 6-1, 6-1 in the semi-finals and then outplayed Dwight Davis 6-3, 6-3, to gain the title.