It is extraordinary how naïve the general public sometimes are. People
will watch first-class tennis, sitting for hours together perhaps in
great discomfort, and yet display a lamentable want of knowledge about
the game. In fact, to many its object is a mystery! This seems hardly
possible, but it is quite true. I once overheard a lady who was
watching a match in the centre court at Wimbledon remark, "There, that's
the very first time that man has hit the net with the ball, and he has
had hundreds of tries!" I thought the man mentioned must be playing
pretty good tennis! One really wonders why these onlookers spend so much
time round a court, or where the pleasure can come in for them.

At a garden party not so very long ago where tennis was on the
programme, the visitors, arriving on the court, found one solitary ball,
tied round with a long piece of string, the other end being attached to
the net. To a natural inquiry the hostess replied, "Oh, they lost so
many balls in the shrubbery last year, I really couldn't afford it, and
thought of this plan. It has been most successful. This ball has lasted
for ages!" Another lady at Eastbourne, whom I had noticed because she
never left her seat, bringing her lunch with her so as not to lose a
moment's play, asked me at the end of the week, while watching a double,
whether the partners were side by side or opposite, as in bridge!

One of the most rooted mistakes in the public mind is that the
first-class player is a professional. Many times people have said to me,
"You must be making quite a nice bit of pocket-money from your tennis."
"Making?" I say. "Spending, you mean!"--which always makes them stare in
amazement. This fallacy annoys me very much, and is, I find, very
common. Let me take the opportunity here of pointing out that there are
no professional lawn tennis players excepting a few coaches at Queen's
Club, London, and at some of the clubs abroad; these men, of course,