TENNIS

Tennis has grown tremendously in popularity during the last decade. From a despised, so-called "effeminate" game, it has emerged as one of the great sports of the nation. Under the efficient management of the National Lawn Tennis Association, every club, every section has its tournament and its champion. Eleven thousand people witnessed the finals of the National Championship at Forest Hills, New York.

The fall tournament of the University, which started yesterday, had an entry list of two hundred and sixteen names. That of the national championship had only one hundred and twenty-eight. These figures may give some idea of the remarkable enthusiasm for tennis at Harvard. It is very doubtful if any tournament held this year had so many contestants.

Why not make tennis a major sport? In what better way can the desire of both Faculty and undergraduates to create more participation in athletics be satisfied? Men would be interested in something which would afford them pleasure and exercise during their whole lives. Nothing so inspires a man to work for a team as the hope of reward in the form of a straight letter. The University has excellent facilities for playing. The four fields, Divinity, Jarvis, Holmes and Soldiers', if all properly cared for, could handle easily more than a hundred players every day. No vast new expense would be involved.

The great objection raised against creating new major sports is the subsequent cheapening of the value of an "H." But a tennis team consists ordinarily of six players, almost never more than this number. Six more letter wearers out of two thousand is not many. As against the advantages obtained by so raising the dignity of tennis, this principle criticism appears weak.