Howard Preston

Man who

swung at shadows

Frank Deford has done a nice thing for sports fans, especially those who remember the golden 1920s, and also for people who enjoy in-depth character studies of famous perr sons. He has written a book about Big Bill Tilden, parts of which work have appeared in Sports Illustrated.

It is the story of William T. Tilden, perhaps the greatest tennis player of all time but at least of his era. Til-. den began playing tennis as a young man and competed in tournaments until far beyond his prime. He died at 60.

PRESTON

Tilden was a star when other great athletes were at their peak, Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb, Red Grange, Bill and Bun Cook, Jack Dempsey, Tommy Hitchcock, Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen. Tilden was a great competitor, a lover of classical music, a drama buff and sometime actor, a strange man doomed to be somewhat of a social outcast because of a perverse quirk of nature. He was a homosexual.

Even so, the moody and brilliant Til-, den was the toast of the tennis world. Youngsters who were students of the game copied Big Bill's court strategy. He made a science of the sport, figuring position play and making diagrams featuring the ratio of returns against placements. He charted the effect of trajection and spin on the ball.

His philosophy was that every tennis stroke should have meaning and should lead up to some desired result if it was not a winning placement by itself. On his best days, he was unbeatable.

He was lean and temperamental. He would not have been called "Big Bill" today because he was barely over six feet in height and weighed less than 160 pounds. He towered mainly because of the aura of superiority which surrounded him.

Tilden turned professional rather early in the big Depression decade and went on tour. It was a long way from pro tennis today. The troupe first played here in an old market on St. Clair Ave., I believe, beyond E. 105th St. The seating arrangements were poor; some fans sat on the outside lines of the alley on one side of the court.

As I recall, Tilden play the feature match each night on the tour against a Czech better known as a tennis teacher than as a player. Vincent Richards was a member of the cast which put on a good show despite the bad lighting.

Tilden came here again after the war and not long before the closeout of his tragic life. He played in pro tennis tournaments held on the Lakewood Park courts and Tilden even then was something of a box office iure. I saw him lose to Frank; Kovacs in a match played in the twilight, when it was difficult to follow the ball.

No longer temperamental, Tilden seemed content just to, be around the fringe of big-time tennis. He had trouble seeing Kovacs' drives and he muttered to the gallery. "All I'm doing is swinging at

shadows."

Tilden jousted with shadows much of his life, as Deford brings out in interviews with persons who played against Tilden or who knew him in his best days. He comes down through the years as a gaunt spectre, magnificent but still to be pitied.