Anthony Wilding by Jackie Smyth December 15 2014
A box of old tennis books arrived from an auction house the other day, and amongst the titles was Arthur Wallis Myers' great book about the New Zealander ANTHONY WILDING, four times Wimbledon champion from 1910-13.
As coincidence would have it, I this morning read this passage about Wilding in another old book, Jackie Smyth's "Lawn Tennis", published in the early 1950s: "In 1914 he lost the championship he had held with such distinction for four years, but he took his defeat - bitter though it must have been - with the perfect composure and sportsmanship one would have expected of him. On May 9th, 1915, near Neuve Chapelle in France, he was killed by a shell which landed directly on his dug-out - actually within a few yards of where I was standing at the time."