Evening star., 1934-03-13
HIGH ADVENTURE
PEPS EARLY LIFE
Saved by Life Belt When
Titantic Sank-CraCk
officer in War.
BY LAWRENCE PERRY.

M By no possibility could
the United States Lawn
4 Tennis Association have
selected a better captain for
the Davis Cup team than Dick
Williams.
At the age Of 43 he still is an
active tournament player and a good
one. Familiar with all the shifts and
turns of the modern game. his eX-
perience reaches back some 20 years,
when he was national singles cham
pion-in 1914 and 1916.
1t goes back even farther; it ex-
tends into schoolboy days in England,
where he learned his tennis.
I first saw him at the old West
Side Lawn Tennis Club up in the
Bronx playing against Maurice Nc
Loughlin. then in his prime. and max
ing as good a showing as could be eX-
pected of college boy opposed to the
flaming meteor of the tennis firma-
ment
Since then lot of tennis balls have
gone over the net, and Williams has
sent more of them over in big-time
tournaments than any modern player
Led Five L. S. Teams.
TIE WAS, for instance. a distin-
n guished Davis Cup player be-
tween 1913 and 1927 in which
period he figured in nearly a score of
Davis Cup ties. From 1921 to 1925
he was playing captain of five Davis
foo 11I ha taI tato
Olympic team of 1924.
He holds, besides his singles cham
pionships, several national and inter-
national doubles and mixed doubles
titles, not forgetting his intercollegiate
singles championship while a student
at Harvard in 1913 and the two in
tercollegiate doubles titles of 1914-l5,
paired with Dick Harte.
1t is extremely doubtful that any
man III the world is as adequately
equipped to prepare team for COM
petition and then to tool it through
the Welter of actual conflict as R.
Norris Williams
Born in Geneva, Switzerland scion
of an old Philadelphia family, he spent
much of his early life abroad, mainly
in England, from which he was re-
turning to enter Harvard in 1912 as
a passenger on the Inflated White
Star liner Titanic
Clinging to life preserver. he was
picked out of the sea by one of the
drifting lifeboats and came to port
with other survivors on the Cunarder
Carmania.
thrn1Intnltt III,
has eXemplified the amateur spirit in
every nice degree. He plays the game
because he loves it, and he has never
departed from prediction for the
bizarre and the spectacular.
His method of play and his style
OF game were such that almost any
high-class rival could beat him when
he was not strictly right. But in any
match where he was on his game no
player could stand against his daz-
zling Wizardry. And I mean, no
player.
He was very colorful on the court
and if it occurred to his joyously
whimsical mind TO drop-kick balls
across the net to an opponent, who
needed them for service. he never
hesitated to indulge his inclination.
He Found Way.
VXIHEN we entered the World
" War, Williams was in Platts-
burg. Even though he had
twice won the national singles title,
the Army medics were not going to
pass him for a commission because
OF fiat feet, or something of the sort
Desperate. worried stiff. Williams
took out very influential colonel one
morning for game of tennis. The
colonel won two sets-and Williams
got his commission.
With a picked group he was sent
abroad ahead of the A. E. F. and at
tached to 75-mm. gun crew in Pic
ardy. He became brilliant artil-
lerist in no time. and when the Amer
leans came over Williams was as
signed to our Army as an instructor
The greatest match 1 ever saw him
play, and one of the grandeSt matches
ever played. was al Newport in 1923
a five-set singles engagement against
Vincent Richards. Both men were
absolutely on their game that day
and the pyrotechnics were dazzling.
Finally, having Richards at match
point in the fifth set, the spectators
pop-eyed with excitement. Williams
defauIted. He wanted tc play doubles
with Watty Washburne. If he had
beaten Richards he would have had
to continue in the singles tourney
and pass up the doubles. So he did
what he wanted to do. In tennis he
has never done ANYTHING else