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What is gamesmanship? Most difficult of questions to answer
briefly.'The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating' - that is my
personal 'working definition'. What is its object? There have been five
hundred books written on the subject of games. Five hundred books on play
and the tactics of play. Not one on the art of winning. I well remember
the gritty floor and the damp roller-towels of the changing-room where the
idea of writing this book came to me. Yet my approach to the thing had
been gradual.
There had been much that had puzzled me - I am speaking now of 1928 -
in the tension of our games of ping-pong at the Meynells'. Before that
there had been the ardours and endurances of friendly lawn tennis at the
Farjeons' house near Forest Hill, where Farjeon had wrought such havoc
among so many visitors, by his careful construction of a 'home court', by
the use he made of the net with the unilateral sag, or with a back line at
the hawthorn end so nearly, yet not exactly, six inches wider than the
back line at the sticky end. There had been a great deal of hard thinking
on both sides during the wavering tide of battle, ending slightly in my
favour, of the prolonged series of golf games between E. Lansbury and
myself.
But it was in that changing-room after a certain game of lawn tennis in
1931 that the curtain was lifted, and I began to see. In those days I used
to play lawn tennis for a small but progressive London College - Birkbeck,
where I lectured. It happened that my partner at that time was C. Joad,
the celebrated gamesman, who in his own sphere is known as metaphysician
and educationist. Our opponents were usually young men from the larger
colleges, competing against us not only with the advantage of age but also
with a decisive advantage in style. They would throw the service ball very
high in the modern manner: the back-hands, instead of being played from
the navel, were played, in fact, on the back-hand, weight on right foot,
in the exaggerated copy-book style of the time - a method of play which
tends to reduce all games, as I believe, to a barrack-square drill by
numbers; but, nevertheless, of acknowledged effectiveness.
In one match we found ourselves opposite a couple of particularly tall
and athletic young men of this type from University College. We will call
them Smith and Brown. The knock-up showed that, so far as play was
concerned, Joad and I, playing for Birkbeck, had no chance. UC won the
toss. It was Smith's service, and he cracked down a cannonball to Joad
which moved so fast that Joad, while making some effort to suggest by his
attitude that he had thought the ball was going to be a fault,
nevertheless was unable to get near with his racket, which he did not even
attempt to move. Score: fifteen-love. Service to me. I had had time to
gauge the speed of this serve, and the next one did, in fact, graze the
edge of my racket-frame. Thirty-love. Now Smith was serving again to Joad
- who this time, as the ball came straight towards him, was able, by
grasping the racket firmly with both hands, to receive the ball on the
strings, whereupon the ball shot back to the other side and volleyed into
the stop-netting near the ground behind Brown's feet.
Now here comes the moment on which not only this match, but so much of
the future of British sport was to turn. Score: forty-love. Smith at S1
(see figure) is about to cross over to serve to me (at P). When Smith gets
to a point (K) not less than one foot and not more than two feet beyond
the centre of the court (I know now what I only felt then - that timing is
everything in this gambit), Joad (standing at J2) called across the net,
in an even tone:
'Kindly say clearly, please, whether the ball was in or out.'
Crude to our ears, perhaps. A Stone-age implement. But beautifully
accurate gamesmanship for 1931. For the student must realize that these
two young men were both in the highest degree charming, well-mannered
young men, perfect in their sportsmanship and behaviour. Smith (at point
K) stopped dead.
SMITH: I'm so sorry - I thought it was out. (The ball had hit the back
netting twelve feet behind him before touching the ground.) But what did
you think, Brown?
BROWN: I thought it was out - but do let's have it again.
JOAD: No, I don't want to have it again. I only want you to say
clearly, if you will, whether the ball is in or out.
There is nothing more putting off to young university players than a
slight suggestion that their etiquette or sportsmanship is in question.
How well we know this fact, yet how often we forget to make use of it.
Smith sent a double fault to me, and another double fault to Joad. He did
not get in another ace service till halfway through the third set of a
match which incidentally we won.
That night I thought hard and long. Could not this simple gambit of
Joad's be extended to include other aspects of the game - to include all
games? For me, it was the birth of gamesmanship.
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