The Heyday of Amateurism in Modern Lawn Tennis

Jefferys, Kevin

doi:10.1080/09523360903367685

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…39 While Daniel was reprimanded for negotiating with Hammer, in France for example, the Fédération Française de Tennis (FFT, French Tennis Federation) turned a blind eye to side deals regarding the financial gratification of their victorious 'Four Musketeers' Davis Cup squad (René Lacoste, Henri Cochet, Jean Borotra and Jacques Brugnon), in order to prevent them from becoming professional, paid tennis players. 40 The suspension meant that Daniel missed most of the 1931 season, including all major tournaments. Jacob Borut has argued that Daniel allegedly left 'the German sports association' and joined the oldest Jewish sports club Bar Kochba in Berlin as a consequence of this experience.…”

Section: Daniel Prenn -Germany's Man In the Top Tenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Daniel Prenn – From Germany’s First Man in the Top Ten to ‘“No Nationality” Man’?

Jenkel

2021

The International Journal of the History of Sport

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This biographical study thematizes the life of Daniel Prenn, Germany's first male tennis player in the world's top ten ranking. Emigrating from St. Petersburg to Berlin as an adolescent, he soon developed a great talent in tennis, became Germany's number one player and represented the country in the Davis Cup before in 1933 -at the height of his success -he became a famous victim of the sport segregation by the National Socialists due to his Jewish background. Subsequently, Daniel migrated to the United Kingdom and was able to continue his tennis career. This article explores his story and contextualizes it before the historical background, as his life is connected to numerous contemporary developments of the time such as antisemitism, emigration, naturalization and more. Further, the study provides insights into the role of sports regarding processes of integration and identification. It looks at the trajectory of an early sports migrant, his motivations, experiences, obstacles and successes. So far, Daniel Prenn's story has been absent from (sports) history, and his life has not yet been studied in detail nor remembered comprehensively. This biographical account is a first attempt at changing this.On Friday June 25, 1937, the headline in the Dundee Evening Telegraph read: 'Frankie Parker meets "No Nationality" Man' . 1 As always during the summer months of June and July the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club hosted its annual lawn tennis championship at Wimbledon, London. In the fourth round Frankie Parker, the American who would later reach the tournament's final, played a man with whom he not only shared his talent for tennis but his Polish ancestry. This mysterious 'No Nationality Man' was no stranger, neither to the tennis community nor the British public. He had played Wimbledon on several occasions before. The particularity this time was that the tournament's programme for the round of the last 16 listed 'four Britishers, four Americans, two Australians, two Germans, one Czech, one New Zealander, one Belgian and one -Daniel Prenn' [emphasis added]. 2

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Section: Daniel Prenn -Germany's Man In the Top Tenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Daniel Prenn – From Germany’s First Man in the Top Ten to ‘“No Nationality” Man’?

Jenkel

2021

The International Journal of the History of Sport

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“…53 This response was indicative of British conceit at the time, stemming from class-and raciallybased imperialist ideology, as they looked down upon other administrative bodies that did not share their values or exalted status. 54 Throughout this period, the British frequently ridiculed American playing conditions. The LTA's official mouthpiece, Pastime, was one of several publications that made overstated claims 'tainted with hyperbole'.…”

Section: Emerging Tensionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

In Search of America

Galen

Nicholson

2018

Digital Journalism

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Anglo-American relations in tennis are a fascinating subject, particularly in the period of the late-19 th /early-20 th century, during which the developments seen both on and off court were reflective and indicative of broader societal shifts, as the US gradually replaced Britain as the world's leading industrialized nation. The aims of this paper are to discuss how Anglo-American relations in lawn tennis shifted throughout this period, from when lawn tennis was "invented" in Britain to the onset of the Great War, and to contextualize these developments in the light of shifting geo-political/economic and cultural relations more generally between the two nations, alongside developments within sport and tennis more specifically. Shifts in the following areas are examined: attitudes toward and opinions of the relative standards of both American and British tennis players from the general public, correspondents and the media of the other nation, in terms of their overall rank and possibilities of success; and, attitudes from tennis officials toward the formal organization of competitions between players of both nations.America's aggressively egalitarian version of democracy could undermine Britain's longheld and deeply stratified class system, which was sustained by the widely-held belief that 'guiding the masses' was an upper-class 'responsibility'. 13 Approaches to sport were a key target, but, often unwilling to negotiate "amateur" ideals, the British initially projected their version of amateurism -in the image of a "gentleman amateur"as unequivocally the version to which all athletes worldwide should replicate. 14 American officials, however, were less concerned about limiting coaching/training opportunities or the unrelenting pursuit of competitive success, and American athletes seemed to play sport with less restraint and with a more performance-oriented approach. This became increasingly commonplace in American sport, as Frederick Taylor's theory of "scientific management" (or "Taylorism"), which sought to analyze and synthesize workflows to improve economic efficiency and labour productivity in the workplace, made inroads in other spheres of human endeavour throughout the late-19 th /early-20 th centuries. American athletes, according to Rader, brought 'the same winning-at-all-costs ethos that prevailed in the marketplace. Hence, defeating one's rivals by any means... was consistent with their experiences in the world of commerce and industry'. 15 This attitude ultimately gave American athletes an edge, but the British criticized their general approach to sport, depicted them as 'savages' and 'cads, cheats, liars who… were incapable of [sportsmanship]… and who knew little about the finer things in life and cared even less: in short, ill-mannered, uncultured philistines'. 16 Their ensuing rivalry was exposed, perhaps most famously, during the 1908 Olympic Games, when divergent interpretations of "amateurism", particularly related to coaching/training in track-and-field athletics, brought a protracted power s...

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“…Historical research (e.g. Jeffreys, 2009;Lake, 2010a;Lowerson, 1993;Wigglesworth, 2007) has helped build an understanding of how early tennis clubs featured in communities, and their specific norms, values and rules of engagement that simultaneously functioned to bond socially compatible members together and exclude 'undesirables'. Evidence here suggests these features still persist in a diluted form, thus pressing the need to examine this phenomenon in the context of contemporary issues of social exclusion, challenging the rhetoric of how 'macro' sport policy transfers to 'micro' club-level environments.…”

Section: Social Exclusion As a Theoretical Conceptmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘They treat me like I’m scum’: Social exclusion and established-outsider relations in a British tennis club

Lake

2011

International Review for the Sociology of Sport

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Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Lawn Tennis Association introduced numerous policies to remove barriers associated with social exclusion in tennis clubs. Ethnographic research was conducted within one club to analyse the incidence of social exclusion, and consider the success of LTA policies in these regards. Findings suggested the club made structural changes to receive LTA funding, such as removing exclusive membership and clothing restrictions, hiring coaches and establishing school-club links, yet its culture remained almost entirely inaccessible to new members. For analysis, Elias and Scotson's 'Established-Outsider Relations' theoretical framework is applied: to discover who was excluded, how and why, and, to set the outcomes of power struggles between members in the wider social and historical contexts of changing LTA policies.

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The Heyday of Amateurism in Modern Lawn Tennis

Cited by 7 publications

References 2 publications

Daniel Prenn – From Germany’s First Man in the Top Ten to ‘“No Nationality” Man’?

Daniel Prenn – From Germany’s First Man in the Top Ten to ‘“No Nationality” Man’?

In Search of America

‘They treat me like I’m scum’: Social exclusion and established-outsider relations in a British tennis club

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