Talk:Mercer Beasley: Difference between revisions

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==All of the below is source material that I may use to expand the article==
==All of the below is source material that I may use to expand the article==


Brook Zelcer's article, to be studied again and mined for info and quotations:
email from Brook:


Mercer Beasley was born on July 18, 1882, to a family of prominent New Jersey jurists.  Uncle William S. Gummere served thirty one years as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, his grandfather, Mercer Beasley, served as a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of New Jersey, and his father, Chauncey H. Beasley, was a Princeton alumnus and District Court Judge.  Given his family's connections and wealth, a career in the law seemed a foregone conclusion for Beasley, but his tenure at Princeton was short-lived.
Vines wrote an article titled "The Insignificant Cause of Our Davis Cup Defeat?" for American Lawn Tennis (August 5, 1933 p11) in the same issue Wilmer Allison that wrote "The Indictment of 'Over-Training'" (17) in response to the unfortunate Davis Cup result.
This is by Vines:
"To say our captains don't know their tennis is rot.  We players have every confidence in them and they themselves are old time players" and blames the loss on "the most obvious of all reasons...the French are great players.  Why not give them their due credit?  It has not been the ball, the court, the gallery, the training methods that have beaten us, but the players themselves....You may call it an upset if you wish, but we were beaten through superior play." (11)
Vines never mentions Beasley.
This is by Allison:
"This year's Davis Cup Committee and especially its chairman, Mr. Prentice, left no stone unturned to see that we arrived at the Inter-Zonal final in perfect physical and mental condition...Things were nearly as perfect as it was possible for Captain Prentice and Mr. Lawrence Baker to make them, and yet we were beaten decisively.  Neither Vines nor I were able to win a singles match.  The more one looks at it and tries to analyze it, the more convinced one becomes that we were beaten purely and simply because Perry and Austin were better tennis players." (17)
Again, no mention of Beasley.
   
The following is from the September 5, 1933 edition (one month later):
"Report of Davis Cup Committee".  American Lawn Tennis. Bernon Prentice, Chairman [italics given].  September 5, 1933.  (26)
"As to the coaching of our team, Mercer Beasley went to France as a correspondent of an American newspaper syndicate.  He was not officially attached in any way to our team. Both Vines and Allison urgently asked to have him go with us to France, which we found impossible; and they were pleased to hear that he was to make the trip independently.  He made himself available at all times to them when called upon". (26)
Note from BZ: Tilden offered his services as well, to which Prentice thanks him for his "kind offer and the spirit in which it is given". (26)
Prentice continues: "the boys will have all the tennis they should have prior to the Challenge Round, should we be lucky enough to qualify for it.  They will probably want to play very little during that period anyway". (26)
Was Davis Cup double elimination back then?  (Allison mentions losing to the Brits while Vines mentions the French). 
Who, I wonder, is Mr. Lawrence Baker? 
So Beas, though apparently influential, is off officially off the hook.  But how deep was Beasley's involvement with the team, you gotta wonder?  And what the dialogue was like between Beasley and Prentice?  Or Baker??  Was any official agreement reached regarding Beasley and working with the team?  This is such a weird story!!
Oh…can Citizendium mention Ruth Aaron Hughes in connection with Beasley's book?  She's in the Table Tennis Hall of Fame, and writes that she learned to play the game by applying the principles in Beasley's book to the table.
Beasley wrote the model for disciple Barbara Breit-Gordon's wonderful, Socratic instructional series "Lessons from the Master" for World Tennis.  For my money Breit's series rates among the best of all time.  The note introducing the series says "For 'Teacher' in this article substitute 'Mercer Beasley'". ("Carol Learns to Watch the Ball".  Barbara Breit-Gordon.  World Tennis, April 1971.  70-72)  Breit wrote the series which appeared quite regularly quite a few years, beginning in April, 1971 and going until at least May, 1977..
Beasley's precursory instructional series for American Lawn Tennis was called "Phil Brady, Club Player".  I don't know how long it lasted (it was not as long-lived as Breit's column) but it was a dialogue between his coach and, of course, Phil Brady….club player.   
Overall, it's looking like Beasley's contribution to tennis letters is significant.  From what I could glean out west from he was a frequent contributor to American Lawn Tennis especially from 1948-1951, writing instructional columns, tournament summaries and analyses, tennis items and an array of series, like the one on "Phil Brady".  There is another really cool and doubtless important series on the health and prosperity of the sport as it existed in the public parks.  See for example: "Public Park Survey: New York City" (American Lawn Tennis, August 15, 1949 (22-23) or "Public Park Survey: Philadelphia" (American Lawn Tennis, September 1, 1949 12-13).


A local paper referred to Beasley's "passing out" and being "ousted" in the span of four months, and reported, "for some reason or other the faculty did not agree with his [Beasley's] solution to academic problems."
== Like grandfather, like grandson ==
Beasley spent the next 18 years traveling from one occupation to the next--among them railroad detective and pressman’s devil--before finding himself at the decidedly middle age of 39 as an assistant manager at the Notlek Amusement Company of New York City, a precursor to Chelsea Piers.


Blurred Vision
It would seem that courts are a unifying principle. --[[User:Howard C. Berkowitz|Howard C. Berkowitz]] 04:25, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


While Beasley's duties included general maintenance and running the pro shop, he started to coach the customers, although his own playing skills were poor.  Beasley blamed his uninspired tennis on the "complicated" instruction found in a tennis primer given him by his father, but his eyesight is the likely culprit.  In many photos, he is pictured wearing coke bottle glasses, and protégé Phillip Osborne remembers his coach having to drop and hit the ball from his hand in order to demonstrate groundstrokes.
:Dunno about the son in between, however -- mebbe he wuz a Court Jester (subject of an article?) [[User:Hayford Peirce|Hayford Peirce]] 04:30, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


Beasley was a natural, and in no time he had the Notlek regulars playing their best tennis. Word got around, and legends Vinny Richards and Bill Tilden visited with Beasley, offering up advice and encouragement.
::Perhaps the son had an unfortunate confusion between the chalice from the palace with the vessel with the pestle? --[[User:Howard C. Berkowitz|Howard C. Berkowitz]] 04:42, 11 January 2010 (UTC)


Wealthy Midwesterner Victor Elting came to Notlek to hire Beasley, and found his future pro disposing of a wheelbarrow full of cinders.  When Elting offered him the job, Beasley said he wasn't qualified.  But the persistent Elting doubled Beasley's current salary, and in no time Beasley and wife Audrey were off to the well manicured grounds of the Indian Hill Club of Winnetka, Illinois, where Beasley reinvented himself as a teaching pro.
:::Get it? Got it! Good! [[User:Hayford Peirce|Hayford Peirce]] 04:44, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
 
The Wizard of Winnetka
 
When Mercer Beasley took up his grip for Illinois in 1921, professionalism of any kind was widely despised in tennis.  In fact, the life of a pro at a typical country club was still that of a servant, and tennis very much a sport of the elite.  At the Indian Hill Club, Beasley was allowed to eat in the club dining room only through the direct intervention of Elting himself.  But no matter, for however out of place he may have appeared to others, Mercer Beasley was always his own inimical self.
He arrived at court each morning dressed in a white jockey cap, long flannel pants and a pinstriped blazer. In his arms were instruments such as boxing gloves, hammers, baseball bats and bicycle tires, anything to help teach his system of the game.  And it worked.
 
Five years later his students Louise McFarland and Marjorie Gladman bagged a junior national title each.
 
In 1932 Time declared Beasley the most significant teacher in the history of U.S. tennis.  By then he had developed Vines and Parker, his two great protégés, and promoted the game to hordes of other competitive and recreational players.  To the vast majority of Americans, Beasley was tennis.  He traded jabs and jibes with lightweight champ Benny Leonard, and even held court with the mighty Babe Ruth, who complained of any game that required him to keep the ball inside the fences.
The A.G. Spaulding Company's "Mercer Beasley" model was the top selling racquet for much of the 30's and 40's, outstripping even the ubiquitous "Jack Kramer" in terms of its popularity.  Many were the memorable matches played with the "Beasley," including the stellar 1949 U.S. singles title between Ted Schroeder and Pancho Gonzalez.
 
Mind Game
 
Beasley’s How to Play Tennis (1933) was a perennial best seller at a time when instructors were scarce.  How to Play Tennis approaches the sport from an entirely tactical, scientific perspective.  Beasley’s goal: to produce winning tennis players.  To this end, he preached the virtue of percentage play, calling good tennis the "avoidance of making errors," and emphasizing that "a point won on an error counts just as much as a point scored on an ace."
 
About 50 years before athletes cross trained, Beasley's students were already tapping other sports in order to master different aspects of tennis.  Boxing taught players to attack short balls in the front court. "Foot up to it on your forehand side and shoot a right jab at it," Beasley would say. Basketball helped teach defensive play and alertness.  Ballroom dance and gymnastics were studied. He discovered learning tools everywhere. He even used a marching band for players to rally to while practicing footwork.
 
While Tim Gallwey's Inner Tennis would later advocate for the realization of athletic spontaneity through deliberate mindlessness, Beasley preached the benefits of constant and focused attention.  Of Frank Parker, Doris Hart exclaimed, "you could almost see him thinking out loud, so intense was his concentration."  For years, Hart herself was too easily distracted on the court, a tendency that earned for her many heart wrenching defeats.  When Hart finally defeated Louise Brough in the finals of the 1955 U.S. Nationals after four unsuccessful attempts, Beasley told her, "If only you had started thinking years ago, the game would have been much easier for you," a sentiment with which the indomitable Ms. Hart wholeheartedly agreed.
 
Beasley was a stickler for on-court deportment: "What you do on a tennis court during a tournament match is watched by every spectator in the gallery as well as by your opponent.  Therefore, you should be perfectly natural in every way.  Avoid making any gestures or audible sounds that might cause comment.  There should be nothing to encourage or discourage your opponent.  Not an action of yours should show elation or dejection. Nothing he does, whether it is to score an ace or to make an error, should change your expression."  Indeed, both the mechanical Parker and the larruping Vines were renowned for their polite on court demeanor.


Beasley beginners learned to play "The Little Game," whose object was to develop ball control by shrinking the size of the court to its service boxes.  Once they advanced to baseline play, Beasley's players were trained to see the court as a traffic light: when at or behind the baseline (red) the ball must be played safely; when in no-man’s land (yellow) a forcing but never reckless ball is played; while the frontcourt (green) is the area denoting more decisive shot making.
Hayford, you've created a gem here.  Very interesting reading. [[User:Chris Day|Chris Day]] 22:57, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


== Like grandfather, like grandson ==
:wait'll you see my 1924 NYC aerial photo of the Notlek courts! (maybe -- it's hard to distinguish, but if the address is correct, it has to be them.) Thanks for the kind words! (there's a website with 1924 NYC from the air!) [[User:Hayford Peirce|Hayford Peirce]] 23:38, 4 March 2010 (UTC)


It would seem that courts are a unifying principle. --[[User:Howard C. Berkowitz|Howard C. Berkowitz]] 04:25, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
== Definite Midge info ==


:Dunno about the son in between, however -- mebbe he wuz a Court Jester (subject of an article?) [[User:Hayford Peirce|Hayford Peirce]] 04:30, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Married


::Perhaps the son had an unfortunate confusion between the chalice from the palace with the vessel with the pestle? --[[User:Howard C. Berkowitz|Howard C. Berkowitz]] 04:42, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Midge Gladman Van Ryn to Richard Buck on March 1, in Chula Vista, CA. Midge was first married (and later divorced) to Davis Cupper John Van Ryn. Richard's first marriage also ended in divorce. Midge is best knwon for her doubles prowess and attended college at the University of Southern California. 1947


:::Get it? Got it! Good! [[User:Hayford Peirce|Hayford Peirce]] 04:44, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
from http://www.tennisforum.com/showthread.php?t=398117 [[User:Hayford Peirce|Hayford Peirce]] 01:53, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

Latest revision as of 10:03, 13 September 2019

All of the below is source material that I may use to expand the article

email from Brook:

Vines wrote an article titled "The Insignificant Cause of Our Davis Cup Defeat?" for American Lawn Tennis (August 5, 1933 p11) in the same issue Wilmer Allison that wrote "The Indictment of 'Over-Training'" (17) in response to the unfortunate Davis Cup result.

This is by Vines:

"To say our captains don't know their tennis is rot. We players have every confidence in them and they themselves are old time players" and blames the loss on "the most obvious of all reasons...the French are great players. Why not give them their due credit? It has not been the ball, the court, the gallery, the training methods that have beaten us, but the players themselves....You may call it an upset if you wish, but we were beaten through superior play." (11)

Vines never mentions Beasley.


This is by Allison:

"This year's Davis Cup Committee and especially its chairman, Mr. Prentice, left no stone unturned to see that we arrived at the Inter-Zonal final in perfect physical and mental condition...Things were nearly as perfect as it was possible for Captain Prentice and Mr. Lawrence Baker to make them, and yet we were beaten decisively. Neither Vines nor I were able to win a singles match. The more one looks at it and tries to analyze it, the more convinced one becomes that we were beaten purely and simply because Perry and Austin were better tennis players." (17)

Again, no mention of Beasley.


The following is from the September 5, 1933 edition (one month later):

"Report of Davis Cup Committee". American Lawn Tennis. Bernon Prentice, Chairman [italics given]. September 5, 1933. (26)

"As to the coaching of our team, Mercer Beasley went to France as a correspondent of an American newspaper syndicate. He was not officially attached in any way to our team. Both Vines and Allison urgently asked to have him go with us to France, which we found impossible; and they were pleased to hear that he was to make the trip independently. He made himself available at all times to them when called upon". (26)

Note from BZ: Tilden offered his services as well, to which Prentice thanks him for his "kind offer and the spirit in which it is given". (26)

Prentice continues: "the boys will have all the tennis they should have prior to the Challenge Round, should we be lucky enough to qualify for it. They will probably want to play very little during that period anyway". (26)


Was Davis Cup double elimination back then? (Allison mentions losing to the Brits while Vines mentions the French).

Who, I wonder, is Mr. Lawrence Baker?

So Beas, though apparently influential, is off officially off the hook. But how deep was Beasley's involvement with the team, you gotta wonder? And what the dialogue was like between Beasley and Prentice? Or Baker?? Was any official agreement reached regarding Beasley and working with the team? This is such a weird story!!

Oh…can Citizendium mention Ruth Aaron Hughes in connection with Beasley's book? She's in the Table Tennis Hall of Fame, and writes that she learned to play the game by applying the principles in Beasley's book to the table.

Beasley wrote the model for disciple Barbara Breit-Gordon's wonderful, Socratic instructional series "Lessons from the Master" for World Tennis. For my money Breit's series rates among the best of all time. The note introducing the series says "For 'Teacher' in this article substitute 'Mercer Beasley'". ("Carol Learns to Watch the Ball". Barbara Breit-Gordon. World Tennis, April 1971. 70-72) Breit wrote the series which appeared quite regularly quite a few years, beginning in April, 1971 and going until at least May, 1977..

Beasley's precursory instructional series for American Lawn Tennis was called "Phil Brady, Club Player". I don't know how long it lasted (it was not as long-lived as Breit's column) but it was a dialogue between his coach and, of course, Phil Brady….club player.

Overall, it's looking like Beasley's contribution to tennis letters is significant. From what I could glean out west from he was a frequent contributor to American Lawn Tennis especially from 1948-1951, writing instructional columns, tournament summaries and analyses, tennis items and an array of series, like the one on "Phil Brady". There is another really cool and doubtless important series on the health and prosperity of the sport as it existed in the public parks. See for example: "Public Park Survey: New York City" (American Lawn Tennis, August 15, 1949 (22-23) or "Public Park Survey: Philadelphia" (American Lawn Tennis, September 1, 1949 12-13).

Like grandfather, like grandson

It would seem that courts are a unifying principle. --Howard C. Berkowitz 04:25, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Dunno about the son in between, however -- mebbe he wuz a Court Jester (subject of an article?) Hayford Peirce 04:30, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Perhaps the son had an unfortunate confusion between the chalice from the palace with the vessel with the pestle? --Howard C. Berkowitz 04:42, 11 January 2010 (UTC)
Get it? Got it! Good! Hayford Peirce 04:44, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Hayford, you've created a gem here. Very interesting reading. Chris Day 22:57, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

wait'll you see my 1924 NYC aerial photo of the Notlek courts! (maybe -- it's hard to distinguish, but if the address is correct, it has to be them.) Thanks for the kind words! (there's a website with 1924 NYC from the air!) Hayford Peirce 23:38, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Definite Midge info

Married

Midge Gladman Van Ryn to Richard Buck on March 1, in Chula Vista, CA. Midge was first married (and later divorced) to Davis Cupper John Van Ryn. Richard's first marriage also ended in divorce. Midge is best knwon for her doubles prowess and attended college at the University of Southern California. 1947

from http://www.tennisforum.com/showthread.php?t=398117 Hayford Peirce 01:53, 5 March 2010 (UTC)

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