I am not an advocate of persistent volleying in a lady’s single.  I think it is too great a tax on the physique.  Nor do I think it pays in the long-run.  A volleyer, to my mind, is much easier to play against than a base-liner, and most of the first-class base-line players agree with me.  The great physical exertion entailed in running continually to the net will after a time make the ground strokes weaker and weaker; and you must have good length to be able to come up and volley with any success.  Miss E.W.  Thomson (now Mrs. Larcombe), one of our best lady volleyers, put up a magnificent game in the first set against Miss Sutton at Wimbledon in the championship singles of 1905.  She had carefully watched Miss Sutton’s game and thought out the best way to play her.  Volleying most judiciously, she would force Miss Sutton up to the net with a short drop stroke, and then, lobbing over her head nearly on to the base-line, take up a position at the net, winning the ace with a neat cross volley.  These tactics she repeated again and again, and actually led by five games to two.  If she could have lasted she must have won that match.  But she could not keep it up.  She became obviously exhausted, did not get up to the net quickly enough, and her length got shorter and shorter.  Miss Sutton eventually won that set and the next easily.  I do not know what would have happened if Miss Thomson, when she found she was tiring, had stayed back for a little while and then resumed her tactics at the net.  Perhaps she would have come much nearer to victory.

A very large majority of non-volleyers in singles have won the ladies’ championship, and I think that fact helps to prove my argument.  Miss Maud Watson, Miss Rice, Mrs. Hillyard, the late Miss Robb, Miss Sutton, Miss Boothby and myself are base-liners.  Miss Dod and Mrs. Sterry are the only two volleyers.  Every girl, however, should learn how to volley.  You may be inveigled up to the net, and you should then know how to play and place a volley.  And you should go up now and then on a good-length ball.

In Doubles of course it is different.  I think then a girl should volley.  It will greatly improve her play all round, and will also make the game so much more attractive.  I think it would be an excellent plan if ladies’ doubles were always played like men’s doubles, both players moving together and keeping parallel with one another, going up to the net together and retiring to the back of the court together.  Competitors would improve their volleying, and the double, instead of being the dreary, monotonous affair it is now, especially for the base-liner, would be varied and instructive.  I am sure referees would welcome the change with avidity.  The much-dreaded, interminable ladies’ double event would be a thing of the past.  If we played the double with the new formation, perhaps we should succeed in re-establishing the event at Wimbledon!  But it is very difficult to get ladies to volley at a tournament.  They think they have more chance of winning from the back of the court.  Perhaps they have.  But they have much less chance of improving their game and learning a variety of strokes.