ABSTRACT
On the 21st April 1924, tennis champion Bill Tilden shocked the world of tennis by announcing that he would resign from the United States Davis Cup team (Tilden Quits Place on US Tennis Teams 1924). His announcement was the latest move in an ongoing battle between the world’s top-ranked player and the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA). Over previous years, a new generation of financiers and industrialists had seized control of the USLTA from its first leaders, drawn from the upper crust of Newport, Rhode Island, society. These newer leaders, particularly long-time Executive Committee member Julian Myrick, were just as authoritarian as their Newport society predecessors, and they found Tilden to be a constant source of criticism – much of it expressed through the articles he wrote for newspapers and magazines (Tunis 1928). They insisted that he confine his actions to the tennis court, but Tilden proved to be a consistently difficult opponent (Deford 1975).
