Another interesting tennis item emerged this week with a 1927 photo article about an Australian invented tennis ball machine. Here we have the inventor, Mr P Jepson of Melbourne (left) along with Gerald Patterson (2nd right) with the visiting French Team of Brugnon and Boussus. It served out balls at a rate of 14 -28 balls a minute. So there you go a very early date for the development of ball machines. Also note that Renee Lacoste wrote about building a Tennis ball machine in his book “Lacoste on tennis” so maybe this was the inspiration. This also went to the USA for various exhibitions at tournaments. No idea of the commercial success but a great piece of ingenuity.
November 17th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Another great article!
You know what I really enjoy about these photos? How well dressed they always are. Look at the 4 gentlemen dressed in suits. Tennis truly is a gentleman’s sport and I hope that players start to dress like Roger Federer at Wimbledon.
Apparently Nike is looking to ’smarten up’ Rafael Nadal’s image in 2009.
Great work
Michael