The Decline of Lawn Tennis in Ireland around the Turn of the Twentieth Century: Bad Management, Bad Luck, or Bad Homburg?

Abstract

For a time in the 1880s and early 1890s, lawn tennis in Ireland was at its peak, and a leading nation in the sport, globally. Its players were among the world’s best, the only rival to its national championships in terms of prestige and quality of entries was Wimbledon, and its coaching professionals ranked among the world’s most sought after. From the mid-1890s onwards, however, a combination of bad management and bad luck brought long-term decline to Irish lawn tennis, particularly in and around Dublin and the Irish Championships. The story of decline must be situated within the contexts of the desertion of aristocratic support, the emergence of alternative leisure pursuits like bicycling and golf, the spread of lawn tennis across continental Europe that led to increasing competition between tournaments, alongside the mounting pressure for lawn tennis clubs and tournaments to be properly managed and organized as a collective, rather than isolated entities. This decline around the turn of the twentieth century should serve as a cautionary tale for how broader circumstances, only some of which were under the direct influence of its officials and leaders, had a profound influence on a rich, sporting culture.