Palfreys

Margaret, the eldest, used to be the best. Then Elizabeth learned to beat her. Mianne was next in line, but for some reason Sarah, two years younger, made headway faster. Helen Wills played Sarah last summer at the Essex County Club Tournament and said afterward: “She is the best girl player of her age I ever saw.” Mianne’s main trouble was that she had no confidence in her backhand, became nervous at the wrong moments. Last week in the finals of the Women’s National Indoor Singles Championship, Mianne dropped five games to Mrs. Marion Zinderstein Jessup, then rallied furiously to win the match and the Women’s National Indoor Title, 7-5, 6-2.

There are six Palfreys playing tennis, five of them girls. After Margaret, Elizabeth, Mianne and Sarah come Joanna and little John. Once their father, John Gorham Palfrey, Boston lawyer, good friend of the late Poetess Amy Lowell, asked them if they wanted a tennis court.

Everybody learned except John who toddled after balls. In the summertime when famed tennis players came to play at tournaments in the clubs around Boston, the John Gorham Palfreys took their swarm of brown-haired, blue-eyed, wiry, sunburned children to the matches. On their own court they practiced what they had seen. In 1926, Elizabeth won the indoor doubles with Marjorie Morrill. Mrs. George Wightman, a resident of Brookline, holder of 31 national titles, came over in the afternoons to give them lessons. The Palfreys had learned by themselves those parts of the game that players not taught by a professional always get first-serve and forehand drive. Mrs. Wightman taught them footwork, volleying, trained them not to run around the shots that came to their backhands. Now, together and singly, they hold all the national junior and girls’ titles. Sarah, best on turf, has never been beaten by a girl of her age or younger. Still a 17-year-old school-girl, she did not have time to play in the singles last week but easily won her third doubles title with Mrs. Wightman. Four teen-year-old Joanna is winning local tournaments.