25 Years Ago In Time

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With TENNIS booming--along with the women's lib movement--TIME looked at how worlds collided:

[Tennis pro] Vic Braden notes that in tennis, as women free themselves from inhibitions about sweating and yelling and hustling to win, they may prove more of a court scourge than men. Says he: "Women are hurt more deeply and stay hurt longer by losses. I've had women come to me saying they wanted to be good enough to beat someone two years from now. The arguments in the new all-women's leagues are something like 25 times as many as occur in the men's leagues. For women who don't work, tennis is their only outlet. There is no definite reward system in being a mother. With tennis, there is a definite reward system."... One who thinks cutthroat competition for women is bad is anthropologist Margaret Mead. She admits that if women turn their backs on the home and childbearing, they may need sport to give them confidence in their bodies, as men have done since the beginnings of society. But she thinks Americans are terrible sports ("We're always saying, 'Kill the umpire!'"), and she wishes that in or out of sports, American women would set a better example for men. --TIME, Sept. 6, 1976