player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameEdgar Forest (Gar)
LastnameMoon
GenderMale
CountryAustralia
Date of birth1904-03-12
Place of birthForest Hill, Wagga Wagga, New South Wales, Australia
Date of death1976-05-26
Place of deathGreenslopes, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

About

From The Western Mail (Perth), 13 February 1930:

Gar Moon’s Rise to Fame

By “Bawl”

Six months ago Queensland enthusiasts were alone in voicing the opinion that Edgar Moon should be included in the Davis Cup team; three months later the other States began to sit up and take notice of the tall young Bananalander; and now his selection as second string in the team – the others are Jack Crawford, Harry Hopman, and Jim Willard – has been accepted as a matter of course.

Moon, named Forest, in memory of his birthplace. Forest Hill, which is 50 miles south-west of Brisbane, comes of an ardent tennis family, in which both his father and mother were homely professors. The parents introduced their offspring to the white oblong at an early age, and they had the happiness of beholding, beside the celebrated Edgar, another promising son, and a daughter of 17, who is playing a very good game.

Moon went to the Brisbane Grammar School, which, strongly addicted to team sports, and tending to frown on such selfish and individual pastimes as tennis, encouraged him to burn up his patience in the dear old game of cricket. But cricket could not hold him. Once home, and with his parents’ earth court beckoning him to play, he put away the bat and took up the racquet once more. It was at Cabooltura, where his father pursued the life of a dairy farmer, that Moon sharpened his eye and developed his punch in practice. There were no regular competitions – only impromptu matches between families – but the youth exhibited unusual form.

The two features of his play then were his hard, plugging drive, and his dour, fighting face. The latter, indicative of his concentration, has been a warning to many of the valour behind his hand. The drive, produced after great practice, is considered to be one of the severest hits in tennis. Good judges declare that it has more pace and overspin than the forehand drive of either the late American geniuses, Bill Tilden and Bill Johnston. And of his backhand there was nothing but the best to be said.

His game has not been tutored by local virtuosi, or by the syndicated advice of oversea wonders. He has never had a lesson, scarcely a hint, though he is grateful for the kindly interest manifested in his progress by the ex-Queensland champion, Bert Saint John, the Victorian enthusiast, T.E. Robinson and the celebrated Gerald Patterson. It was a compliment to the young man when the good-hearted Gerald came out of his retirement lately to partner him in the doubles in the South Yarra tournament, and add another trophy to his pile. Saint John, however, was the first to discover his possibilities and haul him out of his rustic obscurity to present him before a metropolitan audience.

In 1923 he joined up with East Brisbane, and then with the Toombul team. There is no doubt that it was largely due to his own sparkling tennis that Toombul won the first grade pennant in 1926. It was Cam Hammod, the veteran Victorian umpire and savant of the game, who declared, a little over two years ago that Moon was the find of the century. Moon was then appearing in the Victorian November championships, and the way he was finishing off good local players like Charles Buckley and past internationals like Norman Peach, showed that he was a potentiality to be reckoned with. Since, then, despite a few lapses from form, he has hardly looked back.

What improved his game, however, and made him a serious challenge to the best in tennis was his tour abroad with Jack Cummings in 1928. Both were conspicuously enterprising, and their appearance at Wimbledon added immensely to the interest of that famous tournament. Moon, strange and unadvertised, ran into the fourth round of the world's champion singles, eliminating the Englishmen Brian Gilbert and Randolph Lycett, and the Japanese champion Yoshiro Ohata, before he was put out, after a hard fight, by the brilliant young Frenchman Christian Boussus.

George Lott and John Hennessy, the hard-hitting American pair, defeated him and Cummings in the third round of the doubles. But he managed to reach the semi-final of the mixed doubles at Wimbledon with Meryl O’Hara Wood, which, on the whole, was not a bad achievement for a comparative tyro making his début.

Moon’s subsequent travels through Denmark, Germany, Czechoslovakia, and
South Africa were of considerable educational value, inasmuch as he met and
beat in Copenhagen Denmark’s two Davis Cup players, Axel Peterson and Einer Ulrich, and also in Berlin overcame Otto Froitzheim, the same adroit Deutschlander who was in America to play Australia for the Davis Cup when war broke out. The Germans – indeed, all the continentals who beheld Moon during this expedition – spoke and wrote of him with the highest admiration, and declared then that he merited a larger Australian recognition.

Moon is an example of the tall, wiry athlete that this Commonwealth produces in great quantities. Nearly as high as James O. Anderson, he is not so long in the leg, his most remarkable characteristic being the width and strength of his shoulders, which, even in mufti, catch the eye of the stranger. In personality he is probably one of the most diffident fellows wielding a racquet. His reticence about his performances has earned him a reputation for sourness and aloofness which he does not deserve.

Media

Leave a Reply Cancel reply