player – Tennisarchives.com

General First nameFrederick William
LastnamePayn
GenderMale
CountryEngland
Date of birth1872-09-16
Place of birthBickley, Kent, England
Date of death1908-05-00
Place of deathBaku, Azerbaijan

About

From Lawn Tennis and Badminton, 30 April 1908:

The Late Mr Frederick W. Payn

We much regret to have to record the death while sojourning abroad of Mr Frederick William Payn, whose career as a prominent and successful lawn tennis player covered a period of some twelve years or more prior to 1906. As an undergraduate of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Mr Payn had a distinguished academical career, taking honours in the Law School, and (in addition to the ordinary B.A. degree) the degrees of LL.B. and, subsequently, LL.M., besides gaining a Whewell Scholarship.

He was afterwards called to the Bar, but the fact that he was a man of varied pursuits and a lover of travel and outdoor life doubtless prevented him from applying himself with any marked success to the practice of his profession. At Cambridge he devoted much of his time to rowing, and developed into an extremely useful oar. He was also an expert at billiards, was a winner of the ‘Varsity Challenge Cup, and played for Cambridge against Oxford; but at lawn tennis, though moderately proficient, he failed to gain his Blue, and it was not until after he had gone down that he began to make his name.

Thenceforward his devotion to the game increased pari passu with his ability as a player. His fondness for travelling and change of scene took him far afield in pursuit of his favourite pastime, and in the course of a career which embraced at least 120 tournaments in England and on the Continent he won (apart from his home achievements) many foreign championships, including the Championships of Frankfurt, Russia, Moravia, Sweden, Vienna and Denmark, besides reaching the final for Championships of Germany, Austria and the Netherlands.

To sum up his chief characteristics as a player, he was left-handed and an out-and-out volleyer; added to which he was a hard fighter, a man who was never done with, and one who was at his best against better players than himself, yet liable at all times to go down to an inferior opponent. This may perhaps be tantamount to saying that he was a variable player, but it would be more true to say that his game was influenced more by variations in his opponents’ game than in his own.

His persistent volleying (rendered additionally disconcerting by his being left-handed) was capable of upsetting any first-class man who was not feeling quite sure of his ground strokes, while at the same time it was liable to fail against a second-class man who happened to be in the vein for making passing shots. Hence in 1900 he beat Sidney Smith (an achievement of which few can boast) by two sets to love at Newcastle, and yet lost matches elsewhere to players to whom Smith could have given half 30 or more.

Payn’s best years were 1900 to 1904 inclusive, and whereas the beginning of that period saw him on the 4/6 and 3/6 marks in handicaps, at the end of it he had owed 3/6 15, and even more. In 1903, he won the Scottish singles and doubles (with Augustus Wallace MacGregor), and his other more notable successes at various times the Championships of Kent (limited to Kent players) thrice, the Highlands (Pitlochry), and Lucerne; the open singles at Blackheath, Nottingham and Gravesend, and second in the singles at the Northern Championships, Gipsy, Chichester, Folkestone, Chiswick Park and Sheffield.

In doubles he was neither so proficient nor so successful as in singles, partly because he cared more for the single game, and partly because he was not an easy man to play with, being a left-hander, with a tendency to monopolise too much of the play. Mixed doubles he practically eschewed altogether.

His other pursuits included golf, cycling, shooting, walking and climbing; and in the course of his solitary walking tours abroad he would explore places to which many a pedestrian would give a wide berth; for he was quite insensitive to danger, and on one occasion his pluck and presence of mind enabled him to stop a runaway horse and save the occupants of the carriage behind it from being hurled over a precipice.

As a writer – on many subjects besides lawn tennis – he showed real ability; but as far as lawn tennis is concerned, it must be admitted that there was a decided inequality about his work, though much of it was undeniably good. A close observer of men and things, he was at his best when describing the characteristics of some player, or giving his impressions of some place which he had visited, and when theorising about the game he could always interest his readers even if they did not agree with him.

It is therefore to be regretted that he was so dominated by a spirit of antagonism that he devoted too much of his attention to controversial topics often of a comparatively unimportant nature. Of his three books on the game – Secrets of Lawn Tennis, Lifting the Veil and Tennis Topics and Tactics – the first-named is probably the best. It contains, inter alia, hints on diet and training, which, allowing for the fact that Mr Payn was a pronounced believer in vegetarianism (which does not suit everybody), are well worth studying.

Another of his books deals solely with the diet question. He was also an occasional contributor to this journal, and we gather from a letter received from him not so long ago that he was contemplating the publication of a further treatise on the game. We take this opportunity of offering to his relatives our sympathy in the untimely loss which they have sustained.

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