Robert J Lake
Biographic Data
| ID | 338482 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robert J Lake |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robert J |
| FAMILY NAME | Lake |
| SIGNATURE | LAKE R J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Douglas College |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-0219-3718 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 43 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1985 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
And How Pretty They Are!”
In the four decades straddling the turn of the nineteenth century, the small Ontario town of Niagara-on-the-Lake experienced marked growth in its tourism industry. Catering predominantly to wealthy upper-middle-class Canadian and American visitors, the lake-side settlement offered numerous opportunities for polite recreation. Chief among them was lawn tennis, a sport that sat somewhat outside of the mainstream in terms of its high-class, mixed-se…
Oft Incandescent on the Green Sward”
Despite the recent successes of Canadian players in the elite world of professional tennis, there remains a glaring gap within the sport's historiography. This article aims to advance our understanding of the sport's incipient development in Canada, focusing on its historical epicenter of southern Ontario. Early clubs and tournaments were repositories of the upper-middle-class values of behavioral self-control, refined tastes, and propriety and e…
An unnerving otherness
Flannelled Fools are Strutting About Tennis Courts’
This article examines the connections between (lawn) tennis in Britain and the Great War (1914–1918). While previous historical research has suggested a four-year hiatus, in fact the sport continued to be played during the war, recreationally and among servicemen/women and more elite players in exhibition matches. Anecdotes about the cessation of tournaments and restricted play were interspersed with debates about the appropriateness of continuin…
To ‘fan the spirit of race hatred’
This study considers the various ways that tennis was implicated within First World War propaganda; more specifically, to consider tennis as both a lens to view and a context to understand and communicate perspectives about the war from a British perspective. In the midst of heightened nationalism, jingoism and Germanophobia, tennis featured in broader debates in both the mainstream and sporting press as a site of contested meanings of British na…
The Decline of Lawn Tennis in Ireland around the Turn of the Twentieth Century
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 decl…
Success in Britain comes with an awful lot of small print
Sport continues to be one of the primary means through which notions of Englishness and Britishness are constructed, contested, and resisted. The legacy of the role of sport in the colonial project of the British Empire, combined with more recent connections between sport and far right fascist/nationalist politics, has made the association between Britishness, Englishness, and ethnic identity(ies) particularly intriguing. In this paper, these int…
Routledge Handbook of Tennis
Our Ginny”
Within sport media, it is customary for sportsmen rather than sportswomen to be accorded the privileges and responsibilities of competing not just for the nation but also on behalf of it. However, under certain circumstances, it is apparent that the typically gendered media conventions may shift to accommodate nationally important sportswomen. This study concerns the British tennis player Virginia Wade, and via a textual analysis, the print-media…
Bowled over
Launched in 2004, the Played in Britain team has produced over a dozen books on sports heritage, some focused on specific cities of interest, and others – like this one – on specific sports or game
New Dimensions of Sport in Modern Europe
This collection offers new perspectives on European sport history in the ‘long twentieth century’ designed to challenge and deconstruct what might be considered ‘traditional’ or more familiar Euro-centric conceptions and geographies of sport and leisure—especially those deriving from the leading hotbeds of European sport history. This special issue introduction adds to the growing corpus of explorations of sport and leisure in late-modern Europea…
The Forgotten Powerhouse
Within the historiography of lawn tennis in Ireland, there remains considerable scope to discern how the sport rose to prominence – reaching its apex in the early 1890s – among the wealthy landed classes, and what influence it had upon the structure and culture of the sport globally. This is set against the assumed view of lawn tennis being a rather marginal sport during the late-nineteenth century when the fight for popularity between native Iri…
The new boys of summer
The late 1960s was a period of enormous socio-cultural and political significance to Americans, marked by political protests related to civil rights, gay rights and radical feminism, protests again
Dwight Davis and the Foundation of the Davis Cup in Tennis
Dwight F. Davis is widely credited with having invented, or at least conceived, the original idea for the international tennis competition that bears his name, the Davis Cup. This paper aims to debunk this myth through comprehensive critical analysis of the period preceding Davis’s apparent epiphany in 1899. Previous national-team-based competitions are investigated, alongside key figures in American and British/Irish tennis, to demonstrate that …
Sport & Modernity
Vive le defecteur!' an analysis of the British media's construction of Greg Rusedski's national identity in the 1990s/2000s
This paper concerns the former professional tennis player from 1991 to 2007, Greg Rusedski, who was born in Canada but shifted national allegiance to Great Britain in 1995. Despite an impressive playing career, that saw him reach the US Open final in 1997 and attain a world-number-four ranking, alongside his steadfast efforts to ingratiate himself to the broader public, Rusedski's British identity remained contested throughout his career. Focusin…
The old days of amateurism are over’
Tennis featured in every Olympics from 1896 to 1924, after which disagreements between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) on matters pertaining to organisational control and the amateur eligibility of players led to tennis being removed from the Olympic Games as a full-medal event until the 1988 Seoul Olympics. This paper traces the steps of the sport’s reinstatement, from when efforts co…
Real tennis
Maxine Greene and the pedagogy of social imagination
During this centennial year of Maxine Greene’s birth (1917–2017), we recognize the importance of celebrating and reflecting on her life and work in terms of her intellectual genealogy within the co
Mamma don't put that blue guitar in a museum
They said, “You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are.”The man replied, “Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar.”–Wallace Stevens (1937/1954)Within the current U.S. so
Sandwich-Men Parade the Streets’
The bulk of tennis historiography has tended to project a Southern-centric image of the sport, through descriptions of its clubs and tournaments, its players, and associations. Both the Lawn Tennis Association and the Wimbledon Championships began and have remained bastions of Southern hegemony, but there existed (and continues to exist) a large and active ‘tennis culture’ in the North that has been overlooked. The aim of this paper is to critica…
Defeat, decline and disconnect
Of all periods in the history of British tennis, arguably the inter-war years were the most significant and tumultuous. Officials recommenced activities with an ultimate goal of restoring British prowess at an international level. This paper aims to assess the long-term effectiveness of the LTA’s efforts in these regards. It was far from straightforward. After several years of lacklustre performances, a group of reformers staged a mutiny that cul…
The ‘ghosts’ of lawn tennis past
This article examines the lives of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century lawn tennis coaching-professionals, notably Tom Burke, Harry Cowdrey, Charles Haggett and George Kerr. These men, considered equally if not more gifted than the first-ranked amateur players of the period, have received scant attention or recognition, either as ‘expert’ players or for their role as coaches/instructors within the ‘amateur’ game. Ostensibly, these working…
The ‘Ubiquitous Apostle of International Play’, Wilberforce Vaughan Eaves
In the context of sustained imperial dominance during the late Victorian era, foreigners perceived British playing styles, methods and approaches to lawn tennis as ‘blueprints’ for aspiring players. Those seeking to learn the game were largely dependent on observing skilled performers, however before the mid-1890s, most of the best British players declined to venture to Australasia and America, perceiving the opposition as inferior and their cham…
Vaudeville on the Diamond
Gender and Etiquette in British Lawn Tennis 1870–1939
‘Mixed doubles’ was regarded as the most popular type of lawn tennis game for those preferring the ‘social’ aspects to competition. An analysis of behavioural etiquette in mixed doubles from 1870 to 1939 reveals a considerable amount about shifting gender relations in wider British society. Findings are presented from over 50 textbooks and instructional guides on mixed doubles play published throughout this period in order to answer the following…
They treat me like I'm scum
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Lawn Tennis Association introduced numerous policies to remove barriers associated with social exclusion in tennis clubs. Ethnographic research was conducted within one club to analyse the incidence of social exclusion, and consider the success of LTA policies in these regards. Findings suggested the club made structural changes to receive LTA funding, such as removing exclusive membership and clothing restrict…
Social Class, Etiquette and Behavioural Restraint in British Lawn Tennis, 1870–1939
From the 1870s, lawn tennis developed a code of behavioural etiquette demanding on-court self-restraint, which notably influenced the development of particular playing strokes and styles. This paper explores the sport's historical development in Britain from 1870 to 1939, with its main aims: to document the changes in behavioural etiquette and playing style; to consider these interdependent developments in the context of shifting class relations …
Success in Britain comes with an awful lot of small print
Sport continues to be one of the primary means through which notions of Englishness and Britishness are constructed, contested, and resisted. The legacy of the role of sport in the colonial project of the British Empire, combined with more recent connections between sport and far right fascist/nationalist politics, has made the association between Britishness, Englishness, and ethnic identity(ies) particularly intriguing. In this paper, these int…
Vive le defecteur!' an analysis of the British media's construction of Greg Rusedski's national identity in the 1990s/2000s
This paper concerns the former professional tennis player from 1991 to 2007, Greg Rusedski, who was born in Canada but shifted national allegiance to Great Britain in 1995. Despite an impressive playing career, that saw him reach the US Open final in 1997 and attain a world-number-four ranking, alongside his steadfast efforts to ingratiate himself to the broader public, Rusedski's British identity remained contested throughout his career. Focusin…
Defeat, decline and disconnect
Of all periods in the history of British tennis, arguably the inter-war years were the most significant and tumultuous. Officials recommenced activities with an ultimate goal of restoring British prowess at an international level. This paper aims to assess the long-term effectiveness of the LTA’s efforts in these regards. It was far from straightforward. After several years of lacklustre performances, a group of reformers staged a mutiny that cul…
Love Game
In Love Game, author Elizabeth Wilson has added imaginatively to the historiography of tennis, a sport that has received less written attention than it probably deserves. Given her background and e
The Making of Sporting Cultures
Stigmatized, Marginalized, Celebrated
This paper examines the numerous changes to the role, influence, professional standards and general social status of coaches and the vocation of coaching in lawn tennis, focusing predominantly on the inter-war years. It was during this time, generally, when lawn tennis clubs became more open and democratic in their memberships, and when elite-level tennis came to embrace more profoundly the ethos of professionalism. As such, the recognized value …
Real Tennis and the Civilising Process
This article examines the social significance of Real Tennis among the Western European nobility during its heyday of the sixteenth century. Underpinned theoretically by Norbert Elias's seminal empirical work The Civilising Process, this article seeks to identify the societal preconditions for the emergence of Real Tennis, and provide explanations for its diffusion across Western Europe and subsequent boom in popularity among the nobility. A crit…
Fly High, Go Deep, Add Value
In this paper I discuss the characteristics of an expert evaluator. My thesis is that the expert evaluator—the ‘black belt’ in the field—is characterised by taking a broad view that sees patterns where others see points; by delving deep for root causes where others see surface explanations; and by emphasising worth and value. This paper is a thought piece and a reflection—its aim is to stimulate debate and discussion rather than to offer definiti…
An unnerving otherness
The Decline of Lawn Tennis in Ireland around the Turn of the Twentieth Century
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 decl…
New Dimensions of Sport in Modern Europe
This collection offers new perspectives on European sport history in the ‘long twentieth century’ designed to challenge and deconstruct what might be considered ‘traditional’ or more familiar Euro-centric conceptions and geographies of sport and leisure—especially those deriving from the leading hotbeds of European sport history. This special issue introduction adds to the growing corpus of explorations of sport and leisure in late-modern Europea…
The old days of amateurism are over’
Tennis featured in every Olympics from 1896 to 1924, after which disagreements between the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) on matters pertaining to organisational control and the amateur eligibility of players led to tennis being removed from the Olympic Games as a full-medal event until the 1988 Seoul Olympics. This paper traces the steps of the sport’s reinstatement, from when efforts co…
Maxine Greene and the pedagogy of social imagination
During this centennial year of Maxine Greene’s birth (1917–2017), we recognize the importance of celebrating and reflecting on her life and work in terms of her intellectual genealogy within the co
Mamma don't put that blue guitar in a museum
They said, “You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are.”The man replied, “Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar.”–Wallace Stevens (1937/1954)Within the current U.S. so
Sandwich-Men Parade the Streets’
The bulk of tennis historiography has tended to project a Southern-centric image of the sport, through descriptions of its clubs and tournaments, its players, and associations. Both the Lawn Tennis Association and the Wimbledon Championships began and have remained bastions of Southern hegemony, but there existed (and continues to exist) a large and active ‘tennis culture’ in the North that has been overlooked. The aim of this paper is to critica…
The ‘Ubiquitous Apostle of International Play’, Wilberforce Vaughan Eaves
In the context of sustained imperial dominance during the late Victorian era, foreigners perceived British playing styles, methods and approaches to lawn tennis as ‘blueprints’ for aspiring players. Those seeking to learn the game were largely dependent on observing skilled performers, however before the mid-1890s, most of the best British players declined to venture to Australasia and America, perceiving the opposition as inferior and their cham…
That Excellent Sample of a Professional’
This paper critically examines the life and career of Daniel “Dan” Maskell OBE CBE (1908-92), the much-loved British professional coach and BBC commentator for Wimbledon, and position his social ascendancy during the inter-war and post-war periods within the contexts of shifting class relations in British society, and the professionalisation of tennis and growing performance orientation of amateur tennis authorities in Britain. Given his working-…
The "Bad Boys" of Tennis
Tennis from the mid-1970s until the mid-1990s witnessed a global downturn in on-court manners. This was exemplified by players such as Ilie Năstase, Jimmy Connors, and John McEnroe, who built reputations on their "bad-boy" images by exhibiting lower levels of sportsmanship, honesty, courtesy to officials, and behavioral restraint; and concomitant higher levels of ostensible petulance, aggressive posturing, and disrespect toward opponents, umpires…
Sport in History
important to understand what happened in the past, but to understand how we understand what happened in the past. The latter tells us a great deal about how we view ourselves because of where we th
Managing change' in British tennis 1990-2006
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) initiated several policies aimed at developing talent in British tennis, chief of which was the transformation of traditional tennis club cultures to make them more open, accessible and performance-oriented. The 1990s also witnessed other changes that influenced the LTA's overall position: a shift in emphasis from mass to elite-level provision within wider British sport policy, the…
News Accounts of Attacks on Women
It was as if, suddenly, somebody had declared violent, anonymous war on women of the city where I live," wrote the editor of Quest magazine in September 1982. The city was Toronto, where over a six month period in 1982, the three Toronto daily newspapers (Sun, Star and Globe and Mail) published three hundred ninety-one items "the basic message of which was that Toronto had experienced a surge of violence against women" (page 5)
Communication Theory and Interpersonal Interaction. Volume II
These volumes present forty-six articles selected on merit from the proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Culture and Communication held in 1981 at Temple University. As one would expect from a conference with that broad a mandate, the reader of these volumes is like an air traveller in the desert: we skip from oasis to oasis. As one also expects, some stops are more fruitful than others. But the journey is worth the effort. The q…
Studies in Mass Communication and Technology. Volume I
These volumes present forty-six articles selected on merit from the proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Culture and Communication held in 1981 at Temple University. As one would expect from a conference with that broad a mandate, the reader of these volumes is like an air traveller in the desert: we skip from oasis to oasis. As one also expects, some stops are more fruitful than others. But the journey is worth the effort. The q…
Social Communication in Canada (Second Edition)
What did it all mean
The final conference plenary was designed as a review session to focus on what had been learnt at the conference. Chaired by conference discussant Patricia Rogers, a panel drawn from six AES regions contributed their impressions of the conference and what they saw as the key issues over the three days. This panel session was followed by Patricia's closing address, which appears on pages 30-34
Fly High, Go Deep, Add Value
In this paper I discuss the characteristics of an expert evaluator. My thesis is that the expert evaluator—the ‘black belt’ in the field—is characterised by taking a broad view that sees patterns where others see points; by delving deep for root causes where others see surface explanations; and by emphasising worth and value. This paper is a thought piece and a reflection—its aim is to stimulate debate and discussion rather than to offer definiti…
Real Tennis and the Civilising Process
This article examines the social significance of Real Tennis among the Western European nobility during its heyday of the sixteenth century. Underpinned theoretically by Norbert Elias's seminal empirical work The Civilising Process, this article seeks to identify the societal preconditions for the emergence of Real Tennis, and provide explanations for its diffusion across Western Europe and subsequent boom in popularity among the nobility. A crit…
Sports History Classic Texts
Stigmatized, Marginalized, Celebrated
This paper examines the numerous changes to the role, influence, professional standards and general social status of coaches and the vocation of coaching in lawn tennis, focusing predominantly on the inter-war years. It was during this time, generally, when lawn tennis clubs became more open and democratic in their memberships, and when elite-level tennis came to embrace more profoundly the ethos of professionalism. As such, the recognized value …
Managing change' in British tennis 1990-2006
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) initiated several policies aimed at developing talent in British tennis, chief of which was the transformation of traditional tennis club cultures to make them more open, accessible and performance-oriented. The 1990s also witnessed other changes that influenced the LTA's overall position: a shift in emphasis from mass to elite-level provision within wider British sport policy, the…
Social Class, Etiquette and Behavioural Restraint in British Lawn Tennis, 1870–1939
From the 1870s, lawn tennis developed a code of behavioural etiquette demanding on-court self-restraint, which notably influenced the development of particular playing strokes and styles. This paper explores the sport's historical development in Britain from 1870 to 1939, with its main aims: to document the changes in behavioural etiquette and playing style; to consider these interdependent developments in the context of shifting class relations …
Historical Dictionary of Tennis
John Grasso, Historical Dictionary of Tennis (Plymouth, UK: Scarecrow Press, 2011). Pp. xxiv+419, £44.95 (hb), ISBN 978 0 8108 7237 0 John Grasso's book is one of a half-dozen ‘Historical Dictionar
Sport in History
important to understand what happened in the past, but to understand how we understand what happened in the past. The latter tells us a great deal about how we view ourselves because of where we th
Gender and Etiquette in British Lawn Tennis 1870–1939
‘Mixed doubles’ was regarded as the most popular type of lawn tennis game for those preferring the ‘social’ aspects to competition. An analysis of behavioural etiquette in mixed doubles from 1870 to 1939 reveals a considerable amount about shifting gender relations in wider British society. Findings are presented from over 50 textbooks and instructional guides on mixed doubles play published throughout this period in order to answer the following…
The Making of Sporting Cultures
Tarnished Rings
Stephen Wenn, Robert Barney and Scott Martyn, Tarnished Rings: The International Olympic Committee and the Salt Lake City Bid Scandal (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2011). Pp. xxix + 273
They treat me like I'm scum
Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the Lawn Tennis Association introduced numerous policies to remove barriers associated with social exclusion in tennis clubs. Ethnographic research was conducted within one club to analyse the incidence of social exclusion, and consider the success of LTA policies in these regards. Findings suggested the club made structural changes to receive LTA funding, such as removing exclusive membership and clothing restrict…
Globetrotting
In Globetrotting, Damion Thomas tells the important story of how the US government repeatedly, surreptitiously and shamelessly exploited African American athletes as political pawns during the Cold
That Excellent Sample of a Professional’
This paper critically examines the life and career of Daniel “Dan” Maskell OBE CBE (1908-92), the much-loved British professional coach and BBC commentator for Wimbledon, and position his social ascendancy during the inter-war and post-war periods within the contexts of shifting class relations in British society, and the professionalisation of tennis and growing performance orientation of amateur tennis authorities in Britain. Given his working-…
Love Game
In Love Game, author Elizabeth Wilson has added imaginatively to the historiography of tennis, a sport that has received less written attention than it probably deserves. Given her background and e
Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain
Women, Sport and Modernity in Interwar Britain is the second instalment of an exciting new series of sport history monographs published by Peter Lang, under the direction of series editors Richard
The "Bad Boys" of Tennis
Tennis from the mid-1970s until the mid-1990s witnessed a global downturn in on-court manners. This was exemplified by players such as Ilie Năstase, Jimmy Connors, and John McEnroe, who built reputations on their "bad-boy" images by exhibiting lower levels of sportsmanship, honesty, courtesy to officials, and behavioral restraint; and concomitant higher levels of ostensible petulance, aggressive posturing, and disrespect toward opponents, umpires…
Defeat, decline and disconnect
Of all periods in the history of British tennis, arguably the inter-war years were the most significant and tumultuous. Officials recommenced activities with an ultimate goal of restoring British prowess at an international level. This paper aims to assess the long-term effectiveness of the LTA’s efforts in these regards. It was far from straightforward. After several years of lacklustre performances, a group of reformers staged a mutiny that cul…
The ‘ghosts’ of lawn tennis past
This article examines the lives of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century lawn tennis coaching-professionals, notably Tom Burke, Harry Cowdrey, Charles Haggett and George Kerr. These men, considered equally if not more gifted than the first-ranked amateur players of the period, have received scant attention or recognition, either as ‘expert’ players or for their role as coaches/instructors within the ‘amateur’ game. Ostensibly, these working…
The ‘Ubiquitous Apostle of International Play’, Wilberforce Vaughan Eaves
In the context of sustained imperial dominance during the late Victorian era, foreigners perceived British playing styles, methods and approaches to lawn tennis as ‘blueprints’ for aspiring players. Those seeking to learn the game were largely dependent on observing skilled performers, however before the mid-1890s, most of the best British players declined to venture to Australasia and America, perceiving the opposition as inferior and their cham…
Sports, Gender, and Society (37 works) · Political science (31 works) · Sport and Mega-Event Impacts (31 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Law (26 works) · History (24 works) · History (23 works) · Law (21 works) · Art (19 works) · Media studies (18 works)