In May 1927 Payne Whitney collapsed on his tennis court on the Greentree estate in Long Island. He was carried into the dedans where he died. The Times said it was “acute indigestion” but failed to note that six years earlier he had an emergency appendectomy. He was fifty-one.

Three years later some friends started an inter-city team tennis doubles tournament in his memory, the Payne Whitney Memorial Cup. Yesterday at the Racquet & Tennis Club, the 78th Whitney Cup concluded, amid much fanfare and excitement. Last year, the two teams in the finals split the first four matches, so it came down to the fifth and final pairs. I was in one of those pairs, playing for Washington, and we lost 6-4, 6-5 to New England (an amalgamation of the Tennis & Racquet Club in Boston and the National Tennis Club in Newport).

This year, I played for Philadelphia and we were quickly shown the door in the round-robin phase, losing both our matches 4-1. In the finals, the two-time defending champions New England faced Greentree/Aiken. Again it went to 2-2. In the final match for the second year in a row was New Endland’s George Bell. Last year, we were tied 40-all, game-ball in that eleventh and final game in the second set. Bell was receiving, and he slammed three consecutive main wall forces at me and Bradley Allen. Brad parried the first two nicely, but Bell slipped the third into the dedans for the win.

This year, he was not so lucky, even if he was playing with Garrett Gates, the USCTA’s most improved player of the year. The crucial eleventh game went the other way as Peter Pell & Bob Hay won the first set and then the match 6-5, 6-2.

It was the first time since 2003 that Greentree, the official hosts of the tournament, had won the Whitney Cup and the first time ever that Aiken will see its name inscribed on the venerable trophy.