The Prodigal Parents by Sinclair Lewis

The scene was, for Fred, too fragile and artificial for comfort, yet he admired its gaiety: the club tennis courts, the white cement, the green balls flying, and the young people in white, young men with blue and crimson scarves above white shirts, girls with white shorts and honey-coloured legs, all against hills flamboyant with late September. He particularly liked the tall umpire's chair, now empty. To be perched up there, above the conflict yet close to it and dominating it, would be kingly, he explained to Walter Lindbeck.

'Awful. I knew a fellow got a tennis ball in his eye just when Fred Perry was smacking the hands across the sea,' argued Walter.