All-England

Frederick John Perry is the son of a onetime British M. P. He learned his tennis on London's public courts, won the world's table tennis championship at 20, established his reputation as a tennist by beating Sidney Wood in the Davis Cup matches of 1931. He is noted for the speed of his forehand drive, the thoroughness with which he trains for matches and the nonchalance of his behavior on the court. When Perry and Jack Crawford of Australia, the defending champion, entered Wimbledon's centre court for the final last week, no Briton had won the All-England singles championship for exactly a quarter of a century.

Perry and Crawford played each other in the finals of the U. S. national championship at Forest Hills last year. Then Perry won after a titanic 5-set struggle. Last week's match was nothing of the sort. Perry won the first set, 6-3. He won the second 6-0, losing only seven points. In the third set, Crawford, a player distinguished for his extraordinary steadiness, stopped clasping his forehead to show amazement at his opponent's shots, began to make some of his own. After losing eleven games in a row, he worked the score up to four-all and then broke through Perry's serve to lead 5-4. Perry replied by briskly winning three games in a row, reaching advantage point, for set & match, on Crawford's serve.

Linesmen at Wimbledon last week discovered a new and ingenious method of detecting foot-faults: looking through the reverse end of a pair of opera glasses to focus simultaneously on a player's racket and his foot. At match point, Crawford's first serve looked to himself and to the crowd of 20,000 like a clean ace. A linesman squeaked "Foot-fault!" Dismayed, Crawford served his second ball into the net, bowed to the footfault judge as he walked forward to shake hands with the new champion who had just added the tennis title of England to his U. S. and Australian titles.

When for the first time in eleven years an Englishman won the British Open Golf Championship last fortnight it broke a U. S. monopoly. The U. S. monopoly in tennis was broken years ago. Since the late Arthur Wentworth Gore last won for Great Britain at Wimbledon in 1909, Australians have taken the match eight times, Frenchmen and Americans six each. To U. S. observers, last week's tournament, No. 1 event of the tennis year, was interesting because in it were entered all the members of this year's U. S. Davis Cup team, except Wilmer Allison who had remained behind because of a sprained ankle but sailed to join the others last week.

Lester Stoefen and George Lott were eliminated in the quarterfinals, Stoefen by Crawford who had felt too sick to try to win at first; Lott by Perry, in the eighteenth game of the fourth set. Frank Shields and Sidney Wood, finalists at Wimbledon in 1931, went out in the semifinals, after the two best matches of the week. Perry beat Wood, 6-3, 3-6, 7-5, 5-7, 6-3. Crawford, in what he called "the hardest match of my career," dropped the first two sets to Shields, then won, 2-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-3, 6-4.

Helen Wills Moody, in retirement since defaulting to Helen Jacobs in the final of the U. S. championship at Forest Hills last autumn, was last week reporting the Wimbledon tournament for Hearst papers. To have her longtime rival describe her first victory at Wimbledon was the pleasant prospect which presented itself to Helen Jacobs when she entered the centre court last week to play the final against England's demure Dorothy Round.

When she left the court 70 minutes later, Helen Jacobs had the painful experience of having her dearest ambition completely thwarted by England's No. 1 lady tennist, who learned the game on the lawn of her father's Worcestershire vicarage and refuses to play a match on Sunday. Miss Round won the first set. 6-2. Miss Jacobs won the second, 7-5. There was a moment in the third when Miss Jacobs needed only one point to lead at 3-1. When Miss Jacobs came to the net behind a weak forehand chop and Miss Round lobbed neatly over her head, it gave the English girl the confidence to run out set and match. 6-3.

Delighted and amazed, the crowd including the King & Queen cheered wildly the second British victory of the week, the first men's and women's victory since 1909, the year both new champions were born.

Doubles winners at Wimbledon last week were: George Lott and Lester Stoefen, Elizabeth Ryan and Mme Rene Mathieu; mixed doubles winners: Dorothy Round and Ryuki Miki.

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