At Wimbledon

In an 18-hole golf match, a good player rarely makes more than 75 shots. In a three-out-of-five-set tennis match, a player may make as many as 5,000 shots. Consequently, in tennis, luck counts for comparatively little and the better player almost always wins. Before the All-England tennis championships started at Wimbledon last fortnight, experts knew who the best players were: redhaired, lanky Donald Budge of Oakland, Calif. and Germany's handsome Baron Gottfried von Cramm.

"Wimbledon Week" is a fortnight in which five tournaments (men's and women's singles, men's, women's and mixed doubles) are played simultaneously before well-mannered, tennis-wise London crowds who stand in queues all night for tickets, drink tea and ginger beer under the old green stands between matches. Last week, 128 of the world's ablest tennists were entered in the men's singles. Record crowds watched the field narrow down to a final in which Budge and von Cramm played each other for the "world's championship" which England's Fred Perry abdicated last winter by turning professional.

Increasingly able since he played in his first Wimbledon tournament in 1935, Budge has this year reached the peak of his form. On his way to last week's final he had lost only one set--to his Davis Cup Teammate Frank Parker in the semifinals. Included among the opponents whom he had beaten with distressing ease were Australia's Vivian McGrath, Czechoslovakia's Ladislow Hecht, France's Christian Boussus. Von Cramm had more trouble in his early matches, beating Australia's Jack Crawford in five sets and then playing a red-hot semi-final against England's Henry Wilfred ("Bunny") Austin in which Austin won the third set 14-12 before losing the match in the fourth. The final between Budge and von Cramm was interrupted once. That was when Queen Mary arrived at her box just after the first set. Two years ago, Budge amused Wimbledon by greeting the Queen with a wave of his racket. Last week, more formal, he bowed from the waist. Before the interruption, Budge had won the first set, 6-3, taking the last five games in a row. After it, with almost unplayable serves and drives that made chalk fly from the corners of his opponent's court, he took the second set, 6-4, after von Cramm had had a lead of 4-3. When von Cramm broke Budge's service from 40-love in the second game of the third set, it was his last flicker of resistance. Budge then won four games in a row, carelessly lost von Cramm's service, won his own for set, match & title, 6-3, 6-4, 6-2.

Most notable feature of Budge's unceremonious greeting to Queen Mary in 1935 was that Wimbledon found it less offensive than ingratiating. This was because, though he comes from a family in moderate circumstances (Budge Sr. is a laundry truck driver), he was never one of those ill-bred tennis cubs who travel around to the U. S. invitation tournaments as "amateurs" on club expense money. Budge, who learned to play on public courts, is an amiable, homely, naive, wholly likeable young man of 22, who would wave at a queen quite as naturally as he would offer a pretty girl an ice-cream cone. Wondering whether tennis was at last to have a real sportsman successor to famed William Tatem Tilden, the game's No. 1 amateur for a full decade, instead of the commercial-minded performers who have come and gone since, tennis commentators were encouraged last week by Budge's first utterances as champion. Presented to the Queen Mother after his victory oven von Cramm, Champion Budge came back to speak to reporters with characteristic tact and modesty. Said he:

"I don't think it's proper to tell what the Queen said to me. Just say that she congratulated me. ... I was lucky to play probably the finest tennis of my life just when I wanted to. ... I almost had to pinch myself when I reached match point. . . . Von Cramm is a great player and a great gentleman. ... I guess I'll remain an amateur for years and years and years--" Next day Budge climaxed his victory over von Cramm by winning the men's doubles with Gene Mako (6-0, 6-4, 6-8, 6-1) against England's Hughes & Tuckey, and the mixed doubles with Alice Marble (6-4, 6-1) against France's Yvon Petra & Mme Mathieu, to become the first tennist in history to win three Wimbledon titles in one year.

Women. Women tennists are not only much less able than men but much less predictable. At Wimbledon last week experts considered at least seven women about equally capable of winning the singles championship. They were Hilda Krahwinkel Sperling of Denmark, Anita Lizana of Chile, Simone Mathieu of France, Alice Marble and Helen Jacobs of the U. S., Dorothy Round of England, Jadwiga Jedrzejowska of Poland. Of these, by far the most noteworthy was Jadwiga Jedrzejowska.

A Cracow-born, Warsaw typist whose younger sister, Zosja, is her nearest Polish rival, Jadwiga ("Jaja") Jedrzejowska, 24, pronounces her name Yad-vi-ga Yed-zay-yof-ska. Reduced 10 lb. since last year, she still weighs 154, moves like an agile Percheron, believes that "an apple tart is good for the service because it makes you strong." Last week London's Daily Express described Jaja as "the fairy of the courts." "Fairy" was a misprint for "fury" which is appropriate not only because jolly, burly Jaja is unable to hit a ball without making a horrible grimace (see cut) but also because the shots which accompany her grimaces are more powerful than those of any other player of her sex in the world. Last week, while her rivals were performing in the erratic vein peculiar to women tennists, Jaja, rated Poland's No. 1 since 1929, lived up to her potentialities at Wimbledon for the first time.

First favorites to drop out were Helen Jacobs, Anita Lizana and Hilda Sperling. While they were losing to Dorothy Round, Simone Mathieu and Alice Marble, respectively, Jaja was busy beating the weakest sister among the quarter-finalists, England's Peggy Scriven. Two days later, Jaja defeated erratic Alice Marble, 8-6, 6-2, in the semi-finals after being behind at 3-5 and set-point in the first set. This achievement made her a strong favorite to bring Poland its first title in Wimbledon history.

The expression on Jaja's face when she faced Dorothy Round, who had outsteadied Mme Mathieu 6-4, 6-0 in the semifinals, made it unthinkable that she would fail to rise to this historic opportunity. Truer to feminine tennis tradition than to her somewhat unfeminine exterior, Jaja did the unthinkable. The match, as ragged a women's final as Wimbledon had seen since the War, proceeded as though each contestant, far below her best form, were trying to give points to the other. When it finally ended, Dorothy Round, champion in 1934, was champion again, 6-2, 2-6, 7-5.

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