Future Cuppers

The United States Lawn Tennis Association, ruling body of U. S. amateur tennis, keeps a sharp eye on all promising junior players to detect, if possible, embryonic Davis Cuppers. For, blushing unseen among the juniors might be another Donald Budge, Robert Riggs, Frank Parker or Joseph Hunt--all of whom started playing first-rate tennis before they were 18 (junior-division age limit). The age limit for the boys' division is 15, but there is no law against a boy or a junior playing in an older division. Vincent Richards won the U. S. men's doubles championship with William T. Tilden in 1918 when he was a boy of 15, and the following year won both the U. S. junior singles (outdoors) and men's singles (indoors). U.S. L. T. A. officials were therefore watching eagerly last week when 88 very young men started play in the U. S. indoor junior championship tournament on the smooth board floor of Manhattan's big, bleak Seventh Regiment Armory.

It was a good instance of how closely the old men of tennis keep their juniors tabbed when the four top-seeded players cleared to the semifinals. But there calculations began to go amiss. Opposed were Isadore Bellis, seeded second, and Joseph Fishbach, seeded fourth; William Gillespie, seeded first, and Marvin Kantrowitz, seeded third. Fishbach and Kantrowitz trounced their opponents in straight sets, prepared to face off in the final. Both slim, dark New York City boys, they learned their tennis together on a concrete court back of the De Witt Clinton High School in The Bronx. Two years ago when they were high-school seniors they played together on the team that won the New York interscholastic tennis championship. Then Kantrowitz went to the University of Texas, Fishbach to St. John's University in Brooklyn. When they met last week for the most important match of their careers, 17-year-old Joseph Fishbach showed an extremely promising forehand, a splendid knowledge of court tactics, finally won 6-1, 6-3, 6-1 to become national indoor junior tennis champion.

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