The Kings Are Dead . . .

Ever since Australia's Frank Sedgman and Ken MacGregor turned pro, tennis fans have wondered which of the lesser lights would succeed to the world's amateur tennis titles. Last week, in the Australian championships at Melbourne, four 18-year-old youngsters supplied the answer, winning four of the five titles at stake, and sharing in a fifth.

Ken Rosewall, the prodigy who at 17 upset U.S. Davis Cup Captain Vic Seixas in the U.S. Nationals, did it again last week. Next day Rosewall became the youngest player ever to win the men's singles title by blasting a relative veteran, 22-year-old Davis Cupper Mervyn Rose, 6-0, 6-3, 6-4. Then Rosewall and his 18-year-old sidekick, Lewis Hoad, walked away with the doubles crown. Gasped Rose: "What will he be like in another couple of years?"

In the women's division, it was the U.S. which had the winning youngsters. Maureen Connolly, the 1952 champion of Wimbledon and the U.S., whipped California's Julie Sampson, 6-3, 6-2, for the Australian singles title, then teamed up with her defeated opponent to win the doubles. Mixed doubles winners, the U.S.'s Sampson and Australia's Rex Hartwig, an oldster of 20 who finally managed to dent the 18-year-olds' monopoly.

The U.S. Lawn Tennis Association, taking due note of three straight Davis Cup losses to Australia, last week liberalized its amateur code to conform with that of other nations. U.S. players, heretofore limited to eight weeks' subsidized barnstorming a year, may now compete in an unlimited number of tournaments, all expenses paid. Still under discussion: a rule, modeled on Australia's, which would permit U.S. amateurs to earn their own keep by working for such interested employers as sporting goods firms.

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