New Tennis Tour

When Promoter-Player Jack Kramer finished his professional tennis tour last May, he first jotted down the score that interested him most: an $860,000 gross. Then he added up a secondary score: he had beaten Australia's Frank Sedgman 54 matches to 41, and had paid Sedgman more than $125,000 for taking the lumps. For this season, Player Kramer decided to stick to being Promoter Kramer.

Last week Kramer & Co. (World Tennis, Inc.) opened their 1954 tennis tour at Madison Square Garden with a new cast of characters, "the four best tennis players in the world--five, if I play," says Kramer. The new cast included some old faces: Don Budge, now 38 and sadly slowed, but still master of the most devastating backhand in the game; Sedgman, an old pro of 26; Pancho Segura, 32, the most dogged retriever tennis has seen; and Richard ("Pancho") Gonzales, making a sensational comeback to the pro tour at the advanced age of 25.

Jackpot Prize. Even the youngest tennis fans could remember rangy (6 ft. 3 in., 180 Ibs.) Pancho Gonzales, the self-taught youngster who smashed his way to the U.S. championship at 20, helped the U.S. successfully defend the Davis Cup, then cashed in by turning pro. The fans also remember a later, paunchy Pancho, a sullen, undertrained pro who got trounced by Kramer, 96 matches to 27, in a 1950 tour. Since then, Gonzales has been teaching and playing in occasional pro tournaments, out of the big-money league. But last week a reconditioned Pancho, fit and full of walloping good tennis, was back in the headlines again, and with him a new way of rewarding the professionals.

Because sports skeptics have questioned the will to win of the play-for-pay boys, Promoter Kramer decided to set up a jackpot-prize tournament at each of the 88 U.S. cities the pros will visit in their 25,000-mile cross-country junket. Where the take is fat enough, as it has been in New York and Philadelphia, the players will be shooting for $4,000 to the winner, will have to settle for $2,500, $1,500 or $1,000 in defeat. In other cities, they will play for comparable percentages of the gate.

Generous Gesture. In last week's first match, a steady Segura beat a rusty Budge. Then it was up to Gonzales to launch his comeback against the world's second-best player (after Kramer), Frank Sedgman. Pancho dropped the first set, 3-6. Then he began to find the range with his booming serve, the fastest (112.88 m.p.h.) ever recorded electronically. He finally broke through in the twentieth game of the second set on his third set-point, to win it 11-9. Playing with a concentration he had seldom shown either as an amateur or a pro, Pancho stuck to his big guns and finally won the two-hour match, taking the deciding set 13-11. Next night, hampered by a torn callus and a lame ankle, big Pancho Gonzales nonetheless beat little Pancho Segura, 7-9, 6-4, 6-4. to make his comeback official --and to pocket some well-earned cash.

Promoter Kramer was delighted with Gonzales' performance and the tour's prospects. He then made a generous gesture to his amateur friends: Old Pro Kramer announced that he was willing to put up $7,500 of his own money and give up two months of his own time to help coach youngsters to win the Davis Cup back for the U.S.

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