O!d-Fashioned Champ

Old-Fashioned Champ

The shy, solemn Australian looked beaten before he started. Even the crowd at Long Island's West Side Tennis Club this week figured that Ken Rosewall was a sure loser. He had done well to get to the finals of the U.S. Men's Singles championships, but now he was up against his fellow countryman Lew Hoad. There was too much at stake for Lew to let this one get away. Victory would make him the only man besides Don Budge to make a grand slam of the biggest titles in tennis--Wimbledon, plus the French, Australian and U.S. championships. A $100,000 pro contract would be his for the asking.

The two young (21) Australians squared off, and Ken started slowly, losing the first set 6-4. But he wore a curious frown. It could have been dejection; more likely it was wonder. For Lew Hoad's dangerous serve didn't seem so wicked after all, he was far from impressive at the net, and in the tricky wind his overhead game was unbelievably sloppy. All of a sudden Ken Rosewall stumbled on the exciting idea that he might very well win.

Now he began to produce the brand of tennis that had made him a gallery favorite all week long. In the quarter-finals the luck of the draw had sent him against quick-tempered Dick Savitt, 29, back in the big time after a four-year layoff. And Savitt had forced him to play the best tennis of his career to pull out the match. As he faced Hoad it seemed improbable that he could be that good again. But he was. Watching him took spectators back to the golden days of prewar tournaments, to Tilden and Vines and Budge, to Perry. Crawford and Cochet.

Somehow, in an era when tennis has quickened into a slam-bang game of brief, explosive rallies. Ken Rosewall nourishes an old-fashioned taste for the back court, for stylish strokes, for careful strategy worked out through a long, exciting exchange of shots. Such tactics seldom stand a chance against the "big" game of today's champions--and until this week Ken had a habit of finishing secondbest. Smooth, fast-paced ground shots may be lovely to look at, but most of the time they add up to little against a booming serve backed by the ability to come up fast and put away a volley at the net.

But against Hoad in the finals, everything worked. When necessary, Ken found he could command the net himself. His long, flat drives flicked baseline chalk so often that overworked linesmen seemed to make more errors than he did. He pulled Hoad up with sneaky drop shots. He sent him scurrying toward the baseline after deft lobs that his beefy blond adversary seemed to have forgotten how to handle. He ran Lew Hoad off the slippery green court 4-6, 6-2, 6-3, 6-3.

In the Women's Singles championships, Wimbledon Champion Shirley Fry carefully and methodically beat New York's Althea Gibson. Taking it easy, using her service only to get the ball in play, Shirley waited for Althea to make the errors, won the U.S. title 6-3, 6-4.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.