Best in the World
The temperature at Melbourne's Koo-yong stadium boiled to 112DEG last week, but nobody minded except the spectators (too of whom fainted in their seats) and a listless pair of players from sunny Italy. In a mismatch worthy of the Roman Colosseum, Australia's Davis Cup defenders, Rod Laver, Neale Fraser and Roy Emerson, beat back the Italian challengers 5-0, took home the 62-year-old cup for a record tenth time in twelve years.*
The lopsided score merely hinted at the humiliation of Italy's defeat. Not until the deciding first three matches were over did bumbling Nicola Pietrangeli and Orlando Sirola cadge a single set from their relentless Aussie tormentors. The crucial doubles match lasted only an hour; Pietrangeli and Sirola won only nine games--the worst Challenge Round showing since 1919, when Britain's doubles players dropped all but two games to Norman Brookes and Gerald Patterson of a combined Australia-New Zealand team. "A pathetic display," snapped the Sydney Morning Herald, and Milan's II Giorno agreed: "They played like trained seals." Italy's coach, Czech Jaroslav Drobny, was so disgusted by his team's showing ("They treated the Davis Cup like a garden party") that he planned to resign.
Brutal Efficiency. The coolheaded squad that shellacked Italy last week operated with precision and brutal efficiency. Redheaded Rod ("Rocket") Laver, 23, raised puffs of chalk along the base line with his accurate overspin backhands. Neale Fraser, 28, hampered all year by a bad knee, forced the Italians into error after error with neatly placed volleys. Star of the team was wiry Roy Emerson. 25, a tireless technician who plays like a blackjack shark: he does not hit hard, but he thinks fast and rarely makes an error of judgment. Last week Emerson got Australia off to a 1-0 lead by trouncing Pietrangeli 8-6. 6-4, 6-3. Then he teamed with Fraser to win the doubles, and rounded out his week's work with a crushing 6-2, 6-3, 4-6, 6-2 victory over Sirola.
Foreign tennis fans could find small hope in the fact that Emerson & Co. probably will not be around to defend the Davis Cup next year: at week's end Fraser was already talking about retiring: Emerson and Laver insisted they had no immediate plans to turn pro. But these days, the top amateurs, both in the U.S. and Australia, almost always defect to the pros. But Australia plans for such losses. Ever since 1950, the ever-changing Aussie roster has almost always been good enough to lick the rest of the world. The teams:
1950 -52. For three straight years, the big silver punch bowl belonged to Frank Sedgman and Ken McGregor. Perhaps the best all-round shotmaker Australia has ever produced. Sedgman still plays part-time pro tennis, owns a gymnasium and squash courts in Melbourne. McGregor now runs an Adelaide sporting goods store.
1953 -56. During the four years that they took over from Sedgman and McGregor, Australia's brilliant Whiz Kids. Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall, lost only once--to the U.S. in 1954. In 1957 both players turned pro. A power hitter with flat-trajectory ground strokes, Hoad is the logical successor to No. 1 Pro Pancho Gonzales. A master scrambler, possessor of the game's best backhand. Rosewall is a frequent winner on the rich pro circuit.
1957 -58. During these lean years of Down Under tennis, Mal Anderson and Ashley Cooper still managed to win the Davis Cup in 1957; they might have repeated in 1958 if Peruvian Alex Olmedo had not carried the U.S. to victory. Both turned pro with varying success: Cooper has done well, but Anderson is erratic and unspectacular. They were ably replaced as Davis Cuppers by Fraser, Laver and Emerson in 1959.
Talent Hunt. As the Aussie players come and go, their team's most valuable man remains its laconic captain, Harry Hopman. A hard-nosed disciplinarian who demands monastic devotion and impeccable manners from his players. Hopman. 55, bosses an uncompromising talent-hunting organization that spots promising youngsters, grooms them carefully for the big time. There is no nonsense about higher education: instead, players quit school at 14 or 15, take "employment" from some sporting goods firm, and spend every working minute on the courts.
Even as Aussies waited for this year's team to turn pro, they knew that Hopman was already building for the future. In Miami Beach, Australia's No. 3 junior player, Geoffrey Pollard, a rangy lefthander with a booming serve, whipped U.S. Junior Champion Charles Pasarell in an early round of the Orange Bowl Tournament 10-8, 8-6.
* Next best record: the U.S.'s seven straight victories, run up in 1920-26 by Bill Tilden, Bill Johnston and Vinnie Richards. The string was broken by France in 1927, and the U.S. did not win the Davis Cup again until 1937.
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