On to Adelaide

Tennis fortunes wax and wane--and Australia's mostly wax, while the U.S.'s mostly wane. The Aussies have won the Davis Cup in eleven of the past 13 years; the U.S. has not even reached the Challenge Round since 1959. But last week U.S. fortunes took a distinct turn for the better. The U.S. team had already beaten Mexico and Britain handily. Now it needed only to get past India in the interzone finals to challenge Australia for the cup.

Out in Bombay the Indians did their bit to make the matches interesting. Captain Ramanathan Krishnan inspected the Cricket Club's slick clay court, groaned, "The Yanks will murder us on this," and ordered a new court to be built immediately--out of sand, an old Indian recipe guaranteed to take the bounce out of the ball, to say nothing of the Yanks. On the appointed day, the temperature was in the 90s, flocks of cawing crows hovered low overhead, and Indian fans heckled the Americans' both from the stands and from nearby apartment-house balconies. When California's Dennis Ralston blasted a serve past Krishnan and the linesman signaled a clean ace, the galleries set up such a hullabaloo that the umpire shrugged, and replaced the linesman.

India won the skirmish, but the U.S. won the war. Ralston, the Peck's Bad Boy of tennis, for once kept his temper under control, beat Krishnan at his own sandy game, with short volleys and dinky drop shots that won in straight sets, 6-4, 6-1, 13-11. Texas' Chuck McKinley, mounting the same kind of whirlwind attack that earned him the Wimbledon championship, needed only 72 minutes to dispose of India's Permjit Lall, 6-4, 6-3, 6-0. Ralston and McKinley then won the doubles to give the U.S. a 3-0 lead and turn the last two singles matches into a meaningless exhibition. Final score: U.S. 5, India 0.

Australia may once again prove too strong for the U.S. when they meet in Adelaide next month. But the Aussies are worried enough to try luring Neale Fraser out of retirement. And the Americans have one thing going for them: cheek. "I know these boys can beat the Aussies," crowed U.S. Captain Robert Kelleher. "It's just a matter of applying the right pressure at the right time."

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