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There are twice as many tennis players in the U.S. (10 million) as there are people in Ecuador, (5,000,000), and the list of participants on a Sunday at the courts in Manhattan's Central Park is longer than the membership rolls (500) at all of Ecuador's five tennis clubs combined. But the U.S. Davis Cup team, which in eight years has managed to lose to Mexico, Italy (twice), Spain and Brazil, was not about to let statistics stand in the way. In Guayaquil last week, a four-man U.S. squad headed by Arthur Ashe--ranked the No. 1 amateur in the U.S. and No. 4 in the world--was upset by a couple of Ecuadorians who had never won a major tournament in their lives.

The son of a poor rice farmer in Urbina Jado, 260 miles southwest of Quito, Miguel Olvera, 27, works as an administrative assistant at the Guayaquil Tennis Club--a job that pays him $200 a month. Francisco ("Pancho") Guzman, 21, is the son of a Guayaquil businessman and a dues-paying member of the club. Neither is particularly well known outside the country. Olvera was eliminated in the first round at Wimbledon last year, and Guzman's best showing abroad came in 1964, when he was beaten in three sets by somebody named Bill Harris in the semifinals of Miami's Orange Bowl junior tournament.

Double Fault. Not even a home-court advantage figured to be much help to Olvera and Guzman when it came to playing the likes of Ashe, Cliff Richey and the U.S. doubles team of Marty Riessen and Clark Graebner--all of whom are veterans of the international circuit. Richey got the U.S. off to a 1-0 lead in the best-of-five series by beating Guzman, 6-2, 2-6, 8-6, 6-4. But what happened after that was incredible. Ashe, who had not lost a single set in Davis Cup play this year, lost three in a row--and the second match--to Olvera. Riessen and Graebner, after winning the first set of the doubles at love, lost, 6-0, 7-9, 3-6, 6-4, 6-8. Finally, Ashe added irony to injury by losing to Guzman, 6-0, 4-6, 2-6, 6-0, 3-6--double-faulting away the match point that gave Ecuador an unassailable 3-1 lead.

Rushing pell-mell onto the court to congratulate his players, Ecuador's non-playing Team Captain Danilo Carrera tried to hurdle the net, tripped, fell and gloriously snapped an ankle. The victory was so unexpected that Ecuadorian tennis officials had no funds set aside to send Olvera and Guzman to next month's interzone semifinals in Europe. They immediately began taking up a collection--and U.S. Captain George MacCall contributed $50. For the losers, there was one final humiliation. From London came word that for the first time in memory no American player would be seeded in the men's championships this week at Wimbledon.

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