Upset at Wimbledon

Jimmy Connors' skill at tennis is normally exceeded only by his preening selfesteem. In the preliminary rounds of the men's singles at Wimbledon, Defending Champion Connors, 22, rated No. 1 in the world, had not dropped a set, prompting him to predict smugly that last week's final would be "just another day at the office." Like Connors, the odds makers figured the match would merely be a mildly interesting footnote to tennis history, and that only because his opponent, Arthur Ashe, 31, was the first black to reach the men's finals in Wimbledon's center court. They were wrong. Rocketing his serves and precisely stroking his ground shots, Ashe stunningly upset Connors, 6-1, 6-1, 5-7, 6-4, in the all-American final to win tennis' most coveted cup and a $22,000 prize. His achievement has been equaled by only one other black tennis player: Althea Gibson, who won the women's singles at Wimbledon in 1957 and 1958.

Breaking Connors' serve five times, Ashe glided through the first two sets, then ran into trouble in the third as Connors appeared to regain his previously invincible form. In the fourth set, the Connors comeback continued, as he took a 3-0 lead. But Ashe fought back to break Connors' serve twice more for set, match and title.

Two Hats. The victory, together with the World Championship Tennis title that he won in Dallas last May, puts Ashe at the very top of his profession for the first time. Son of a policeman, he learned tennis at the age of ten from a black physician in Richmond, Va., who hoped to develop the first black player to win the national Interscholastic Championships. Ashe won that tournament in 1961. As a freshman at U.C.L.A. in 1963, he achieved top-ten ranking among U.S. tennis players and has remained there.

But he had never quite reached the pinnacle. A year ago he told an interviewer: "The very fact that I wear my 'black hat' before my 'tennis hat' interferes with the single-mindedness required to be No. 1." Last week he wore both hats with consummate ease. After the match Connors was cocky as ever. Said he: "They don't know how to play me. They have to play out of their minds to beat me, as Arthur did today."

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