Sport: No Golden Age

On Labor Day weekend the U.S. tennis season ended with the National finals at Forest Hills. One of the entrants, listing his home tennis club as the 36th Armored Regiment, indicated pretty well the real finality of the event. There have been no Davis Cup matches since Sir Norman Brookes took his Australians home to war in 1939. The sacred turf of England’s Wimbledon has been torn by bombsand turned into a pasture. The general bleakness this week overtook the West Side Tennis Club’s stadium, whose eleven flagpoles used to be none too many to fly the national emblems of its players.

War planes from Long Island fields often flew over the big stadium, where people sat in the sun of flawless Indian summer afternoons to watch and hear the ritual of first-class tennis: the shots resonantly made and returned, the ball boys bobbing across the courts, the explosive verdicts of linesmen, the players toweling their heads beside the umpire’s platform, the massed groans, naughty whistles and well-mannered shushes of the crowd. Tennis history had neatly formed decades for the occasion: it was the 50th summer of play in the stadium, the 50th anniversary of the Club.

The Show had neither the old cosmopolitan cast of Europeans and Australians nor the drawing card of a champion (last year’s No. 1, Bobby Riggs, turned professional this year). But as the week went on, the galleries began to see that at least one South American and one Californian were playing for keeps.

Francisco (“Pancho”) Segura from Ecuador turned up in U.S. tennis two years ago as a two-handed freak. By mid-1942 he looked more like a two-handed champion. Every tennis player in the country whistled last July when Segura batted his way through the strong Czecho-Slovakian, Ladislav Hecht. 6-0, 6-0, 6-0. An urchin-like figure with a pigeon-toed slouch and a dark Indian face, Segura addresses a forehand shot as if he were about to kill it with an ax, often whirls so far off the ground that he seems to be swung by his racket.

Frank Parker from California played his first matches at Forest Hills ten years ago as a 16-year-old pride of famed Tennis Coach Mercer Beasley. For a decade one of the first ten ranking U.S. players, Parker developed the steadiest game in contemporary U.S. tennis, but he could never win against brilliance, had never won the national title. This year gave him his chance. The first full test came when he met Segura in the semifinal round.

Parker’s dark sunglasses, grave face and deliberate air help his reputation as a “colorless” player. Tennis connoisseurs found nothing insipid in his management of the first two sets against Segura. Hitting with perfect length on both forehand and backhand, using always the exactly appropriate stroke, and subtly increasing the pace and angle of his shots when Segura left the court slightly open, Parker made just seven errors in two sets. Segura seemed lucky to get one game per set.

To this absolute efficiency, which only greatness could beat, Segura in the third set responded with greatness. Dancing with anguish and resolution, cheered on by yells of “Bravo Pancho!” from the crowd, he found his nerve and his sense of the court at the same time. He began passing Parker at the net with the only possible shots that could have passed him—audacious and perfect ones—and won his fifth game with two deeply thoughtful drop shots. The set was Segura’s, 6-2, and the electrified gallery sighed with satisfaction. If they had gone on playing then, Segura had a chance. The ten-minute intermission cooled him off. Parker, ever cool, came back to win, 6-2, pulling off a barely credible volley and an incredible get on the last point, after which Parker did two things he rarely does—he fell flat on his face, then lifted his head and grinned.

In the finals Parker met Ted Schroeder of Stanford, winner with Jack Kramer of the men’s doubles’ championship in 1940-41, a player once called “the amateur of the future” by Tennis’s Grand Old Man. Tilden. A grimacing 21-year-old with a football build. Schroeder had the most powerful service and forehand smash that Parker had met. The match was a terrific fight. After losing the first two sets 6-8, 5-7, Parker used all his aplomb to break through Schroeder’s service and take the third, 6-3. He returned a smash with a frivolous volley that made the crowd roar.

Sobersided Frank Parker began to get the applause. While Schroeder shook his head and lifted his arms to heaven in disgust over misses, Parker kept on making him miss, won the fourth set, 6-4. But in the last set all the correct tennis in Frank’s 26-year-old bones could not avail against Schroeder’s unwearying pace. Playing every point for all he was worth, never cracking, Parker went down. 2-6; again a champion had been too much for him.

Other winners:

Women’s singles: Redheaded Pauline Betz of Los Angeles beat chubby 19-year-old Louise Brough of Beverly Hills (TIME. Aug. 31) 4-6, 6-1, 6-4.

Men’s doubles: Lieut. Gardner Mulloy of Jacksonville Naval Air Station and Billy Talbert of Cincinnati, beat Schroeder and Sidney Wood. 9-7, 7-5, 6-1.

Era’s End. So, in an atmosphere of wartime furlough, a quarter century of wonderful tennis slipped into the past. The Golden Age was the 20s, the years when Tilden (“Big Bill”) and Johnson (“Little Bill”) fought five times in the finals and tenacious Little Bill bowed to the exuberant master every time; when the swinging pigtails of Atlanta-like Helen Wills were seen first at Forest Hills and the reign of that imperturbable queen began. Tennis became a science as well as an art; Henri Cochet, the Frenchman who beat Tilden in 1926, thought out his court tactics mathematically.

Peace, luxurious peace, nourished all that pretty sport. But the tough 1930’s brought a touch of hardness into the game.

The term “tennis bums” was found for proficient young men who drifted from tournament to tournament, expenses paid. Top-flight players—Fred Perry, the ping-pong stylist, Ellsworth Vines, the lanky speed king, Don Budge, the redheaded wonder—turned pro and went on tour. Graceful girls in shorts refreshed the nation’s sport pages. But top-flight competition could not survive World War II. “Somehow, anything seems more important at this point than tennis,” said Ted Schroeder, before the tournament. The end of such pleasures was at hand.