Sport: Forest Hills Finale

A sellout crowd of 13,000 jammed into the West Side Tennis Club stadium at Forest Hills last week for the semifinals of the national championship tournament; the biggest U.S. tennis gallery since 1946 was primed for white-hot competition. One bracket pitted Australian Frank Sedgman against Art Larsen, the flashy, unpredictable U.S. champ; the other match paired husky Dick Savitt, who had earned his No. 1 seeded position by knocking off the Australian and Wimbledon titles, against Vic Seixas, flashing the best play of his five-year career.

What followed was some remarkable tennis and a big letdown. Sedgman, in superb condition, took exactly 49 minutes to blow Larsen off the court, 6-1, 6-2, 6-0. Tennis buffs could not recall another time in the 70-year history of the men’s tournament when the U.S. champion had taken such a one-sided thrashing. It was hard to say whether any part of Sedgman’s game was notably better than the rest as he fed Larsen a paralyzing assortment of burning serves, deadly volleys and deep, sure ground strokes.

Larsen, incredibly, seemed to have expected victory. When the execution had been carried out he mumbled: “I thought I had this one locked up . . . He was like a pistol.”

After that it was up to Savitt and Seixas, if the fans were to see a real battle. But Savitt was playing against heavy odds. Early in the tournament a boil had developed back of his left knee. Stiff-legged and slow, he had bulled his way along, pulling out a punishing five-set match from Budge Patty in the quarter-final by dogged courage as much as by his court tactics. The infection had to be lanced two hours before his match with Seixas.

Within a few minutes it was obvious that determination had taken Dick Savitt as far as it could. Again & again he was short of reaching Seixas’ placements; he could not go to the net effectively; Seixas took the first set at love. Savitt rallied himself for a do-or-die effort and somehow managed to win the second set, 6-3, but after that his cork was pulled; Seixas ran the match out, 6-3, 6-2.

Next day Sedgman warmed up for a game or two, tried Seixas out, then cut loose with a well-rounded attack that collapsed Vic’s defense and rolled him up, 6-4, 6-1, 6-1, in 48 minutes, one less than for Larsen. Said Sedgman, with massive understatement: “I’ve been playing pretty well in this tournament.”