Sport: Gamesmanship Down Under

Canny Harry Hopman, nonplaying captain of the Australian Davis Cup team, seemed to be giving U.S. Captain Frank Shields a splendid lesson in Gamesmanship,* Down Under style. As a full-time tennis writer for the Melbourne Herald, Hopman based his opening ploy on the U.S. warmup performances. His particular target: Vic Seixas, who, he said, had “foot-faulted a number of times” without being taken to task. U.S. Captain Shields showed himself no mean Gamesman in return by promptly retorting: “When Harry resorts to such tactics as this, I think it indicates only that we’ve got him worried.”

During the Victorian championships last week, Shields had every reason to congratulate himself on his counterploy. His pickup doubles team of veteran (30) Ted Schroeder and young (21) Tony Trabert was looking better than ever. A fortnight ago, the U.S. pair was within a game of beating the invincible Aussie combination of Frank Sedgman and Ken McGregor, U.S. and Wimbledon champions. Last week at Melbourne, with the top Aussies separated in a Gamesmanlike experiment by Hopman, Schroeder and Trabert breezed to the title in straight sets.

Even the U.S. singles picture was brightening. Wimbledon Champion Dick Savitt appeared to be rounding into top form as he whipped Lefthander Mervyn Rose, Australia’s No. 3, in a five-set quarterfinal. Savitt looked even stronger as he blasted McGregor, the Aussies’ No. 2, in a straight-set semifinal. That set the Stage for a long-waited showdown with Aussie No. 1, Frank Sedgman.

But as every Gamesman knows, the final score is the proof of the gambit. With Sedgman displaying the same whirlwind form that won him the U.S. title, he took just 58 minutes to give Savitt as sound a thrashing as the Wimbledon champion has taken in years. The score: 8-6, 6-0, 6-4. The result, on the eve of the U.S.-Sweden zone finals, made good gamesman Hopman a likely candidate to go down in Gamesman history with such famed experts as Frith-Morteroy (master of the art of Countering the Crock), Edward Grice (specialist in the Secondary Hamper), and Stephen Potter himself (inventor of the Jack Rivers Opening). It also left the U.S. singles line-up just where it was a month ago: up in the air.

* A behavior pattern first synthesized by British Humorist Stephen Potter in his classic manual, subtitled “The Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating” (TIME, Sept. 6, 1948).