¶ Upsets studded the first week of the All-England championships at Wimbledon, which more than ever seemed to be dominated by Australian men and U.S. women. Egypt’s Jaroslav Drobny, 1954 champion, was beaten by an Indian with a rapier backhand called Ramanathan Krishnan. Ashley Cooper, the 19-year-old Australian whiz, beat third-seeded Sven Davidson of Sweden, and then Cooper himself was outlasted by unsung Allen Morris, onetime Georgia Tech footballer. Elegant Budge Patty, 1950 champion and seeded fourth, was ousted by Britain’s hard-hitting but erratic 20-year-old Bobby Wilson. Luis Ayala of Chile downed Denmark’s high-spirited Kurt Nielsen, who reached the finals in 1955. Althea Gibson, the American Negro, arrived safely in the quarterfinals, along with fellow Americans Beverly Baker Fleitz, Shirley Fry, and Defending Champion Louise Brough.
¶The usually phlegmatic English turned out in milling droves to see Ben Hogan play for the first time on English soil. At the Canada Cup tournament at Wentworth, the galleries jostled each other (and Hogan); some fell from trees, and one man toppled off a ladder and broke his leg. Ben Hogan responded with a wintry smile, then knocked out three birdies on his first four English holes. “An amazing genius,” cried British newspapers. Teamed with Sam Snead, Hogan won the cup for the U.S. and captured the individual prize for himself with a seven-under-par 277.
¶ Italian Bantamweight Mario D’Agata, a stone-deaf laundryman from Arezzo, opened a cut over the eye of Champion Robert Cohen in the third round of a match in Rome, and then kept slicing at it accurately and relentlessly. At the bell for the start of the seventh, Cohen’s cut was bleeding uncontrollably, and D’Agata was new champion on a TKO.
¶ Carola Mandel, Cuba-born beauty and wife of a Chicago department-store executive, broke 300 straight targets to beat three other top women and 14 men in the annual Rebel Open Skeet Shoot all-gauge championship at Jackson, Miss., went on to establish a new women’s world record of 387 birds out of 400.
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