Underdog v. Hard-Lucker

He was a big, lean kid, an ex-G.I. whom few tennis fans had ever heard of. Tom Brown got his schooling in the game on the San Francisco public courts, and had never played "the circuit." He was unranked nationally. He had entered national tennis tournaments twice before -- and had been knocked out in the first round. As a mortar gunner with the 20th Armored Division he had packed a tennis racket all over Europe, never got a chance to play.

The fans began to notice him first in the quarter-finals last week at Forest Hills. Matched against amateur tennis' defending Champion Frank Parker, Tom Brown uncorked an awkward but powerful forehand, which he hit with his elbow cramped close to his body, the most violent attacking game since Ellsworth Vines, and an insatiable habit of going after hard ones and hitting them for winners. Down went Parker, in five sets.

Next day 15,000 people crowded into the ivy-covered, horseshoe-shaped stadium, and most of them came to cheer for Underdog Tom Brown to beat Davis Cup stalwart Gardnar Mulloy. Sportswriters had already taken to calling Brown the California Comet, a name once reserved for Maurice McLoughlin. Tom Brown had great crowd appeal: he was a killer of the Jack Dempsey kind. His forehand kept rifling into corners for point after point. As he walked off the court you couldn't have told from his expression whether he had won or lost. He had won: 6-4, 6-2, 6-4.

Few beside Tom Brown himself knew how he had keyed himself up to the task of giant-killing. He was not as phlegmatic as he seemed. His game was aggressive, forcing; he was what tennis players call a "big hitter." It was power, not form with him. He was only 23, and this was his first big year (at Wimbledon this spring he reached the semifinals, a performance which got him seeded 6th at Forest Hills). The day of the finals Tom Brown was obviously jittery when he walked out to play a fellow-Californian, ex-Coast Guardsman Jack Kramer.

Sixteen-Minute Finish. The finals meant a lot to Tom Brown, but they meant more to Kramer. For Brown, tennis is a part-time concern: he intends to study law; 25-year-old Jack Kramer, a married man, hopes to make a living out of tennis. Kramer was seeded No. 2, but he was a hard-lucker who had never won a national tournament. He had an appendicitis attack just before the 1942 championships, collapsed with ptomaine poisoning in the '43 finals, raised a disastrous blister on his hand (TIME, July 8) in this year's Wimbledon play.

For 13 games it looked like touch & go Brown's serve, fast for the amount of spin he put on it, couldn't be broken. Kramer had a big serve, too, and all the other strokes. The pro-Brown crowd cheered when Brown's rocket forehand nicked the line, hissed the linesmen like a crowd of Dodger fans when they called one out. Kramer finally won the first set 9-7. After that it was quick. The final set took just 16 minutes. The score: 9-7, 6-3, 6-0. New Champion Kramer had lost only one set in the whole tournament.

In the women's championships Pauline Betz (TIME, Sept. 2), knocked out six opponents, losing only one set on the way reached the finals along with her good friend and doubles partner, Doris Hart Pauline, as usual, knew what she wanted to do: "She'll do the forcing. . . . I'll just get 'em back." In straight sets (11-9 6-3) she won her fourth U.S. Women's Singles Championship.

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