Sport: Forest Hills Finale

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For people who cling patriotically to the myth of U. S. supremacy in sport, the game of tennis has lately been a painful disappointment. Not since 1926 has the U. S. won the Davis Cup. For the past two years the ablest amateur tennist in the world has been that convivial young Englishman, Frederick John Perry, who last week made his 1935 U. S. debut by beating old Manuel Alonso in an exhibition match at South Orange. That Perry will win at Forest Hills next week tennis experts are unanimously agreed. If he does so, he will, for the first time, actually become owner of the Cup which stands on a card table beside the court during the final and which, for the last two years, has merely been handed to him to fondle for newsreel cameramen before watchful U. S. L. T. A. officials restored it to its Black, Starr & Frost-Gorham vault. To take the $500 silver Cup away from Forest Hills, a U. S. champion tennist must win the tournament three times. Since the late William A. Larned, who held the championship seven times, won his second Cup in 1910, only one player has actually got his hands on a U. S. Men's Singles Cup. That was William Tatem Tilden, who did it twice, once in 1922, again in 1925, and holds one leg on the present trophy. If Perry succeeds next week where McLoughlin,* Williams, Johnston, Lacoste and Vines failed, he will be the first foreign player who has ever won possession of a U. S. Singles trophy. Moreover, he will have done so against a field which includes, except for Australia's Crawford, Germany's von Cramm and England's Bunny Austin, all the best amateur players in the world. If he fails, it will be the biggest upset in a sporting year full of surprises. Scanning the field last week tennis enthusiasts could pick out at least half a dozen players who might conceivably accomplish the impossible.

Wilmer Allison is ranked No. 1 in U. S. tennis today largely because he was the finalist who carried Perry to five sets at Forest Hills last September. A sunburned, drawling Texan who has been in the first ten since 1928, Allison's main assets are a well-rounded assortment of dependable, aggressive strokes, a good tennis head and a desire to make some reparation for his calamitous failure in last month's Davis Cup challenge round (TIME, Aug. 5). Equally impressive are his drawbacks. He has never beaten Perry. At 30, he finds two five-set singles matches on successive days more than he likes.

Roderick Menzel, with the exception of Perry, is the ablest foreigner in next week's tournament. An enormous, shaggy-looking Czech, who frequently plays in shorts, he is celebrated off the court for writing mediocre poetry and novels, speaking five languages, and teasing his 4 ft.-11 in. wife by putting her on a closet shelf from which she is too small to clamber down. Neither his domestic eccentricities nor his tennis technique — awkward but effective volleying, a serve with a pronounced top spin — seem adequate grounds for his reaching the finals unless he catches one or more opponents on an off-day.