Sport: Forest Hills Finale

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Born in Oakland, Calif. in 1915, son of a laundry wagon driver, Donald Budge began to play tennis at 8, taught by his elder brother Lloyd who sawed off a racket for him to play with, on the dirt courts of a public park. His first tennis costume was a pair of blue overalls and a khaki cowboy hat. Lloyd Budge, who became good enough to be tennis coach at St. Mary's College, beat Brother Donald regularly until 1933. That year the younger Budge, not yet 18, won the California Championship for men. A diffident, stringy, surprisingly agile youth, he appeared in major Eastern tournaments the next year, impressed critics with a sounder repertory of strokes and more tennis intuition than any of his contemporaries. Last spring, he and his fellow Californian, Gene Mako, were named for the Davis Cup team more to give them competitive seasoning than because anyone actually expected them to help bring back the Cup. As soon as he reached England, Budge made it clear that he not only deserved a real place on the team but that he was by far the ablest member of it. In the Wimbledon tournament, where he distinguished himself by making Queen Mary smile when, arriving late to watch the matches, she saw him waving his racket to welcome her instead of standing still and bowing, he reached the semi-finals after defeating Bunny Austin. He beat Baron von Cramm in the Davis Cup interzone final and took a set from Perry when the U. S. played England in the challenge round. His only serious rival for No. 1 in U. S. ranking this year—unless something unpredictable occurs at Forest Hills—is Shields. When they met in the final of the Newport Casino invitation tournament last fortnight, Budge won in five sets.

At 20, Donald Budge has already collected more than 70 tennis trophies, which are scattered about the Budge home at Oakland. He has a taste for white tennis rackets; the Wilson Sporting Goods Co., for whom he was a wrapping clerk last winter, has designed one especially for him called "The Ghost." A phlegmatic, gentle youth, so homely that even his mother smiled when a friend said that, if not the best tennis player in the world, her son was certainly the ugliest, young Budge is likeable but undistinguished off a tennis court. He barely graduated from high school a year ago, spends his spare time imitating Bing Crosby or the Mills Brothers, drinks nothing stronger than milk. On the court, the quality that marks his game is the one in which he sometimes seems most lacking elsewhere —savoir-faire. The quality which he will need most if he is to develop into a Class A tennis champion is confidence, and his demeanor this summer indicates that he is rapidly acquiring it. In the final at Newport, Shields returned a first serve by mistake and then courteously called: "Take two. . . ." Replied grinning Budge: "One's plenty." He served once, won the point.