Sport: The Value of Practice

For the third time in 43 years, an American won the tennis championship of Australia. It was all a rude surprise to Australia—winner of the Davis Cup last fall and supposedly sitting serene in the tennis world for a long time to come. The Aussies figured without Dick Savitt.

Savitt, 23, ranked No. 6 in the U.S., beat the two top Aussies, Frank Sedgman and Ken McGregor, on successive days for the title.*

The person least surprised by this outcome was Savitt's mother, back in Orange, N.J. Said she: "Dick never had much time to practice while he was in college [Cornell], and...