Tennis: To the Ludicrous

The state of U.S. amateur tennis has gone from the sombrous to the ludicrous. Last week, for the fifth time in the last seven years, the U.S. Davis Cup team was beaten in preliminary interzone play, and was thereby eliminated from the challenge round against Australia. The previous losses, at least, were to Mexico, Italy (twice) and Spain—all of whom have solid credentials in international tennis. Last week's defeat came in Brazil, where sportswriters spent much of the week trying to explain to their readers just what the Davis Cup is. Only 3,000 fans (700 short of capacity) turned out to watch the matches at Porto Alegre's Leopoldina Juvenil Tennis Club. And most of them—like the bewildered program director of Porto Alegre's TV station, who was in charge of broadcasting the play-by-play—had never seen a tennis match before.

The lads who played for Brazil, however, had a pretty fair idea of how to hold a racket. And they may have worked a pretty good ploy on the U.S. too. As a tune-up for the Davis Cup competition, the Brazilian and U.S. teams played in last month's South American championships at Buenos Aires. The tournament was won by Texas' Cliff Richey, 19, the U.S.'s No. 3-ranked player—behind Dennis ("the Menace") Ralston and Arthur Ashe; in the process, Richey beat both of Brazil's Davis Cuppers, Thomaz Koch, 21, and Edison Mandarine, 25. Cliff's victory seemed suspiciously easy to many observers, but U.S. Captain George Mac-Call, a Los Angeles insurance broker with no big-time playing experience of his own, was so impressed that he picked Richey to play singles at Porto Alegre, in place of Ashe.

"Brasil! Bra-sil!" Cliff lost in four sets to Mandarino, an expatriate Brazilian who lives in Madrid. Then Richey was beaten in straight sets by Koch, who grew up right across the street from the Leopoldina Juvenil Tennis Club. Dennis Ralston kept U.S. hopes alive by beating Koch and teaming with Ashe to win the doubles, 7-5, 6-4, 4-6, 6-2. But in his final singles match against Mandarino, the Menace lost his cool. Visibly rattled by noisy spectators, who chanted "Brasil! Bra-sil!" from the third set onward, he collapsed completely in the fifth set and lost 6-4, 4-6, 6-4, 4-6, 1-6, giving Brazil a 3-2 victory.

Koch and Mandarino were engulfed by delirious well-wishers, paraded around town in a huge, honking car caravan. Although they still must get past either India or West Germany in order to qualify for December's challenge round in Australia, Brazilian newspapers were suddenly tennis mad and proclaiming: THE CUP IS ALMOST OURS.