Sport: Advantage Kramer

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On the outer courts, prepping for a crack at next week's singles championship, were some 60 players—about 25 of them with foreign accents. England had sent Tony Mottram and Derrick Barton. France's Robert Abdesselam, Czechoslovakia's outstanding southpaw Jaroslav Drobny were there, along with India's entire Davis Cup team (Misra, Mohan & Mehta) and Sweden's and Belgium's best.

There were also, of course, the Australians: blond, ambidextrous Jack Bromwich, husky, lob-loving Dinny Pails, bespectacled Colin Long (Bromwich's doubles partner) and temperamental Geoff Brown. They, too, had a lot to do. For their final five days of intensive practice, they engaged a sparring partner—U.S. Professional Frank Kovacs, the champion screwball of all tennis players. The Australian problem was clear-cut but tough: in just eight months they were trying to lift their outmoded, prewar game to U.S. standards.

Lesson No. 2. Some Australians had thought that last December's steamy, 100° Melbourne weather would melt the starch right out of the challenging U.S. Davis Cup stars, Kramer & Schroeder. The starch oozed out of the Australians instead. They lost five straight matches (and the cup). But instead of acting crushed, the Australians got a gleam in their eye. Sir Norman Brookes, boss of the Australian Lawn Tennis Association and onetime Wimbledon champion, issued a communiqué: "The aggressive type of tennis played by your men should have a great influence on our future stars. . . ."

The designer and chief exponent of this aggressive, high-pressure tennis is California's Jake Kramer. He is the U.S. singles champion, the Wimbledon champion, the No. 1 U.S. Davis Cupper in both singles and doubles. In other words, he has proved that he is the best amateur tennis player in the world.

This week, Big Jake will walk confidently into the big, horseshoe stadium at Forest Hills to give Australia's Davis Cuppers another lesson. In his unemphatic way, he calls his style of play the "big game." It combines all the game's attacking strokes into a smooth offense, geared to his none-too-rugged 164 Ibs.

Kramer's "Big Game." Just as the model T had to come before the streamlined 1947 Ford, previous California champions had to blaze the trail. First there was the California Comet, Maurice McLoughlin, whose weapons were lethal but lopsided: a smashing serve and volley. Next in the California line came Little Bill Johnston with the big forehand, then Ellsworth Vines with a bullet serve and an even more devastating forehand. After that was Budge, who had an all-court game and an incomparable backhand. Jake Kramer has something from all these predecessors; perhaps the nearest likeness is to call him a cross between Vines (on whom he consciously modeled his game) and Budge.