TIME Magazine

Build-Up at Wimbledon

Posted Jul. 04, 1949 In London's quiet, out-of-the-way Rembrandt Hotel last week, U.S. Tennistar Ted Schroeder turned & tossed in his bed at night, smoked his five pipes in relays, read detective stories, and jittered. Schroeder, a champion who is not noted for calmness, was playing Wimbledon for the first time. In the opening round, the disaster he feared almost overtook him: he got a cramp in his right thumb.

Schroeder hopped about Wimbledon's famed center court, with 18,000 people looking on, yanking at the cantankerous thumb. Then he bit it. That seemed to help a little; he picked up his racket and ran out the last two games of his desperate, thrill-packed match against Gardnar Mulloy (3-6, 9-11, 6-1, 6-0, 7-5). As the crowd cheered, bandy-legged 150-lb. Ted Schroeder, seeded No. 1, staggered off the court as though every step would be his last.

Revolutionary Idea. Even-tempered Jack Kramer, his old pal, current adviser and consistent conqueror until he became a professional,*was not worried. Kramer knew his fellow Californian as a hothead who habitually worked himself into a competitive dither. Unlike other stars, Schroeder also had the revolutionary idea that an amateur tennis player should work for a living at something besides tennis.

Kramer had talked him into going to Wimbledon as part of a build-up for a Kramer-Schroeder tour next fall—if & after Schroeder turns pro. Since the war, Schroeder, who won the U.S. singles championship in 1942, has stubbornly refused to participate in the big show at Forest Hills. He has practiced intensively only for Davis Cup play, spending most of the year working at his job selling refrigeration equipment for dairy trucks in Southern California.

Ted was impressed by his first visit to Wimbledon. "All you have to do is snap your fingers and five guys fall all over you," he said last week. "Just ask for anything and you've got it—a masseur, a medicine kit, a private safe for your watch. But the greatest thing is the crowd. They really know tennis."

Fancy Pants. None of Schroeder's 127 rivals in the men's singles got a warmer welcome from the stands. Yet he could not begin to match the popularity of California's slim, trim Gertrude ("Gussie") Moran, who became the talk of London by playing in the women's singles wearing fetching lace-edged panties under her brief skirt. Explained Gussie: "After all, jumping and dancing about the court, people see your underwear anyway, so they might as well see something with lace on it."

Tall (6 ft. 3 in.), temperamental Bob Falkenburg, last year's unpopular winner at Wimbledon, did not endear himself to the crowd by defaulting in the mixed doubles; he was favoring a strained back, but as Miss Moran's partner he took Gussie out of the mixed doubles too. Falkenburg got his lumps in the quarterfinals, being dumped by Australia's veteran John Bromwich.. Schroeder, too, had a rough time in the quarter-finals with another Australian, Frank Sedgman, before winning (3-6, 6-8, 6-3, 6-2, 9-7).

Schroeder was the lone surviving U.S. hope this week as Wimbledon went to the semifinals. Still in there with him: South Africa's Eric Sturgess, Czechoslovakia's Jaroslav Drobny, Australia's Bromwich. If Ted could climb out on top, Tempter Kramer would next try to steer him into the U.S. title at Forest Hills in September. Says Schroeder: "Kramer has to promote somebody in his circus next year."

*Having won the pro championship last year, Kramer did not bother to defend his title in last week's tourney at Forest Hills. His successor: Bobby Riggs (9-7, 3-5, 6-3, 7-5) over Don Budge.