Sport: Kramer Goes Down

Jack Kramer, one of Southern California’s innumerable gifts to tennis, sipped his tea and said: “Say, this stuff isn’t bad.” He was impressed, too, by the de luxe valet service in the locker room and the assemblage of 129 stars from 22 nations. It was Wimbledon’s first All-England championship jamboree since 1939, and the only cloud in Kramer’s sky was a blister the size of a quarter on his playing hand.

No one quite understood how Kramer got the blister so late in the season. By using a special glove, the rangy No. 1 hope of U.S. amateur tennis* whizzed through the first three rounds. His big serve was working fine. In the fourth round, he met thickset, bespectacled Jaroslav Drobny, a Czechoslovakian left-hander who also had a big serve. They slammed it out, Kramer aggressively, Drobny methodically. The second set went to an exhausting 17-15 and Kramer developed new blisters, discarded his glove. He winced on each drive to Drobny’s vulnerable spot, the backhand. In the end, Kramer lost, 2-6, 17-15, 6-3, 3-6, 6-3.

America’s best hope at Wimbledon had failed, but a little-known fellow Californian—23-year-old Tom Brown of San Francisco—still had a chance. He upset Ecuador’s flashy Pancho Segura last week, now had to get past (among others) Czechoslovakia’s sizzling Jaroslav Drobny and France’s veteran, 6 ft. 7 in. Yvon Petra to win. The U.S. women, led by Pauline Betz and Margaret Osborne, were still going strong.

* Kramer was temporarily excused from his job as a player on the U.S. Davis Cup team to compete at Wimbledon. This week, without him, the U.S. beat Mexico’s Davis Cuppers to win the American zone playoffs.