Sober pinch-pennies derive great pleasure from betting—they are indeed the most daring fellows alive, for they hazard their careful stake on the expected and the expected rarely occurs. Your extravagant defrauds himself of excitement. He favors unlikelihoods, only to see them crop up at every turn. This paradox of the wise man and his penny is sustained by the fact that it frequently proves untrue. For instance, conservative students of tennis fully expected William T. Tilden to win the National Tennis Championship which was decided last week at Forest Hills. Perceiving a balance draw, with Tilden and Williams in one half, and William Johnston and Richards in the other, they expected that these four players would move smoothly through to the semifinals; they expected that the dashing foreigners—Borotra of France, Alonzo of Spain, Anderson of Australia—would fall by the wayside; that William Johnston would, as in 1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, be runner up, and that he would, as in those years, be defeated.
A few less sensible individuals, eager for the occurrence of an improbability, talked about Wallace Johnson of Philadelphia. Was it possible that he was about to win a National Title? In 1912 he was finalist against Maurice McLaughlin, in 1921 against Tilden. He has been rated in the first ten longer than any other player in tennis. His first appearance in that list was in 1908 when he placed ninth; in 1909 he was third, 1912 third, 1913 fourth, 1914 sixth, 1919 fifth, 1920 tenth, 1921 fourth, 1922 fifth. This season he has been playing his standard game, neither better nor worse. He is not capable of rising to a pitch of resistless efficiency; he is always capable of astounding by being just what he is expected to be—always able to confound doom's fifers by playing in any situation dependable, heady, incisive tennis. To every man comes a moment which he can mistake for his "chance." Certain sports writers hinted that Johnson might win. It was an unlikely, a fantastic notion. It might therefore, come to pass. . . .
Play began. After the conventional eliminations of the first and second rounds, Williams crushed Borotra, and William Johnston, not without dust and heat, defeated Manuel Alonzo, the Flower of Spain. In that round Wallace Johnson came to his first test. He was bracketed against James Anderson, Captain of the Australian Davis Cup Team.
Anderson is tall as a barber's pole. He often wears a blazer striped like one. With the deliberate elegance, so typically British, which is seen to best advantage in Australians, Canadians, South Africans and Russians, he strides about. dealing titanic strokes. Tilden occasionally hits as hard as Anderson. Few other players compare with him for power.