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In the lexicon of champions, fun and games are strictly separate. Big-time tennis is fun to watch, but not to play. Two little rectangles of grassy ground — one in a suburb of London, the other in a suburb of New York — have seen more championship and less fun than any other spots in the world. Near one of those rectangles (not on it, for it was being kept sacred for the tournament), scores of intent young men, dressed in white shorts and short-sleeved shirts, were leaping, sprinting, and hitting the ball for all they were worth. They were practicing for the National Singles tournament, which starts this week.
To a man from Mars, this scene at the West Side Tennis Club at Forest Hills might have appeared like a frenzied ballet, in which no performer stood out, no individual could be distinguished. As any tennis fan could have told him, however, every one was different, and only a few were worth watching.
One who was well worth watching was a swarthy, black-haired young man with deep-set eyes and powerful, slightly hunched shoulders. The picture of intent, unsmiling concentration, he smashed serves, laced backhands down the alley and crosscourt, whaled deep forehands to the corners.
As other players, sweating and spent, ambled to the clubhouse showers, they paused for a moment to watch Dick Savitt, the boy who has won two big ones this year and is hot after the third.* In their speculative eyes there was a new respect, but skepticism too.
They knew he could be beaten; he has lost more tournaments this year than he has won. Nevertheless, nobody can win the Australian championship and Wimbledon in the same year by accident; they knew that Dick Savitt was the man to watch this week.
Three Theories. In spite of the fact that Art Larsen is U.S. champion, at Forest Hills Savitt is seeded No. 1. His rise to the top is recent, and looks fast. In fact, it took him quite a while to get there. Like all athletes of championship caliber, he is sure of his own ability: "If I am on my game, nobody can beat me ... The others are coming uphill to me ... I'm the man to beat." A man in his tennis shoes has to believe that, but he has yet to convince his peers that he is the nonpareil.
In the endless gossip of the lockerroom, where the players dissect their matches with the fanaticism of shot-by-shot golfers—and remember the precise scores of each match for years—several theories are advanced on just how to beat Savitt. Bill Talbert, 32-year-old Davis Cup veteran and still a quick man on his feet (for three sets), says: "Make him run." Talbert's pal and protégé Tony Trabert, the 20-year-old sensation of the summer circuit, thinks the answer is: "Hit 'em harder." Gardnar Mulloy, a canny old hand at 37, says: "Mix him up."
The tennis fans who will pour into the