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Bachelor's Degree. There, his dogged fighting qualities, his persistence and determination, and growing control over his hard hitting paid off. He beat Harry Likas and Vic Seixas (a higher ranked player) in the early rounds. In the semi-final and final matches (against Earl Cochell and Ed Moylan), Savitt dropped the first two sets, and was on the verge of defeat. He won both matches. That worked wonders with his game, and with his belief in himself. It was, in a sense, his bachelor's degree in tennis.
The three ensuing months in Australia gave him a fine postgraduate course. In the Australian championship, after beating wily Veteran John Bromwich in the quarterfinals, Savitt faced two-time Champion Sedgman in the semi-final bracket. The match went to five sets, and in the fifth, Sedgman spurted to a 4-2 lead. Savitt, always tense when he's ahead, simply relaxed and began hitting winners, won four straight games and the match. In the final, against rangy Ken McGregor, "I felt that nothing could stop me." McGregor couldn't. Dick won handily, 6-3, 2-6, 6-3, 6-1.
In his European campaigning ("minor league stuff"), Savitt had only a so-so record, actually lost six of seven matches (on clay) to Jaroslav Drobny, ex-Czech Davis Cup veteran. The losses did little to shake Dick's new-found faith in his ability to win, but they did create a jinx. Drobny beat him again in the quarter-finals of the French championships, a tournament that Savitt really wanted to win. He began to fret, decided he was over-tennised, and practically stopped playing for the whole month before Wimbledon.
The layoff brought his game back to its peak. Dick whipped U.S. Champion Larsen (6-1, 6-4, 6-4) in the quarterfinals. But his big test did not come until his semi-final match with dogged Herb Flam, another fighter and a player who relies on agility and retrieving rather than power. In twelve meetings, Savitt had never beaten Flam. When Flam won the first set, 6-1, it looked like the same old story. The second set was a backbreaker, 15-13, and Savitt won it after trailing 1-5. After that it was easy (6-3, 6-2). With the added momentum that victory gave to his confidence, and showing never a jot of the center-court jitters that have wrecked many another player at Wimbledon, he breezed past McGregor again in the final, 6-4, 6-4, 6-4.
Savitt flew home the next day. He had had five solid months of tennis campaigning, all out of the U.S. The Clay Court championships were being played that week in Chicago, and the tennis bigwigs naturally wanted Dick there: the Wimbledon champion would be a big drawing card. He flatly refused to go. He needed a rest, and he knew it. He did not play again until his Davis Cup debut against Japan. Savitt is always edgy before an important match, and, unlike most of the other players, is given to moments of introspection and brooding. Facing a test that should have been no particular source of worry, Dick snapped at Frank Shields, the nonplaying captain: "Don't talk to me before a match."
Says Shields: "Dick is the first great player I've seen to stay close to the top of his game, and stay nervous throughout the match. Most players will be nervous at the start of a match. But they'll shake it. Usually, the sign of a better man will be that he will shake his nervousness off quicker."