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One afternoon in the summer of 1955, officials of the U.S.L.T.A. told Althea that the State Department had asked them to nominate some players to tour Southeast Asia; they wanted her to go. Althea hesitated ("I had to get on my knees to persuade her," says a friend), finally accepted. The troupe included Karol Fageros, a bouncing blonde as famous for her frilly panties as her fancy tennis, Rhodes Scholar Ham Richardson and California's Bob Perry. India, Pakistan, Thailand, Burma —everywhere the tennists made friends for the U.S., and everywhere Althea was the acknowledged champion. Once or twice when reporters raised a question about race problems, she handled herself deftly. "Sure we have a problem in the States," she would say, "as every country has its problems. But it's a problem that's solving itself, I believe."
Ruthless Geometry. Back home after her victory in Paris and her quarter-final defeat at Wimbledon, Althea made a disappointing showing at Forest Hills, but she was sure by then that she would stick with tennis. She continued to work steadily with a new coach, Sydney Llewellyn, a Negro pro from New York with an unusual knack for teaching his rigidly defined theory of tennis. The game to Llewellyn is a ruthless exercise in geometry. For every shot, he argues, there is one proper return, one proper angle to aim for. "You don't play the person, you just play the board as if you were a machine. Tennis looks genteel," he adds, "but it's the meanest, most vicious game I know."
"When Sydney first came to me," says Althea, "I thought, this guy can't teach me anything." But, for one thing, he changed her grip from the Continental, which allows a player to make forehand and backhand shots without rotating the racket, to the Eastern grip, which requires a slight rotation of the racket but allows a smoother, more powerful swing. Above all, he gave her confidence. "I'm a Virgo," says Althea, who takes her astrology seriously. "Sydney's an Aquarius, a guy of profound perception."
At Forest Hills last year, not even Sydney's perception could help Althea over a bad case of the West Side shakes. Says he: "She got outgeneraled and outfought by Shirley Fry. Forest Hills meant everything to her. She wanted it so much it awed her till it was like living in a pressure cabin. When the day came, she was a nervous wreck, and Fry beat her like a mother beats a child."
The Best Ever. It is doubtful that the new Althea will ever again be in the same kind of emotional pressure cabin. In Chicago last month, when she turned up for the national Clay Courts championship, hotels in stuffy Oak Park would not rent her a room; the swank Pump Room of the Ambassador East Hotel refused reservations for a luncheon in her honor. Officials and newsmen burned with rage, but Althea hardly noticed it. "I tried to feel responsibilities to Negroes, but that was a burden on my shoulders," says she. "If I did this or that, would they like it? Perhaps it contributed to my troubles in tennis. Now I'm playing tennis to please me, not them."