Tennis

Among the professional tennis players who gathered for their championship last week at Forest Hills, L. I., were many whose jobs at country clubs keep them teaching children and patting easy serves across to elderly ladies who want to reduce--keep them, in short, from ever getting a decent match. Most of these had not come to Forest Hills in the hope of winning but because they wanted to play some tennis.

It was generally conceded that Karel Kozeluh and Vincent Richards would meet in the finals as they do in all U. S. Professional tournaments, whether played on boards, clay, or grass. The other pros who played them in their respective divisions of the draw failed to take many games. Howard Kinsey, who ranked in the first ten as an amateur, did well when he won 13 from Kozeluh in three sets. Paul Hesten, in the other semifinal, lost to Richards more quickly.

It is an axiom of professional tennis that Kozeluh can be beaten by any player who scores his aces twice in succession, a condition made necessary by the fact that Kozeluh is pretty sure to return the first ace. This small, brown Czechoslovakian, who punctuates his game with little whirls of annoyance, and expansive, contagious moments of triumph, has revived the prestige of the backcourt game. Keeping the ball in the corners, he rarely tries for kills but scores by making the other fellow miss. His trick of taking the crowd into his confidence with jokes and bits of pantomime has the double effect of drawing attention to himself and upsetting his antagonists; he is intensely superstitious, wears two good luck medals around his neck, and has embroidered on all his sweaters the talismanic image of a small dog sitting up, which he says was given to him by "a great lady of Czechoslovakia." Having left his dog on the sidelines, he began the finals last week in his customary way of drawing Richards, the best volleyer in the world, to the net so that he could win points by passing him. For two sets Richards, pale and imperturbable, saw the ball go by again and again to fall on baselines where he could not reach it and he saw his own apparently ungettable shots come back to him as steadily as though he were playing them off a wall. In the next two sets Richards did what he had to do -- he scored his aces twice. He won those sets, and the crowd, understanding that they were watching such tennis as no one had played anywhere for a long time, forgot their manners to the extent of cheering in the middle of rallies.

Changing courts, Kozeluh rubbed his face with a towel and took a bit of lemon. As he walked back to the baseline after a point he often shook his head--the only gesture left in his gay repertory. Richards ran the score to 5-3, to advantage in the match game, lost the point and then stepping back for a slam, got the ball on the wood of his racket and netted it. Kozeluh won the game and Richards, on his next serve, double-faulted twice for the first time that day--too tired to make any resistance to his squirrel-quick opponent who won the next game, the set, the National Professional title.