National Doubles

Up to the semifinals, the national doubles tennis championship at Brookline, Mass, last week was played like most tournaments, strictly according to form. There was nothing that looked like an important upset until the quarter-finals when Berkeley Bell & Gregory Mangin had Henri Cochet and his 18-year-old partner, Marcel Bernard, two sets down and 2-0 in the third. Bernard went over to speak to Cochet. He seemed to be apologizing for his errors, promising to do better. Cochet smiled and the Frenchmen, piling up points as Bell & Mangin tired, won in five sets 1-6, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4, 6-1. The match put them in the semi-finals against Ellsworth Vines & Keith Gledhill, Vines's best friend who he thinks should have been on the Davis Cup team. The other semifinalists were George Lott Jr. & Frank Shields and the defending champions, John Van Ryn & Wilmer Allison. It often happens, despite careful seeding, that the best match in a national tournament comes in the semi-finals and it happened last week, when Van Ryn & Allison played Lott & Shields. Lott is undoubtedly the ablest doubles player in the U. S. Van Ryn & Allison have been teamed so long that their games mesh perfectly. They ran out the first set easily at 6-3. Then Lott, who has won the doubles title three times (with John Hennessey, 1928; with John Doeg, 1929-30), began to rifle his forehands down the centre of the court and fool Allison with neatly concealed lobs to the backline. Lott & Shields won the next two sets 6-2, 11-9. Shields, with the strongest service of the four, was weakest off the ground; his errors cost his team the fourth set, 6-4. Lott & Shields were leading 4-1 in the last set, then at 3-4 and 0-40 with Allison serving, then at 0-30 on Allison's serve in the 20th game. That was as far as they could get. At 11-all, the break that all four knew would sooner or later end the match came on Shields's serve, which twice before he had won at love. Allison & Van Ryn took the next game with four straight points for the match set, 13-11. Statisticians counted up a score that for once was a true indication of how close the play had been: Games: Allison & Van Ryn 36, Shields & Lott 35. Allison & Van Ryn had 78 earned points to their opponents 87, 139 errors to 151.

Whether Cochet is as good as ever when he wants to be is what the national singles championship next week will prove. Certainly he seldom wants to be as good as he can be. Cochet's misplays, as much as Bernard's, cost the French team a long listless match with Vines & Gledhill, 16-14, 3-6, 4-6, 9-7, 6-2. Almost everyone expected, on the showing of the teams in the semifinals, that Van Ryn & Allison would reverse the beating they took from Vines & Gledhill in the Newport final last fortnight. Instead, Vines suddenly went to the very peak of his game, dominated the match completely, poured into court a stream of bullet serves, volleys at incredible angles, drives that caught Van Ryn & Allison ankle-high. At 0-5 in the third set, Allison & Van Ryn made a last stand. They took Allison's serve and then broke Vines's for the first time in the match. Vines & Gledhill promptly broke through Van Ryn in the next game for the match and championship, 6-4, 6-3, 6-2.

Mixed Doubles Champions: Fred Perry of England & Sarah Palfrey of Boston, 7-5, 6-3, against Vines & Helen Jacobs.

Father & Son: J. D. E. Jones and his son Arnold, of Providence, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4. against Edward Henry Burns and Son Edward Wanner, of New York, for the sixth year in succession, after losing their first set in three years.

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