In Mexico City

The sports which most foreigners identify with Mexico are second-rate bullfighting and revolutions. This is a gross injustice. Proud, excitable and much less torpid than they are reputed to be. Mexicans are ardent sportsmen, although they have invented no game of their own. Mexican boxing matches draw big crowds. Pelota (jai alai) gave rise to the game of fronton tennis, played with rackets instead of cestas. Yale's football coach, Reginald Root, got his experience coaching the first Mexico City University team which was good enough last year to hold Louisiana to 30 points. Mexican soccer and basketball teams have multiplied in the last ten years. Mexico City's best professional baseball team, the Aztecas, is fully as competent as most C league teams in the U. S. Dignitaries like onetime Secretary of War General Joaquin Amaro, General Jaime Quinones, Julio Miller, whose father-in-law is Mexico's Minister to England, play fair polo at their club near Mexico City. The country's boss, Plutarco Elias Calles. prefers poker but he also enjoys riding, golf; he had a set of Bobby Jones clubs with him at Ensenada where he was vacationing last week. President Rodriguez, an even more enthusiastic golfer, recently helped to arrange a splendid new course at Cuernavaca but golf is not yet Mexico's longest suit in sport. Foreigners almost invariably win Mexican championships. The term "caddy" in Mexican most often means a tennis ball-boy. There were two onetime caddies on the Mexican Davis Cup team which last week played in the American Zone Davis Cup matches at Mexico City. The crowd of 5,000 which sat under a broiling sun to see the matches had a painful disappointment. Neither one of Mexico's caddies distinguished himself at all. Esteban Reyes, a half-Indian nicknamed "Pajaro" because he swoops about the court like a small dark bird, was particularly eager to do well because he was playing on the courts of the Chapultepec Sports Club where he used to chase balls. But fair-haired young Clifford Sutler of New Orleans, playing lazily, beat him 6-1, 6-0, 6-1. The only satisfaction the crowd got the first day was the one set that small, slight Dr. Ricardo Tapia--who has been Mexican singles champion for the last five years, whose sister Maria is Mexico's woman champion and whose youngest brother Armando gives promise of becoming Mexico's best player--won from Wilmer Allison, in a match that Allison had to stir his stumps to win, 4-6, 6-3. 6-4. 6-4. Next day the U. S. team of George Lott & John Van Ryn disposed of Eduardo Mestre, whose father founded the Mexican Lawn Tennis Association, and Alfonso Unda, a onetime caddy, 6-0. 6-1, 7-5. That settled the series, and if Reyes and Dr. Tapia hoped the U. S. singles players would let down in the last two matches they had another disappointment. A broiling hot afternoon (92DEG) and Mexico City's altitude (7,500 ft.) suited Dr. Tapia but Sutter eventually pulled the match out, 6-1, 3-6, 7-5, 2-6. 6-1. Allison did away with Mestre in straight sets, 6-0. 9-7, 6-2. Challenge rounds of the Davis Cup matches this year will be played July 28-30 at Paris, a week after the final round in which experts expect the U. S. to oppose Germany or England. Without Dr. Daniel Prenn, who was dropped because he is a Jew, the German Davis Cup team last week beat Egypt, 5-0. Other first round match score: Italy 4; Jugoslavia 1.

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