Wightman Cup

When Mrs. Helen Wills Moody fell ill last week of what her doctors called "sub-acute unstable fifth lumbar vertebrae symptoms" and what Sports Colyumist Westbrook Pegler called "a crick in her back," it looked alarming for the U. S. Wightman Cup team. The ablest substitute in sight was slim, brown Sarah Palfrey, a girl who has played the most graceful tennis in the U. S. for the last four years but who has always, out of some childish nervousness, failed to do her best in important matches. Last fortnight Sarah Palfrey beat U. S. Champion Helen Jacobs in the final of a tournament at Seabright, N. J. This made it look as though her game had finally grown up. Mrs. Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman, who put up the trophy for a series between U. S. and British teams because she felt that women's tennis needed something to correspond with the Davis Cup and who has ably coached Sarah Palfrey and her tennis playing sisters at Longwood. Mass., told her before the matches started that she would probably have to play. Incredulous, Sarah Palfrey said, "That's fine." Before she had time to grow really alarmed about her responsibilities, she found herself on the stadium court at Forest Hills, serving against saucy, snub-nosed, left-handed Peggy Scriven. After the match was over, 6-3, 6-1 for Sarah Palfrey, she explained how she had done it. "I stopped thinking about how I was going to hit the ball and thought about where I was going to hit it." Because Alice Marble, a muscular California girl who had tired herself out with a 108-game match a few days before, also dropped off the U. S. team, Miss Palfrey had another match on her hands an hour later. She and Helen Jacobs beat Dorothy Round and Mary Heeley, who was wearing a glove on her racket hand, 6-4. 6-2. With husky Helen Jacobs' 6-4, 6-2 singles victory over demure Miss Round--whose tennis manners suggest where she learned the game, on the lawn of her father's vicarage at Dudley, England--it gave the U. S. a lead of 3 matches to o, with four to play. Needing one more match, it looked the next day as though the U. S. team could not fail to win--until Miss Round, who took a set from Mrs. Moody at Wimbledon, had taken a brilliant match from Sarah Palfrey 6-4, 10-8, and Betty Nuthall had beaten Miss Marble's single's substitute, Carolin Babcock, 1-6, 6-1. 6-3. U. S. women's doubles teams seldom live up to their potentialities and there was small chance of a U. S. pair beating Betty Nuthall and Freda James, even though Mrs. Moody felt sufficiently re covered from her crick to put on her tennis skirt intending to play in case the doubles turned out to be the deciding match. It turned out not to be. With the score 5-7, 6-2, 3-5 against her in her match with Peggy Scriven, Helen Jacobs let the English girl get as far as 30-all. Then, playing pat-ball tennis to match her opponent's, she won four games in a row for set, match and series -- 4 matches to 3 after Alice Marble and Marjone Gladman Van Ryn lost the doubles, 5-7, 2-6.

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