Upset

Men. "Nobody will give Perry a run." Wilmer Allison of Austin, Tex., who thus expressed last month the gist of expert opinion on the U. S. Singles Championship, flatly contradicted himself at Forest Hills, N. Y. last week. When Allison and Fred Perry, world's No. 1 amateur tennist for the past two years, started to rally before their match in the semifinals, the crowd dubiously hoped that Allison would be able to do as well as he had a year ago, when he carried Perry to five sets. No one expected him to do more. When they left the court an hour later, Allison had become the first player to beat Perry in major competition this season. He had, what was more, done it in straight sets, 7-5, 6-3, 6-3.

Major tennis upsets are rare and seldom completely satisfactory. Last week's was no exception. After it was over, experts wondered how much of it was due to the fact that Allison was playing better than ever before in his life, and how much to what happened to Perry in the seventh game of the first set. The first rally in that game ended when Perry fell flat on his face chasing a drive he could not reach. When he got up, he grinned to indicate that he was not hurt but thereafter throughout the match he was noticeably slower than usual, often put his hand to his side in a gesture of pain. After the match, doctors said he had a displaced kidney. Perry refused to comment on his injury, said, "I've had a licking coming to me for a long time," consoled himself a day later by motoring to Harrison, N. Y., and marrying Cinemactress Helen Vinson.

A weather-beaten, drawling, lantern-jawed Texan, Wilmer Allison has been one of the ten best tennists in the U. S. since 1928. He has been a member of six Davis Cup teams, has been a finalist at Wimbledon and Forest Hills. Nonetheless, although he had won four doubles titles, until last week he had never won a major singles championship. This season, most critics thought from Allison's performance abroad, when he lasted only one round at Wimbledon, lost to Perry, Austin and von Cramm in Davis Cup play, that, at 30, he had passed his peak as an athlete. Day after his match against Perry last week, Allison's opponent was the brilliant, tow-haired, temperamental Sidney Wood, who had reached the final by beating Bryan ("Bitsy") Grant, who had upset ailing young Donald Budge. Faced once more with a chance for a major championship, Allison finally took it, in one of the most one-sided finals in Forest Hills history, 6-2, 6-2, 6-3.

Women. The absence of Helen Wills Moody gave her archrival, Helen Jacobs, a chance to become the first woman who has ever won the U. S. Singles Championship four years in a row. Her major obstacles were Sarah Palfrey Fabyan, Carolin Babcock and left-handed Kay Stammers of England.

Kay Stammers took care of Carolin Babcock in the quarterfinals. Sarah Palfrey Fabyan took care of Kay Stammers the next day. On the afternoon of the Allison-Perry match, to which her characteristic bad luck made her own triumph an anticlimax, Helen Jacobs quickly and calmly took care of Sarah Palfrey Fabyan herself, 6-2, 6-4.

Professionals. William Tatem Tilden II won the U. S. Singles Championship for the first time in 1920. He won it six times thereafter, made himself indisputably the greatest player of the times, turned pro fessional in 1931. With Ellsworth Vines at home in California, Tilden last week became a U. S. Champion for the tenth time in his career, by beating tireless, brown-faced Karel Kozeluh, 0-6, 6-1. 6-4, 0-6, 6-4 in the final of the ninth National Professional Championship played in the presence of a handful of spectators on clay courts, at Flatbush, N. Y.

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