Forest Hills Finalists

Women. At Forest Hills, L. I. last week the U. S. women's singles championship went not to a dark horse but to what the horse world calls a sleeper, i.e., one whose victory comes as a great surprise to all save the very sophisticated. Last year's Champion Alice Marble, who was scheduled to meet Poland's hefty Jadwiga ("Jaja") Jedrzejowska in the final, was instead put out in the quarter-finals by Dorothy May Bundy. Chubby Miss Bundy, who resembles her famed tennis-playing mother May Sutton (U. S. champion 1904, and Wimbledon champion 1905, 1907), more than her rotund and equally famed, tennis-playing father Tom (U. S. doubles champion with Maurice Mclaughlin in 1912, 1913, 1914), was promptly put out (6-2, 6-3) in the semi-finals by Chile's Anita Lizana, the nimble daughter of a Santiago professional. Meantime Jadwiga Jedrzejowska eliminated Helen Jacobs, whom she had already beaten in the quarter-finals of this year's French championship, 6-4, 6-4.

The only outcome capable of confounding the Forest Hills authorities more than an all-foreign final was to have Anita Lizana beat touted Jadwiga Jedrzejowska, a Warsaw typist whose powerful forehand had been strengthened by beefsteak breakfasts, for the championship. Miss Lizana had beaten Miss Jedrzejowska twice before this season in Europe, but Miss Lizana prefers ice cream and candy to meat. Consequently it came as a surprise to most spectators when she proceeded to give the sinewy Pole a third trouncing by pounding her slow backhand, catching her flat-footed with deft drop-shots, 6-4, 6-2. Then, after being photographed with her first U. S. championship cup, first won by a foreigner since Betty Nuthall did it in 1930, little (5 ft.) Champion Lizana swooned away.

Men. A favorite won the men's championship as advertised, although there were moments at Forest Hills last week when it seemed that the last big match of the tennis season, between California's J. Donald Budge and Germany's Baron Gottfried von Cramm, might never take place. While Budge was pacing easily through the field without once losing a set or even being carried to deuce games, von Cramm needed four sets to beat Hal Surface and Donald McNeill, both unseasoned players, and Bitsy Grant, whom he disposed of in straight sets at Wimbledon this year, took him to five furious sets in the quarterfinals. After the semifinals, in which Budge blasted his Davis Cup teammate, Frank Parker, off one court, and von Cramm had to overcome a discouraging two-set lead to fight his way past 19-year-old Robert Riggs on another, the Budge-von Cramm match was assured but it hardly promised to be great.

Whether he had been put off his game by facing exceptionally bright sun as some sportswriters suggested, or had merely underestimated his earlier opponents in the finals, von Cramm returned to grade A play shortly after the sun retreated behind the clouds and Budge had run out the first set, 6-1. Attacking in the face of Budge's smoking service and confident advances to the net, von Cramm managed to break through Budge's service and take the second set 9-7. For the next 56 min., the attack seesawed from one side of the net to the other, with many a point well-earned by blistering placements or clean kills. Both players' errors, when not forced, were due mostly to overeagerness: Budge in over-reaching the lines, von Cramm by netting his fast but treacherously low returns. Budge took the third set 6-1, von Cramm the fourth 6-3. At this point, with the stage prepared for a magnificent drama like that when he met von Cramm in this year's Davis Cup interzone match, Budge rudely proceeded to knock the props from under the last act, outmaneuvering von Cramm all over the court and at the net in a one-sided 6-1 set to win his first U. S. championship.

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