Young Queen

Women's tennis had been in the doldrums since 1941, when Alice Marble left the scene. Its perfectly commendable roster of entirely adequate players seemed unable to turn up anyone in the legendary tradition of May Sutton or Helen Wills. But a Forest Hills gallery last week stood up and cheered with new hope for a sturdy, rosy-cheeked girl who will not turn 17 until next week. Second youngest women's national singles champion on record,* Maureen ("Little Mo") Connolly clearly was a good notch above her tournament competition.

Her style distinguishes her from most of the ladies. Nimbly toe-dancing on the baseline, she suddenly stops bouncing and slugs scorching drives--forehand or backhand--deep into enemy territory. Less outstanding are Maureen's service and volleying: she has the bone and muscle (130 Ibs.) but not quite the height (5 ft. 4 in.) to bang in cannonball aces and smashing kills.

A Real Find. When Maureen was much shorter and only ten, back in San Diego, her widowed mother, a church organist, moved into a modest home only half a block from the courts run by Tennis Pro Wilbur Folsom. Graduating from fence-peeking, Maureen began retrieving balls in exchange for lessons. Folsom converted her from a lefthander, taught her a strategy of baseline defense.

When Maureen was eleven, Folsom knew he had a real find on his hands, persuaded one of his well-heeled patrons to subsidize Maureen's lessons with famed Eleanor ("Teach") Tennant, who coached Helen Wills, Bobby Riggs and Alice Marble to glory. Teach, who has tutored Maureen ever since, began developing the dainty little baseliner into a hard-driving attacker.

In 1949, at 14, Maureen beat all the little girls, became the youngest U.S. girls' champion. Last year she kept her crown--and ranked tenth among the big girls in the women's division. This spring Teach decided that more junior competition would simply dull Maureen's game, coached her to a berth on the Wightman Cup team which beat Britain.

"Yeeow!" California's Perry Jones reckoned three months ago that Maureen was "one or two years" away from taking the U.S. women's title. Then he gave himself a neat out: "Maybe she'll fool some of us experts." Maureen not only fooled Oracle Jones last week; she had Teach near collapse in a marquee box.

In breezing through to the final without dropping a set, Maureen bowled over Veteran Doris Hart, three-time U.S. runner-up. Only Akron's steady Shirley Fry then stood between Little Mo and the big crown. After a battle fought mostly from the baselines, Loser Fry surveyed the result (6-3, 1-6, 6-4), then ruefully said: "No one can duel with her at the baseline . . . Go up to the net against her? . . . Ridiculous."

As her last shot forced an out, the new queen uttered an unqueenly "Yeeow!" Then she scampered to the net for a proper handshake, grabbed a towel near the umpire's chair and sobbed into it for joy over beating all the big girls at last.

* The youngest: May Sutton, who, when she won the title in 1904, was 2 1/2 months younger than Maureen was on her day of triumph.

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