Tight Tour

The winds in Wellington, New Zealand, last week were every bit as bad as their reputation, and the visiting tennists were every bit as good. Despite blustering westerlies that whipped through the "World's Windiest Capital," Pro Champion Pancho Gonzales and Challenger Lew Hoad put on so relentless an exhibition that down under fans were perfectly satisfied that they had seen the most powerful tennis ever played anywhere.

More accustomed to calculating the breezes, Old Campaigner Gonzales came out ahead, 6-3, 6-3. But the victory gave Pancho only a slim 5-4 lead in the 100-match contest that started in Brisbane and is planned to wander all over the world. So close is the competition that next day in Christchurch, Lew zeroed in on the base line and pounded Pancho's backhand so aggressively that he evened the score in straight sets, 6-4, 7-5.

Remembering Lew's sad debut last year, when he first took King Jake Kramer's shilling ($125,000 worth, to be exact) and was whipped by almost every pro he played, a few cynical sports suggested that last week's tight tennis was all an act. But no one with decent eyesight took the sneers seriously; the matches were too tough, too tense to be the least bit phony. In Sydney a fine two-hour contest of four sets sent Pancho to the showers with an aching forearm muscle and a stomach tied in knots. In Adelaide. Pancho's tennis-toughened hands took such a beating that he lost in five sets and left the court with three fingers bleeding. Next day, heckled by a pro-Hoad crowd, Pancho slammed a ball out of the stadium when a linesman's call went the wrong way. He snarled at a slow-moving ball boy, gulped a handful of salt tablets, and finally took out his explosive anger on Hoad. His blistering serves kicked too high and hard to be handled. He got his racket up to almost all of Lew's astonishing stop volleys, and somehow he kept up the incredible pressure until he won the wearing marathon, 11-13, 6-3, 3-6, 6-2, 7-5.

Said former Aussie Davis Cupper Adrian Quist: "Their sole aim seemed to be to crush one another. Their standard of play is better than we have ever seen." Said Hoad, who is only too happy to explain how he has hopped up his game to match the wondrous power of Gonzales: "I'm hitting harder, flatter, trying to drive the other man to the base line. Either he can slam a hot one down the sideline or he can go for a cross-court drive. Now I always cover that sideline."

This type of percentage tennis is something Hoad learned from Promoter Kramer. At week's end it was still paying off for him as he beat Pancho, 6-4, 6-3, 8-6, to take a 6-5 lead on the tour. It was obviously paying off for Big Jake too. As he counted crowd after capacity crowd, he happily predicted that he would come home with a whopping profit of $225,000.

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