Shadow for Substance

The action was so dull at the U.S. tennis nationals at Forest Hills last week that the New York Times's Allyn Baum, looking for a new angle, snapped Peru's Alex Olmedo lunging for a ball. The Times airbrushed out the player and printed his shadow, making it look like an ancient cave painting (see cut). The picture made a telling point: amateur tennis was only a shadow of its former self.

U.S. tennis is in a poor state. With the single exception of Cincinnati's crew-cut Tony Trabert, who turned pro in 1955, the U.S. has not produced a tennis star of consistent world championship caliber since Pancho Gonzales began to play for pay in 1949. Furthermore, the raids of Pro Promoter Jack Kramer on Australia's crack performers have lopped off amateur stars as fast as they emerged. Three years ago an erratic, second-string southpaw named Neale Fraser was ranked well behind Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall, was later overshadowed by Mai Anderson and Ashley Cooper. But with all four lured away by Kramer, Fraser was left as Australia's best. Yet last week Fraser had little trouble blazing his way to the finals with his spinning serve. Across the net was Peru's Alex Olmedo, who agreeably enough had won the Davis Cup for the U.S. in 1958, ineptly enough helped kick it away this year. The routed Americans were up in the stadium.

Fallen on such hard times, U.S. tennis experts turned to fretting about the uneven bounces produced by the chewed-up grass courts (predicted Kramer: "Some day all of Forest Hills will be cement"), grumbled that the big serve and put-away volley were ruining the game. Few outside the closed clique that governs amateur tennis in the U.S. seemed to care when Fraser walked off with the men's title, 6-3, 5-7, 6-2, 6-4.

In the women's half, the story was more of the same. In the first all-foreign women's final since 1937, Brazil's Maria Bueno, 19, the dark-haired Wimbledon champion, beat Christine Truman, Britain's power-hitting six-footer. It was the first time in the 79-year history of the U.S. championships that no American appeared in either title match.

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