Amateur Week at Wimbledon

Like Childe Harold, the folks who run Wimbledon should have known what kind of fruit would spring from those seeds. Ever since open tennis went into effect this spring, amateurs have been beating pros with astonishing regularity. Yet when the seedings were announced for last week's 82nd All-England Tennis Championships, nine out of the top ten were pros. Tournament officials obviously assumed that professionals, by definition, are better players than amateurs, and that the pros would be at the top of their game for the first truly big open tournament. With two exceptions, they were wrong.

In a startling series of upsets, seven of the top ten seeds were eliminated before the quarterfinals. Six of them were pros--and five of those six were beaten by amateurs. At the end, two Australian pros, Rod Laver (seeded No. 1) and Tony Roche (No. 15) turned back the amateurs' challenge and fought it out between themselves for the title, with Laver winning 6-3, 6-4, 6-2. But not even that all-pro final could alter the fact that in the main it was Amateur Week at Wimbledon.

First highly seeded pro to fall was No. 8, Pancho Gonzales, beaten by Alexander Metreveli, an unseeded Russian who was happy just "to play against such famous men as Gonzales." After Pancho, the deluge. Australia's Lew Hoad (No. 7) was dumped by South Africa's Bob Hewitt, also unseeded; Aussie Roy Emerson (No. 5) lost to The Netherlands' Tom Okker, and Spain's Andres Gimeno (No. 3) went down before Ray Moore, a long-haired, self-styled hippie, who ranks only No. 3 in his home country of South Africa.

First Since 1959. The busiest giant killers were a pair of bespectacled U.S. amateurs, Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner. Ashe, ranked No. 13, polished off Okker and Australian Pro John Newcombe (No. 4); Graebner, who was unseeded, beat Aussie Pro Fred Stolle (No. 11) and Spain's Manuel Santana, who as No. 6 seed was the top-ranked amateur. Both advanced to the semifinals before losing--the first time since 1959 that two Americans had gone that far.

What was the matter with the pros? Partly, it was the playing conditions. Said Gonzales: "We are used to playing on poor courts at night under indifferent lighting in smoke-filled halls" --a far cry from Wimbledon's outdoor grass courts. The biggest problem was probably the pros' very professionalism --their tendency to hit "percentage" shots (while amateurs gambled on riskier shots that proved to be winners) and their basic disdain for their amateur opponents.

That is likely to change now. Losing to amateurs at Wimbledon certainly did nothing to improve the pros' image or their drawing power. And as for the amateurs: If they can lick the pros, why shouldn't they join them, instead of playing for $30 a day?

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