At Forest Hills

Mrs. Helen Wills Moody is so much the best women's tennis player in the world that it is not unnatural for her to behave in ways that, for a lesser player, might seem arrogant. Moreover she is married and tends to be serious-minded. U. S. Lawn Tennis Association officials rather expected her to enter the singles championship at the last minute again this year but Helen Moody decided not to. She stayed in Paris, "to study painting." The U. S. L. T. A., which had paid her expenses abroad to play at Wimbledon, expecting she would return to make the U. S. championship a financial success, was piqued. There were reports that if Mrs. Moody went abroad again next year she would pay her own way. Meanwhile, on the green blanket of turf that lies between the railroad tracks and the neat suburban cottages of Forest Hills, galleries slimmer than they have been for the last five years saw a week of pleasant ladies' tennis that contained only one major surprise.

To experts who had seen her beat Dorothy Andrus Burke, Mary Greef and Joan Ridley of England at Seabright last month, what dark, 20-year-old little Carolyn Babcock of Los Angeles did last week was exciting and satisfying. To the rest of the gallery which had never heard of her before, it was amazing. She had a hard match in the second round against Mrs. Burke which she won 10-8, 10-8, but her first real test came two rounds later against Mrs. Lawrence Harper who was runner-up in 1930, when Helen Wills Moody stayed in California. They played their first set in a pouring rain and Carolyn Babcock won 6-3. Next day they went out to finish and Mrs. Harper, with a day to get over the shock of being outplayed by an unranked opponent, ran the score up to 5-2 and set point. That was as far as she could get. Carolyn Babcock, with a forehand so much like Ellsworth Vines's that it was easy to believe she had learned it from his coach, Mercer Beasley, played the kind of calculating tennis that Beasley teaches his proteges, to run out the match 7-5. In the semifinal, Carolyn Babcock was paired against Joan Ridley. She beat the English girl again in three long sets that took an hour and a half 4-6, 7-5, 6-3. On the other side of the draw, muscular Helen Jacobs had had one shaky afternoon against Marjorie Gladman Van Ryn, who interrupted the match frequently to inquire of press telegraphers about her husband, playing Ellsworth Vines at Newport (see below). Both Van Ryns lost. Two days later Helen Jacobs took the step penultimate to what she hoped would be her first U. S. championship by beating another British semifinalist, Mrs. Elsie Goldsack Pittman, 6-2, 6-3. Either way the Babcock-Jacobs match turned out it was a much more dramatic final than anyone had expected. The biggest gallery of the week--2,500--knew that it might turn out to be the triumph that Helen Jacobs has been waiting and playing for ever since she won the girls' championship in 1924 and 1925, a triumph long delayed for her by the coincidence of her career with Mrs. Moody's; or that, ironically for Miss Jacobs, it might turn out to be the culmination of a career which would then be the precise opposite of hers in its spectacular brevity, its absence of disappointments. Before the match was ten minutes old the gallery knew which eventuality to expect. Carolyn Babcock, tired from her long match with Joan Ridley, had lost all control of her shots. Rattled by opportunity, she made 52 errors to 23 for her opponent while Miss Jacobs, pounding the ball deep to shut off the Babcock cross court drives, won the two sets and her first U. S. singles championships in 31 minutes, 6-2, 6-2. To top off her greatest year, which contained also the honor of being runner-up at Wimbledon. Miss Jacobs, paired with Sarah Palfrey of Sharon. Mass., disposed of Alice Marble and Mrs. Whitfield Painter. 8-6, 6-1. for the U. S. women's doubles title.

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