At Auteuil

Austin v. Vines. Vines won the first game on his own serve. Little Bunny Austin, scampering smoothly about the red clay centre court at Roland Garros Stadium in his boyish white shorts, won the next two. Even seeing Vines's serve broken so early in the match did not prepare the crowd for what followed. Vines made ten double-faults. He pushed his drives out of court, angled his volleys past the sidelines. Then, the speed of his game lowered by Auteuil's slow clay and the slow French balls, he tried to match Austin's gentle, foxy placements. The net seemed to reach out for his drives; the baseline drew in for his lobs. He made 92 errors in the course of the match. When Austin was ahead, two sets, 5-4 and 40-15, Vines make a magnificent kill at the net. It looked then for one moment as though he might still recover his form and pull out the game at least. With a fine recovery on what looked like a passing shot, Austin won the next point and the match, 6-1, 6-1, 6-4.

Perry v. Allison-- If Austin, England's No. 1 singles player, could outclass Vines, who blew him off the court in straight sets at Forest Hills last year, it was clear that the mysterious influence which Roland Garros seems to have on U. S. Davis Cup teams was still at work last week. In the next match, it became clearer still. Perry won the first set, as his teammate had done, 6-1. Allison made him work in the second and at 4-5 on his own serve pulled out a game that went to deuce eight times. It was Allison's last threat. Slick, black-haired Perry, playing a fast, confident game, used whistling cross-court drives that caught Allison crouching flat-footed at the wrong side of the court to run out the set and the next one--in which Allison crept up bravely but forlornly from 0-3 to 4-all--6-1, 7-5, 6-4.

What small chance the U. S. team then had left to win the Davis Cup back from France in this week's challenge round, stayed alive for one more day. George Lott and John Van Ryn played magnificently against Perry and George Patrick Hughes. With Lett's service dominating the play, they won their match 8-6, 6-4, 6-1. The first of the two singles matches that followed, between Austin and Allison, was close and exciting but Austin, against an opponent who seemed worn and overtrained, had speed enough to win 6-2, 7-9, 6-3, 6-4. That decided the series and Perry's match against Vines would have been an anticlimax if it had been less desperately, less tragically played.

Vines came out on the court white with nervous fatigue, his sides taped and a bandage on the ankle he had twisted two days before. He won the first set 6-1, netted most of his shots as he lost the second without taking a game, outplayed Perry in the third, 6-4. and was ahead at 3-2 in the fourth when he fell, trying to recover one of Perry's cross-court drives. Obviously hurt, he managed to finish the set, which Perry won 7-5. Vines's service and the pace he gave his drives kept the next set close until the score was 7-6 and 40-15 in Perry's favor. Vines walked back to serve once more. As his long, knobby arms were getting set for the cannonball, he suddenly crumpled up, sprawled on the court in a dead faint. Perry jumped across the net, helped carry his opponent to the clubhouse where he was presently revived. Half an hour later, Vines came out leaning on Jean Borotra's shoulder. When a bystander yelped, "Deflated!", Borotra slapped his face.

The complete collapse of the U. S. Davis Cup team last week would have been more remarkable if it had not happened so frequently before. In 1931, the same English team even more unexpectedly beat a U. S. side that had Sidney Wood, Wimbledon finalist, and Frank Shields, Wimbledon runner-up, in place of Vines and Allison. Last year foxy Jean Borotra won singles matches against both Vines and Allison to keep the Cup for France in the Challenge round. Explanations for last week's surprise were as numerous as they were inadequate. Most experts suggested that Vines and Allison were "over-tennised." John Tunis who goes abroad every summer to cover tournaments for the New York Evening Post said before the matches started that playing in Australia last winter had been bad for Vines, without explaining why it had not hurt Australia's Jack Crawford who beat Vines in the Wimbledon final. Said shrewd Rene Lacoste: "Certainly Vines could have been better but account must be taken of the way Austin maneuvered him around the court."

Confident of winning the cup, the U. S. team this year made more elaborate preparations than ever before. In addition to Bernon S. Prentice, non-playing captain, and a trainer to prevent Vines from eating too many cucumbers, as he did a year ago. the U. S. team had a coach: famed Mercer Beasley, who will be tennis instructor at Princeton next fall and whose able book, How to Play Tennis, was published by Doubleday Doran last week. Comment on Beasley's behavior by Colyumist W. O. McGeehan: "All through the match between Vines and Austin he sat like Madame de Farge at her knitting, only . . . instead of the knitting needles of the French Revolution, he used a pencil and a tablet, making notes. He will present the notes to the United States Lawn Tennis Association, instead of the Davis Cup. . . ."

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