Wimbledon

Played where golf, polo, jai alai, jujitsu and baseball are unknown, tennis amounts to a sort of outdoor Esperanto perfected by that spry, cosmopolitan band of young men and women who, in white clothes and becoming sunburns, buzz around the world to play it. Danes, Poles, Czechs, Australians, Chileans, French, Siamese, Americans, Japanese, English, Spaniards, Germans -- they were all at Wimbledon last week for the sport's greatest tournament, the All-England Championships.

Men. Spain's Enrique Maier lost to Germany's courtly Baron Gottfried von Cramm. England"'s dashing, dark-haired Fred Perry, out to achieve the feat of playing through to his third consecutive All-England singles title, did away with tiny, troublesome "Bitsy" Grant of Atlanta, Ga. Wilmer Allison, No. 1 for the U. S., failed to take a set from Bunny Austin, but red-haired Donald Budge took three straight from Australia's No. 1, Adrian Quist, to reach the semifinals. In that round, as everyone expected, Perry beat Budge, after losing the first set. Von Cramm polished off Austin.

Said green-eyed, slick-haired Baron von Cramm last spring: "I have what you Englishmen call 'something up my sleeve.' ... It is a stroke I learned from Tilden. With it, he says I can beat Perry." In the French hard-court championship last month Baron von Cramm made good his boast. Last week in the final at Wimbledon, the first game, on Perry's serve, went to 24 points before Perry won it. What followed this exciting start was a dull walkaway which Perry won 6-1, 6-1, 6-0, while his opponent barely moved to make a return. When it was over, the umpire announced to the bewildered crowd of 25,000: ''Baron von Cramm strained a muscle in his thigh in his first service of the match and is sorry he could not play better."

Women, Quick as a lizard, Chile's slick little Anita Lizana out-tricked California's methodical Helen Jacobs 6-1, in the second set of a match which Miss Jacobs eventually won 6-2, 1-6, 6-4. Philadelphia's Anne Page fell on a wet court and broke her arm. Frau Hilda Krahwinkel Sperling, German-born Dane, beat England's schoolteacherish Dorothy Round, while Poland's jolly Jadwiga Jedrzejowska jiggled baseline drives into corners where England's pretty Kay Stammers could not reach them, 6-2, 6-2.

Beaten once before in a Wimbledon final, Frau Hilda Krahwinkel Sperling, in her second, last week encountered a young woman whose record in this respect was far superior to hers. Helen Jacobs had played in four Wimbledon finals, lost three of them to Mrs. Helen Wills Moody, one to Dorothy Round. Last week, Frau Sperling lost the first set, 6-2. Miss Jacobs lost the second, 6-4. Leading 4-2 in the third, Miss Jacobs lost two games. Leading 5-4, she lost another. Leading 6-5 and 40-15, she lost two match points, just as she did a year ago against Mrs. Moody. Astoundingly, the next time match point came, a Sperling drive went crashing into the net. Always roundly cheered at Wimbledon, Helen Jacobs last week for the first time heard herself cheered for winning.

Doubles Champions, at the end of "Wimbledon Wreek," which lasts a fort night, were all England's: Pat Hughes & Charles Tuckey; Kay Stammers & Freda James; Fred Perry & Dorothy Round.

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