Even Dozen

In 1924 the U. S. defeated Australia in one fell swoop in the challenge round for the Davis Cup, great silver symbol of international lawn tennis supremacy. Last week, on the same courts of the Germantown Cricket Club, a 1938 crop of U. S. and Australian Davis Cuppers met again in the challenge (final) round.

The team from Down Under was a twosome: 25-year-old Adrian Quist, a fifth year Davis Cupper rated by many as the world's No. 2 amateur; and 19-year-old John Bromwich, a sophomore who caused a sensation in international tennis last year with his either-handed, both-handed racket grip. On the U. S. side was the world's No. 1 amateur, U. S.-English-French-Australian Champion Donald Budge; his doubles partner, Gene Mako; and 20-year-old Robert Riggs, the Los Angeles "quickie" who in two years had jumped from the municipal tennis courts to next-to-top national billing. Unquestionably the second-best tennist in the U. S., Riggs had never before played anything but ping-pong with the Australians, had never matched his strokes against international tennists. He was the 1938 question mark.

When, in the opening match of the series, cocky Robert Riggs turned himself into an exclamation point by beating seasoned Adrian Quist (4-6, 6-0, 8-6, 6-1), experts agreed that Australia had little chance of winning the Cup. Except for a brief shock the following day when the Australians took the doubles in a sensational reversal of form, the 9,000 spectators who filled the stands each day saw just what they had expected to see. Budge beat both Quist and Bromwich in routine fashion, clinched the series before the concluding match, lost by Riggs to Bromwich.

For the twelfth time the U. S. had won the Davis Cup, put up in 1900 by onetime U. S. Secretary of War Dwight Filley Davis.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.