A Pair of Jacks

In Australia, boyish Jack Kramer, the player on whom the U.S. relied most heavily to win back the famed Davis Cup, didn't try to look too good too early. He passed a preliminary singles tourney so that he would not reach top form before he wanted to. But last week the workmen were building temporary stands in Melbourne's Kooyong Stadium to accommodate the Cup crowds, and Jack let go.

His big serve sizzled over the net. Aggressive as ever, California's Kramer scrambled in behind his serve and put away shots with overhand smashes and light teasers. He still had one fault to work on: his forehand drives were floating instead of zipping. But he-beat Teammate Frank Parker in two quick sets and said, "Boy, it feels good to be hitting them again." If he kept on hitting them, he could spoil a big Christmas Week for confident, sport-crazy Australia.

Cricket and T-Bone Steaks. Australia, whose land is nearly as large as the U.S., but whose population is only about one-twentieth as big, turns out bigger sports crowds than the U.S. All last week, Australian radios blared the latest news of the play for "The Ashes,"* the traditional cricket matches with England. Before 80,000 noisy fans in Sydney, down went England again in the second of the five test matches. (In London, a man who feared that England was not taking its defeat with proper "lightness of heart" wrote the Daily Telegraph: "Some will say that it is one of our national characteristics to appear to take our battles less seriously than our test matches. We are mechanizing our playing of the game and souring our enjoyment of it by treating it like negotiations for the American loan.")

Hospitable Australians saw to it that the U.S. Davis Cup training table was filled with pitchers of milk--which is scarce in Melbourne--and T-bone steaks, which are scarcer. U.S. players got so many party invitations that they finally turned them all down. Jack Kramer got word that he had become a father--and was allowed one beer to celebrate.

The man he had to whip this week was an old crony--Australia's ambidextrous Jack Bromwich. Their games were unlike: Kramer is an enthusiastic big hitter, Bromwich is strictly a baseline hugger. Says Kramer: "I have the kind of game that can beat him if I am absolutely right." On their match would probably turn the Davis Cup of 1946. Experts agreed that none of the other three Americans--Frank Parker, Ted Schroeder, Gardnar Mulloy--nor Australia's Adrian Quist, Dinny Pails and Newcomer Colin Long were any match for the Jacks.

Flats & Splits. Since they rode in a borrowed Ford together from Chicago to Los Angeles in 1939, the two Jacks had felt that they would have a showdown some day. Kramer, then 18, did the driving, was arrested twice and spent one night in a Nebraska jail. The car burned out a bearing, lost a rod and had plenty of flat tires. There were additional refreshment stops for Bromwich, 20, who became acquainted with banana splits and ate four or five a day. That was the year that Bromwich and Quist upset the U.S. team and took the Cup home to Melbourne. There it has stayed, unplayed for--because of the war--ever since.

Since then, Bromwich has fought in New Guinea, recovered from a war wound. His ambidextrous game--he serves righthanded, has a left-handed forehand, uses both hands in hitting off the right side--is perhaps better than prewar. Bromwich, now in his prime at 28, is one of the few tennis greats who usually wins without ever going to the net.

At 25, Jack Kramer has not yet proved whether he is, one of the game's greats. But he is one of the most popular--mainly because he has never outgrown a wide-eyed enthusiasm. He gets along easily with the whipping-cream society that is part of big-time tennis, but says with refreshing candor: "Sure, I know they wouldn't be speaking to me if I couldn't hit a tennis ball."

At 13, when his dad first put a tennis racket in his hand, Jack thought the game was sissy, but when the family moved from Nevada to Southern California, he went to work at it. At 14, he was so good that he was put through California's well-advertised factory for promising young players. Four years later, he made the 1939 Davis Cup team--and got beaten.

For one reason or another (first ptomaine, then appendicitis, then a three-year hitch in the Coast Guard) it took him until last fall to become U.S. singles champion.

Much Ado about Money. Like most tennis amateurs, Jack is touchy about the mention of money. Says he: "Everyone knows that a good tennis player in America can make a living going around the country playing tournaments, but if he does, he's called a tennis bum." He can't see why the U.S. does not adopt a "realistic" attitude, as the Australians do. Australians have no objections to their amateurs holding jobs with sporting-goods firms; they are expected to do a full day's work except when they are playing tourneys.

If he passes this week's big test in Melbourne, Jack Kramer can almost name his own price to turn pro. He knows just how much he wants, if he does change over: "Somebody will have to deposit $50,000 in a bank in my name."

* The Ashes do not actually exist. The term was used by an English paper in 1882, to report the "death" of English cricket ("the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia"). An empty urn, standing in the "long" room of Marylebone Cricket Club, is the only tangible evidence of The Ashes.

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