Jack in the Armory

On the close-shaven grass courts of Forest Hills and Melbourne, 25-year-old Jack Kramer had swept all amateur tennis opponents before him. How would the Davis Cup hero do on a slippery board floor? He wasn't sure himself. Last week, in the U.S. indoor championships in Manhattan's Seventh Regiment Armory, he put himself to the test. It was his first indoor tournament.

Like most outdoor tennis players, he found the indoor game on boards confusing at first; the ball seemed to fly through the air faster, and shot off the varnished wood floor in a quick, disconcerting skid. On board floors a "big serve" and severe volleys are almost unreturnable.

But Kramer, after getting used to the way "that ball bounces funny on the boards," breezed through his first three matches so easily that his hair (a crew cut partly grown out) stayed plastered down. In the semifinals, he met 34-year-old Sidney B. Wood Jr., onetime Wimbledon champion who now (with pro star Don Budge) runs a fashionable Manhattan laundry. Time & again Wood showed that he could still hit a perfect overhead while leaping backwards, still nick the sidelines with smoking passing shots. Wood's laundry customers, out in strength, applauded wildly

But neither Wood nor wooden floors could beat California's Jack Kramer. The champion hugged the baseline, matched Wood's finesse with power and control, won in three hard-fought sets, 6-3, 6-4. 6-4. In the finals, two days later, he faced Bobby Falkenburg (brother of Jinx), whose tremendous first serve and smashing net game had been too much for Davis Cupper Billy Talbert. Kramer's return of service made the big serve look less sizeable. As effortlessly as if he were playing table tennis, Kramer kept ramming Falkenburg's cannonball right back up the cannon, and walked away with the match, 6-1, 6-2, 6-2. Throughout the tournament, Kramer never lost a game on his own service. By the time he had lashed over the last ace, veteran galleryites were nodding in sage agreement: the way that boy was playing now, nobody in today's world could beat him--amateur or professional, indoors or out.

Winners in other divisions:

P: Women's singles: steady Pauline Betz (TIME, Sept. 2), repeating her last fall's victory at Forest Hills over No. 4 ranking Doris Hart, 6-2, 7-5.

P: Men's doubles r Kramer and Falkenburg, in a five-set final over Talbert and Wood's old Davis Cup running mate, Francis X. Shields.

P: Women's doubles: Miss Hart and Barbara Scofield, a pert little University of Miami (Fla.) girl with freckles and pigtails, who pouts when she misses, pirouettes when she scores, and almost clouts the cover off the ball.

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