The Road to the Pros

All the up-and-coming tennis amateur needs is a taste for the right clothes, a talent for cocktail-party chatter and a superior knack for belting tennis balls. It is no trick at all to parlay such gifts into a year-round, expenses-paid vacation--wives and kids included. But many young players are not satisfied with such mild rewards. After he won the U.S. singles title in the summer of 1953, crew-cut Tournament Traveler Tony Trabert announced his intentions: for another season or so he would make a name for himself in amateur tennis; then he would be open to offers from the pros.

Tony married handsome Shauna ("Miss Utah State") Wood, quit the University of Cincinnati, and began playing harder than ever. But turning tennis into a business did not come easy. Bothered by blisters and hampered by a hair-trigger temper. Tony won only one major title (French singles) all last year. Only as a member of the successful U.S. Davis Cup team (TIME, Jan. 10) did he come up to his old form. Time was running out: another year as an also-ran and Tony might have to pick a new profession.

Last week, on the slippery boards of Manhattan's Seventh Regiment Armory, Tony started fast in one more try. His big serve skidding and hopping, his net game vastly improved and his temper in check, he breezed to the finals of the U.S.L.T.A. indoor singles championships. In the last round his Davis Cup teammate, Ham Richardson, 21, made him work for the title. But Tony, 24, was equal to the job. After losing the long first set, 11-13, Tony unwound, ran out the match, 7-5, 9-7, 6-3.

Such success on the boards means little compared to outdoor competition. But it does mean that Tony is in shape for his big effort. And it taught him that this summer, as he tries to play his way into the pros, one of his biggest problems will be Intercollegiate Champion Richardson, a Tulane senior (studying for the law) who puts in so much time studying when he could be playing tennis that he has won himself a Rhodes scholarship.

While Tony Trabert was edging up on professional tennis, a onetime sure shot backed away, perhaps for good. Last season, when a pro contract was hers for the asking, Maureen ("Little Mo") Connolly had gone horseback riding, tangled with a cement mixer and dropped out of amateur competition with a broken leg. Now, said Little Mo, her leg had mended but her spirit had not. A comeback was not worth the effort. Standing hand-in-hand with her fiance, San Diego State College Sophomore Norman A. Brinker, she announced: "I just don't enjoy tennis any more. I've lost that old spark . . . So I said, 'Let's analyze it, Mo. There's no use going on like this; might as well tie that hitch and get married.' "

The wedding has been set for June.

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