Light-Foot Favorite

Winning tournaments was getting to be old hat with the long-legged, light-footed girl from the U.S. Ever since November she had traipsed across Europe and Asia, swapping shots with some of the best women tennists in the world. Of 16 tournaments she entered, she had reached the finals in all, won the cup and singles titles in thirteen.* When she overpowered Britain's Angela Mortimer (6-0, 12-10) in Paris last week to win her 13th, the French women's singles championship, Althea Gibson, 28, flew over the net like a happy starling. In all Althea's long map-girdling season of success, the only woman she had not been able to beat was Angela Mortimer.

Merely getting to Paris was a signal achievement for Althea Gibson. She is a Negro, and she entered the aristocratic world of international tennis by the back door. Althea sneaked up on the game by playing paddle tennis on the streets of Harlem. She was 14 when she so impressed a Police Athletic League supervisor that he bought her a full-size racket. Later the pro at Harlem's Cosmopolitan Tennis Club taught her court tactics and coaxed her into daily practice. By 1948, at the age of 20, she was Negro women's champion. The prim and proper U.S.L.T.A. could not long evade inviting her to Forest Hills, and there, in 1950, she gave former National Champion Louise Brough the scare of her life before Louise's experience and talent finally pulled her out of the match. Ranked seventh in the U.S. in 1953, Althea went out to Missouri's Lincoln University (Negro) to teach physical education and coach the men's tennis team.

Last fall the U.S. State Department sent Althea on a good-will tour abroad. Her enthusiasm plus the responsibility of representing her country did wonders for her often erratic game. From Rangoon to Stockholm her concentration never wa vered. Only Angela Mortimer had the Indian sign on her (in the Scandinavian indoor, the Egyptian international and the Alexandria finals). But last week Althea clipped the wings of Angela, too. Uncertain footwork and an unreliable backhand are large faults to be covered up, even by Althea's grim determination. But so far Althea has managed. When she turns up at Wimbledon next month, her determination will have taken her a long way from her days as an object of polite curiosity. She will be the tournament's favorite.

* The titles, mostly provincial, include two championships in India, one in Germany, four in France, one in Monte Carlo, five in Italy.

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