Easy After All

After the long years of trying, after the rebuffs that kept her out of tournaments she might have won, after the jitters that kept her from titles she should have won, the match that meant most of all was astonishingly easy. On the slick and tricky turf of the West Side Tennis Club at Forest Hills last week, husky, lightfooted Althea Gibson (TIME, Aug. 26) breezed through the finals of the U.S.L.T.A.'s national championships just as surely and easily as she used to win paddle tennis games on the streets of Harlem.

Playing with the authority of a Wimbledon championship behind her, Althea lost not a set as she worked her way onto the center court for the payoff match with California's Louise Brough. A canny and experienced campaigner who had won the title herself just ten years ago, Louise tried every trick she knew to stave off the inevitable. She pounded Althea's weak backhand, only to watch it grow stronger. She tried to step up the speed of her own serves, only to make deadly double faults. Taking her time, getting more depth on her shots as her opposition faded, Althea had things all her own way. She hardly drew a hurried breath as she won, 6-3, 6-2. The first Negro to cross the tennis color line was the first lady of tennis.

After Althea, the U.S.L.T.A. championships no longer belonged to the U.S. For the second year in succession, the men's final was an all-Australian affair. First-seeded Ashley Cooper, 20, faced unseeded Malcolm Anderson, 22. A stocky student who turned down a brace of scholarships at Australian universities to concentrate on tennis, Cooper had been the favorite all week long. Slim, moody Mai Anderson, son of a Queensland cattle rancher, had been playing such mediocre tennis before Forest Hills that he almost missed a berth in the tournament.

But Cooper, for one, knew he was in for no easy time. During the week he had watched Mai, who had never tried bowling before he went to Forest Hills, go out for an evening's entertainment and bowl a respectable 200. He had also watched Mai on the tennis courts, whipping America's awkward in-and-outer Dick Savitt in straight sets. This was one week when Mai Anderson's luck seemed all good.

His tennis was even better than his luck. His crackling serve seldom faltered. His backhand, a weak weapon all spring, was suddenly sure and sharp. Neither man made many errors; both scored their points with spectacular placements. Anderson scored the big ones, and he won in straight sets, 10-8, 7-5, 6-4.

Afterwards, Vice President Richard Nixon presented the new champs with the big silver mugs (along with a polite reminder to return them in a year) plus silver platters that are theirs for keeps and golden tennis balls. Before he got tired of passing out the hardware, Dick Nixon might just as well have given the Australians next year's Davis Cup.

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