Davis Cup

The longest Davis Cup challenge-round singles set on record is the 17-15 one which red-haired Maurice McLoughlin won from Norman Brookes in 1914. Last week at Wimbledon, when another red-haired Californian, Donald Budge, played husky Charles Edgar Hare of England in the 1937 Davis Cup challenge round, the games seesawed with service up to 13-all before Budge finally broke through to win. What made the set more remarkable was that Hare, England's No. 2, had been considered barely able enough to make Budge stretch his long legs. Even when Budge ran out the next two sets 6-1, 6-2 it caused tennis experts, who had regarded a U. S. victory in the challenge round as practically won after the U. S. beat Germany in the interzone final last fortnight (TIME, July 26), to feel much less certain. Henry Wilfred ('"Bunny") Austin, England's No. i, had already mopped up the court with the U. S. No. 2, young Frank Parker, 6-3, 6-2, 7-5. Now it looked as though Hare, previously considered likely to lose both his singles matches, was highly likely to beat Parker. If Great Britain could win the doubles match as well, or if Austin, always inspired in Davis Cup play, could reverse his straight-set defeat by Budge in the London Championship in June. . . .

Two days later U. S. alarm was some-what allayed when Budge & Gene Mako beat F. H. D. Wilde & C. R. D. Tuckey, 6-3, 7-5, 7-9. 12-10. That left Budge and Parker the job of winning between them at least one of the last two singles matches to clinch the Cup.

They did better by winning both, clinching the Cup by 4 matches to 1. Parker, playing some of the surest tennis of his career, almost blasted Hare, wildly smashing and volleying, off the court (6-2, 6-4, 6-2). In what then amounted to an exhibition match, Donald Budge easily outplayed Bunny Austin (8-6, 3-6, 6-4, 6-3). Thus the Cup put up in 1900 by Dwight Filley Davis was returned to the U. S., for the first time since 1926, by the youngest U. S. Cup team in history.

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