Latest Comet

Californians say her backhand is as smooth as Don Budge's. Ex-opponents declare her serve is as powerful as Helen Wills's. The girl who is trying to live up to this flossy build-up is California's 19-year-old Louise Brough (rhymes with stuff), U.S. Girls' tennis champion.

Louise may be no Helen Wills. But so far this season her go-getting game has been the sensation of U.S. tennis. While the men's grass-court tournaments produced no consistent winner, this big, blonde 145-lb. Amazon has smashed her way to five successive victories in big-time women's events.

Twice she trounced 22-year-old Pauline Betz, second-ranking woman tennist. In the Longwood Invitation tournament this week she humbled San Francisco's fourth-ranking Margaret Osborne the second time. At Maidstone, she wore sixth-ranking Helen Bernhard ragged.

A sophomore at the University of Southern California, Louise is studying marketing and merchandising, collects swing phonograph records, wears crimson lipstick, dotes on chocolate cookies, chocolate candy bars, chocolate ice-cream cones. She has been playing tennis only six years and still has a lot to learn. But the strokes she has mastered (particularly her American twist serve) are nearly as paralyzing as a Joe Louis punch.

This week she will try for the U.S. Women's championship at the West Side Tennis Club at Forest Hills. Her competition will be less tough than it might have been--Defending Champion Sarah Palfrey Cooke has abdicated her crown in favor of an expected baby. Consequently California's latest comet is favored to win. If she does, she will be the youngest women's champion since Helen Wills (who first won the title at 17).

Among the men, there is no outstanding newcomer this year. Hence, the men's singles should go to one of the four top-rankers who have found time to compete this year: 26-year-old Frankie Parker (on vacation from his job as assistant to the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's special-effects department), Lieut, (j.g.) Gardnar Mulloy (on leave after completing his indoctrination course at Annapolis), Ted Schroeder (scheduled to be inducted into the Navy the day after the tournament ends), and Billy Talbert (not yet called by his draft board).

The gallery, however, will be rooting for Francisco ("Pancho") Segura, a twinkle-toed, 21-year-old Ecuadorian with a grip like a baseball player's. Last year Segura was long on crowd appeal but short on court tactics. This summer, after seasoning on the grapefruit circuit, he won four clay-court tournaments in a row. Little Pancho can play on grass too. Last week at Longwood (last tune-up before the National), his tricky trapshots clouted his confounded opponents right through the final, where he licked Gardnar Mulloy, 6-3, 6-4, 7-9, 3-6, 6-1.

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