Ups & Downs Down Under

Before the Davis Cup matches with Sweden last week, U.S. Captain Frank Shields kept telling his players to keep plugging, that the Swedes were no pushovers. It was hardly necessary to remind the U.S. team that Sweden had given Australia a real fight a year ago before losing the round, 3-2. What's more, no one was quite sure whether or not the Swedish team, in its indifferent showing this year, was up to some foxy strategy: not once, in two warm-up tournaments, had the Swedes met a U.S. Cup player.

But it was soon clear that the Swedes were neither playing foxy nor up to their last year's form. In the first match, the U.S.'s Veteran Ted Schroeder hardly worked up a good sweat as he whipped Swedish Champion Lennart Bergelin, 6-2, 6-2, 6-4, in just 51 minutes. In the other singles, Tony Trabert, 21, had a longer (87 minutes) tussle before subduing Sven Davidsson, 6-3, 6-4, 9-7. But Schroeder's dazzling form had Aussie experts shaking their heads in dismay: "Ted's going to give us trouble again."

Next day in the doubles, the Aussies were again shaking their heads--this time in amazement at Schroeder's shaky performance as he and Trabert dropped the first set to Sweden, 10-12. The U.S. players finally got their signals straightened out, won the match, 6-0, 6-3, 6-2, and clinched a shot at Australia in the Challenge Round. The final singles matches, just a formality, gave the U.S. a 5-0 sweep. But the result threw the U.S. line-up for the Cup matches against Australia into another tailspin. It was obvious that the U.S. doubles team, which had been counted on to upset the flashy Aussies, was not up to scratch. Captain Shields, who had sidelined his two top singles players, Dick Savitt and Vic Seixas, would just as obviously have to start thinking about some new combinations. A fortnight before the big test, Australian Captain Harry Hopman was elaborately unworried: "I saw nothing in the play to frighten members of Australia's Davis Cup squad."

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