Word: althea
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Ruthless Geometry. Back home after her victory in Paris and her quarter-final defeat at Wimbledon, Althea made a disappointing showing at Forest Hills, but she was sure by then that she would stick with tennis. She continued to work steadily with a new coach, Sydney Llewellyn, a Negro pro from New York with an unusual knack for teaching his rigidly defined theory of tennis. The game to Llewellyn is a ruthless exercise in geometry. For every shot, he argues, there is one proper return, one proper angle to aim for. "You don't play the person, you just...
...When Sydney first came to me," says Althea, "I thought, this guy can't teach me anything." But, for one thing, he changed her grip from the Continental, which allows a player to make forehand and backhand shots without rotating the racket, to the Eastern grip, which requires a slight rotation of the racket but allows a smoother, more powerful swing. Above all, he gave her confidence. "I'm a Virgo," says Althea, who takes her astrology seriously. "Sydney's an Aquarius, a guy of profound perception...
...Forest Hills last year, not even Sydney's perception could help Althea over a bad case of the West Side shakes. Says he: "She got outgeneraled and outfought by Shirley Fry. Forest Hills meant everything to her. She wanted it so much it awed her till it was like living in a pressure cabin. When the day came, she was a nervous wreck, and Fry beat her like a mother beats a child...
...Best Ever. It is doubtful that the new Althea will ever again be in the same kind of emotional pressure cabin. In Chicago last month, when she turned up for the national Clay Courts championship, hotels in stuffy Oak Park would not rent her a room; the swank Pump Room of the Ambassador East Hotel refused reservations for a luncheon in her honor. Officials and newsmen burned with rage, but Althea hardly noticed it. "I tried to feel responsibilities to Negroes, but that was a burden on my shoulders," says she. "If I did this or that, would they like...
Playing to please herself, just how good is Althea? Fortnight ago she led the U.S. team to an easy Wightman Cup victory (TIME, Aug. 19); last week she did beat both Louise Brough and Darlene Hard to win the Essex County Invitational tournament in Manchester, Mass. She may not yet be close to the steady, spectacular game that was the hallmark of women's tennis in the days of Suzanne Lenglen and Molla Mallory, of Helen Wills Moody and Helen Jacobs. The champions of a few years ago-Pauline Betz, Doris Hart, Maureen Connolly-could probably have beaten...