Word: jakes
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Jake has always understood that fact of sporting life; and he has always understood the all-round value of becoming a champion. Nothing has ever been allowed to interfere with his determination to make good at tennis...
...next day, Jake sat around watching the other kids playing (one of them was Schroeder). He did not know that he was watching the fledgling chicks of California's high-pressure tennis incubator. They had beautiful strokes, and Jake asked someone how a kid learned to play tennis that way. He was told: "Go see Perry Jones...
...Four. Perry Jones (TIME, Aug. 12, 1946), mother hen of California's tennis chicks, was the first of four men who helped mold Jake Kramer into a champion. Fussbudget Perry Jones-who says "I don't care how you hit your backhand . . . how do your pants look?"-liked the kid's looks; he was neat and polite. At Jones's suggestion the Kramer family moved in closer to Los Angeles where many of the good tennis players lived...
Benefactor No. 2 was Dick Skeen, one of the shrewdest teaching pros in the business. For $25 down and $5 a month, he began teaching young Jake how to swing a tennis racket. Each day, the youngster spent three hours on trolley cars, traveling the 18 miles between his home and Skeen's Beverly Hills court. Gradually his strokes took on a Skeen sheen. At 15, Jake easily beat Alice Marble, who was then women's singles champion...
...next step was getting somebody tougher to play against. Perry Jones got Ellsworth Vines, ex-amateur champion turned pro, the hardest hitter tennis had ever seen. Ellie Vines, Benefactor No. 3, agreed to play young Jake three times a week for five months...