Word: jakes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...When he went over last June to breeze through England's famed Wimbledon tourney, he found that the British spectators were different. Unlike the U.S. crowd, which nearly always pulls for the underdog, they wanted to see the best man win. At Wimbledon, the alert expertness of Big Jake always seemed to be understood by the tennis-wise crowd, expressing itself in cries of "Good shot" almost as soon as the ball met the racket...
Wimbledon's head groundsman, a connoisseur of footwork, says he can always tell who will be in the semifinals by the way the players handle their feet. He paid Jake his highest compliment: "Never made a mark on the court." Jake, in turn, summed up his appreciation of Wimbledon: "It's really high class...
After winning the finals against Tom Brown (both of them thought they had played badly), Big Jake went to King George's box to receive the royal congratulations. As he walked toward the box he thought to himself, "Here I am, a young punk from California. . . ." But was he nervous? "No. I looked at the King the same way he looked at me. ... I guess both of us figured the other was pretty good in his own line." Said London's Daily Telegraph of Big Jake: "The only one of the postwar generation who could have lived...
...Lush Life. Jake Kramer's reward for being champion is the circus-performer's life of the big-time tennis circuit. He is dined, lunched, swum and bathroomed by the rich-and he doesn't particularly like it, but considers it part of the racket. On the West Coast, he gets invitations to visit tennis-minded movie stars, but almost invariably turns them down. "They always want to play tennis," he says, "and with a few exceptions they can't play tennis ... so you have a lousy time...
...short, for all his ability, for all his success, Jake Kramer is a "tennis bum"-as most amateur stars have been for the past 20 years. He isn't losing any sleep over it. "Everybody knows that a good amateur tennis player in America can make a living going around the country playing tournaments," he says, "and if he does, he's called a tennis bum." A tennis pro makes more money, and makes it openly. But the amateur camouflage is a necessary preliminary: it establishes the cashable reputation...