Word: jakes
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Vines taught him strokes, but he did not teach him the "big game." Jake figured that out himself-along with such lesser notions as eating football-style steaks before big matches and drinking warm tea between sets as energy boosters. Finally, along came Benefactor No. 4, a brilliant automotive engineer named Clifton Roche...
...Jake found that Roche's theories worked. Sample: when running to the left sideline, never hit the ball down the line unless you are trying for an ace-it gives your opponent too big an angle for a cross-court return...
...Jake began calling his new engineer friend Coach Roche. The Coach was a fanatic on psychology and energy conservation. In "third-stage" tennis, as Roche calls the big-time game, he says that players are often so evenly matched that an iota of stamina cdn mean the difference between victory and defeat. He argued that it was scientifically sound to press only on the right points. One time to press: when serving from the left court; the two big points, "thirty-fifteen" and "ad," begin there and it is less hazardous (for a right-handed player) to come into...
Every now & then, Coach Roche drops in unannounced to watch his boys play. Says Big Jake: "Just knowing he's there is a big lift." A year ago, in the finals of the National Singles at Forest Hills, Jake spotted the Coach in the stands. Kramer was leading Tom Brown, 2-0, in the third set and was about to ease up a little when he saw Roche clenching a raised fist (meaning "go for it"). Jake closed out the set, 6-0, for his first U.S. singles championship...
With better luck, it might have been his ' third or fourth title. Big Jake thinks that he is playing no better now than he did in 1942, the year he swept through ten straight tournaments and was stricken with appendicitis on the eve of Forest Hills. The next year it was ptomaine poisoning. In the 1944 and 1945 seasons, he was off on Coast Guard duty. He talks about it as though it happened to somebody else and was all a big joke...