Word: kramer
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...night before a big tennis match. Sometimes he got out of bed in disgust and ate a 4 a.m. breakfast. Last week, the hot, humid weather in Melbourne was no help. And it was no help either that he was the unexpected dark-horse choice to help Jack Kramer (TIME, Dec. 30) win the Davis Cup back from the Australians...
...When the Kramer-Schroeder team was announced, Melbourne papers gleefully predicted that Walter Pate, the bright-eyed little Wall Street lawyer who has captained U.S. Davis Cuppers for twelve years, had made a mistake. Frank Parker, nationally ranked the second best singles player of the six Americans who made the trip, complained angrily because he wasn't chosen. At 1:30 p.m. that afternoon, when Schroeder strode out before 14,500 fans in Kooyong Stadium on a slippery grass court, the pressure was on him. He was to meet Jack Bromwich, Australia's big gun, in the opening...
Whatever Jack Kramer did after that was sure to be an anticlimax. In the second singles match of the day, he barely moved off the baseline, but easily defeated Australia's Dinny Pails in straight sets, 8-6, 6-2, 9-7. Next afternoon, when Kramer and Schroeder (twice U.S. doubles champions, in 1940-41) teamed up against Bromwich and Adrian Quist, it was Schroeder's day again. Even though he made winning shots look difficult where Kramer made them look easy, it was Schroeder who carried the load with his smashing net game. That clinched...
...final two cup matches, which didn't matter, were won by U.S. second-stringer Gardnar Mulloy (over Pails, 6-3, 6-3, 6-4) and Kramer (over Bromwich, 8-6, 6-4, 6-4). It was the first Davis Cup sweep since 1935, when the English trounced the U.S. team...
Glowed Captain Pate, who had won his gamble: "I've always said Kramer and Schroeder at their peak are the best doubles team in the world. They very nearly reached that peak today." Ted Schroeder was now free to go back to Glendale, Calif, to sell refrigerators, a job he stuck to most of last summer when other U.S. tennis stars were playing tournaments. Said he: "A fellow's got to quit this tennis sometime and get down to business...