Word: olmedo
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...nations: the U.S. and Australia. But last week, in the 1959 championships, the two big powers took back seats to and got one very rude shock from a pair of Latin nations, where tennis is still a relatively new and undeveloped sport. In the men's division, Alex Olmedo, who plays Davis Cup tennis for the U.S. but comes from Peru, which lists but 3,000 tennis players, was the class of the field. And in the women's division, a slender, poker-faced school marm named Maria Bueno brought Brazil its first big international championship...
...president of the Peruvian Tennis Federation, "two other friends and myself were the only ones who came to see him off. The Lima Lawn Tennis Club had not even let him train on its courts; he was not good enough for them." Last week Alejandro ("Alex" in the U.S.) Olmedo, 23, went home to Peru for the first time since he won the Davis Cup for the U.S. almost single-handed in Brisbane last December. This time what looked like all of Lima tumbled out to wave Peruvian flags printed with his picture and to chant themselves hoarse. The Lima...
...chant-"Olmedo! Olmedo! Ol-me-do!"-crashed across the apron as the champion, tall in his crisp blue suit, threw his arms around Sponsor Harten in an abrazo. With tears running down his face, he hugged his mother and father, his seven-year-old sister and his five brothers. That afternoon at Lima's National Stadium, President Manuel Prado decorated him with the Sporting Laurel of Peru (First Degree). Olmedo posed with the Davis Cup. then played a fast exhibition match against a fellow Davis Cup team member, St. Louis' Earl Buchholz. Appropriately, Olmedo...
Home in Arequipa in the southern Peruvian Andes, Olmedo was riotously paraded, speeched and kissed. He got time for only one much interrupted lunch at the little apartment on the International Club grounds where his father is combination caretaker and tennis professional and where "Alejo"-as he is called at home-grew up. Over his favorite dish, roast guinea hen, his mother sighed, "We have not seen much of you, and now you are leaving again. But I will be brave and will not cry." That afternoon, as she stood waiting for the plane that carried Alejo back...
Jack Kramer's contribution to our Davis Cup victory was tremendous. TIME says that Olmedo's game was sharpened under the watchful eye of Jack Kramer. Many of our members believe Olmedo would not have been here to play for the U.S. had it not been for George Toley, U.S.C. coach and pro for this club. He spent countless hours perfecting Olmedo's game and persuaded him to stay here when he became unbearably homesick for his native Peru...