Word: olmedo
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...action was so dull at the U.S. tennis nationals at Forest Hills last week that the New York Times's Allyn Baum, looking for a new angle, snapped Peru's Alex Olmedo lunging for a ball. The Times airbrushed out the player and printed his shadow, making it look like an ancient cave painting (see cut). The picture made a telling point: amateur tennis was only a shadow of its former self...
...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...
Chief in Command. Olmedo's victory was no surprise. When the going is easy, the lithe, 23-year-old Peruvian with the classic Inca features can blow a match with the best of them. But his charging, slashing game stiffens under pressure, and at Wimbledon the going was tough enough to challenge his mastery. Ranged against him were Australia's nimble Rod Laver, 20, and dark-haired Roy Emerson, 22, and America's moody, towering (6 ft. 4 in.) Barry MacKay. 23, Olmedo's Davis Cup teammate against Australia last winter. MacKay did not get beyond...
With polished grace, "The Chief" dispatched them both. He merely warmed up on Emerson. 6-4, 6-0, 6-4, in the semifinals. In the finals Olmedo cracked Laver's service in the very first game, artfully alternated his power game with contrapuntal lobs, and walked off. 6-4. 6-3, 6-4. with the world's most famous tennis title...
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...