Word: playe
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...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...
...next day, Jake sat around watching the other kids playing (one of them was Schroeder). He did not know that he was watching the fledgling chicks of California's high-pressure tennis incubator. They had beautiful strokes, and Jake asked someone how a kid learned to play tennis that way. He was told: "Go see Perry Jones...
...next step was getting somebody tougher to play against. Perry Jones got Ellsworth Vines, ex-amateur champion turned pro, the hardest hitter tennis had ever seen. Ellie Vines, Benefactor No. 3, agreed to play young Jake three times a week for five months...
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...
Right now Jake is pretty tired of hotels and laundry problems. As soon as possible he is going back home to Montebello, just outside Los Angeles, and he is looking forward to playing some golf-which he hopes to take up seriously some day, as Ellsworth Vines did after he made almost $200,000 out of pro tennis. (Last week, by tying in the Reno Open, Vines added $1,600 to the approximately $50,000 he has earned in five years as a golf pro.) Late in the month, Kramer will play in the Pacific Southwest Championships at the cement...