OCR Text |
Show Tennis' ; Mam M ITIhe DDecadle 1 Budge- 1 By DILLON GRAHAM NEW YORK, Jan. IS UPt By a margin as thin as that of a questionable ques-tionable ace that barely nicks the narrow boundary stripe, Donald Budge, California's carrot-thatched comet gets our nomination over Britain's marvelous Fred Perry as the Man of the Decade In tennis. Regrettably, from a standpoint of Jong competitive comparison; the lanky Budge scurried into the professional ranks Just when he hsd polished his game to perfection. perfec-tion. World's Greatest He Is without doubt the world's greatest player today. Only the records of Perry and Ellsworth Vines could challenge his over the decade and Budge has beaten them often and soundly In the last year. Most experts believe he is better now than Vines or Perry ever were snd possibly even better than Tillman Till-man at his best Ho man, ever dominated tennis more then Budge did In 1937 and 1938, his final years as an amateur. He won both the United States and the Wimbledon singles crowns. Don beat the best the world offered. of-fered. Including Germany's Gottfried Gott-fried von Cramm and Australia's John Bromwich and Adrian Qulst Make Grand Slam He climaxed his last year by becoming be-coming the first tennlst ever to complete the "grand slam" the British, American, French and Australian championships. Budge brought the Davis cup back to this country after Its 10-year 10-year absence and successfully defended de-fended it. The U. S. lost it again when Budge turned pro. Outside of his grand slam. Budge's record Is hardly as Impressive Im-pressive as Perry's. The brilliant Briton won seven of his eight Davis cup matches from 1931 through 1935. He won the Wimbledon championship in 1934-35-36 and the American championship cham-pionship in 1933-34-36, beating Budge in the finals the last year. Perhaps Budge could have beaten Tilden and perhaps he couldn't but It's conceded that Tilden dominated domi-nated the 20s more thoroughly then Budge did the 20s. Not only a great shotmaker and a marvelous competitor and showman, show-man, but also a matchless strategist, strate-gist, Tilden definitely was Mr. Tennis Ten-nis of the 20s. He was ranked first in the United Unit-ed States in each year of the 1920s. He won the U. S. singles championship champion-ship in 1920-21-22-23-24-25-20. He was Wimbledon king in 1920-21-30. He played In Davis cup matches each of the 10 years and was unbeaten un-beaten six years. He won 16 of 20 matches in this International competlon against such aces as Budge and TlHea best Betters of two leeadee. , Norman Brookes and Gerald Patterson, Pat-terson, Jean Borotra and Jean La-Coste. La-Coste. e - |