A GREAT FINAL

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 31, 30 October 1937, Page 16

A GREAT FINAL

U.S.A. TENNIS FINAL BUDGE BEATS VON CRAMM FINEST GAME SINCE 1927 l The final of the American national tennis championship between Donald Budge and Gottfried von Cramm at Forest Hills last month produced the greatest game of the championships since W. Tilden met the Frenchman Lacoste in 1927, according to a writer in the New York Herald-Tribune. Budge won 6 — 1, 7 — 9, 6 — 1, 3—6, 6 — 1. Cramm could not win because no matter how well he played Budge playeii better, and that has been the way each time they have met, it is stated. The pair are the only two men left among the amateurs who can now make a match such as the final proved and it was a better match by a wide margin than any seen at Wimbledon this year. Budge won his three sets all at 6 — 1, and the three of them took little more than half an hour. Cramm had to work more than an hour for his two. In the three that went to the champion the wonder was that a man playing such fine tennis as Cramm could win only one game. It meant that only a perfect shot would beat Budge. Cramm had streams of perfect shots and some that were more than that, but Budge had more and greater ones. German Loscs Chance It cannot be said that Cramm might have won the match if this or that had happened, for no one who saw it can -believe that he is good enough to beat Budge under any circumstances, but there was a moment when he had his chance and was cheated of it by a man he must acknowledge as his master. It came in the fifth game of the second set with Budge serving. Cramm was three games to one and the score was 0 — 40. Any one of 'the next three points to Cramm and he would have won the set, 6—2, instead of in the 16th. game. During those games which intervened between the fifth and the 16th. Cramm was at his very best and tjiat best was, for the time being, just a bit better than Budge's. That period would have carried him into the third( set, and it is not unlikely he would have won it and gone off for the rest interval leading by two sets to one instead of trailing. That he did not get that chance is exactly why he cannot beat Budge. The great t player gives few reprieves when he knows he has to play his best to win. The match confirmed the rating of both players, which had already been pretty well established by the summer's developments. Budge is, at 21, one of the greats of the game, firmly established in his place among the great of all time. There is no amateur anywhere in the world in his class, and it is doubtfiil that h'e would be beaten by any professional player. Only Perry and Vines would have a chance, and the chance of neither would be better than' even. Cramm remains what he has been for years, one of the finest players in the world but not of the great. He misses that^ rating by a shade'and it was the misfortune of this fine and appealing performer to be born about the same time as Fred Perry. But for Perry, Cramm .would have been world champion several times, and before Perry left .along came Budge. An inJterval of only one year in between and he would have been on top, for the margin between him and the next best player is wide. German Rises to Occasion Those who wondered at 'the great improvement in Cramm's play for the final tfailed to take into account that a champion's game always rises to meet the big occasion. Cramm had never, since his arrival in this country, played the game he is able to play, and in three matches preceding the final he was in difficulties. Yet always he was ^ble to dominate the match when threatened and he came up" to Budge with his best game ready. * * His was tennis at its best. He need have no regrets over having lost again, although he might legitimately complain at the destiny which could not arrange a year or two of grace for him. For it is likely that his game in the final was his last chance to win one of the big titles.

"Game Ceased to be Real Thing." "The sooner we get a race of sportsmen who frown on pot-hunting and frantic trophy-chasing, the better, and we'll only get it if we teach our boys, in schools like Christ's College, that real satisfaction is to be found in the game itself and not in the tumult and the shouting. . . The game itself has ceased to be the real thing, . ." — Mr. C. S. Thomas, speaking at the annual dinher of the Christ's College Old Boys' Association (writes piu? Christchurch correjspond**^-