U.s. Tennis Is Back On The Center Court

American tennis prestige—withering away for four years—was restored to hopeful bloom last weekend on the steamy courts of the Los Angeles Tennis Club. There, before appreciative and pleasantly chauvinistic crowds, U.S. Davis Cup players Chuck McKinley and Dennis Ralston beat the Mexican team that last year had defeated the U.S.

The American way back to world amateur tennis supremacy looks easier than it has in a long time. Venezuela, England and India—none of them strong—bar the path to the final assault on Australia, the Davis Cup holder, which this year plays without Rod Laver, now a pro.

Against the Mexicans, Ralston was scintillating; he won his two singles matches and shared in the doubles victory over the world's finest. The Ralston story—the human story of the most rapidly improving player in the game—begins on the next page.

DENNIS IS HIS OWN MENACE

If the ancient statesmen of amateur tennis agree on anything as the national championships get under way at Forest Hills, it is that only two men are capable of preventing 21-year-old Dennis Ralston from becoming the national champion. One is Chuck McKinley, the Wimbledon champion who in 1963 has been playing the best tennis of his career; the other is R. (for Richard) Dennis Ralston (see cover).

Chances are that when the tournament is over, Ralston will have continued to confound and confuse the experts—much as he did last week in the U.S.- Mexico Davis Cup matches, in which he beat both Rafael Osuna and Antonio Palafox with ease. He may have roared through the nationals untouched, leaving the top seeds strewn behind him, or he may have blown his stack and been knocked out in the first round by a player known only to his own next of kin and a few close family friends. That is the very nature of Dennis Ralston, a fretful young man who, for several years, has been the heir apparent to the throne of American amateur tennis.

It has been 12 years since Ralston came down U.S. 99 from Bakersfield to amaze the nabobs of southern California tennis with a sample case of strokes and techniques worthy of a person three times his age. And it has been 15 years since he played his first official tournament (it was tough enough to be only 6, but Dennis was small for his age). He lost, 6-2, 7-5, to an 11-year-old, and immediately a local sports editor called Dennis "the brightest prospect we have."

By the time he was old enough to fool around with his father's shaver, Ralston had filled half a dozen shelves with trophies, including the national junior singles championship. At 17, he went to Wimbledon, paired with Osuna of Mexico (neither player had been able to find anyone hard up enough to join him in the doubles). Together, they brought off the first victory for an unseeded team in the history of that old dowager of tournaments. The same year Ralston became the youngest player ever to reach the semifinals at Forest Hills. At 19, he was national doubles champion with Chuck McKinley. And in his 20th year, which ended last month, he knocked off the national indoor singles & doubles championships, the national intercollegiate singles and doubles championships and more than a few other major tournaments. Perry T. Jones, the paterfamilias of southern California tennis and a former Davis Cup captain says: "No player of Ralston's age has ever made a record to match this. Not Gonzalez, not Budge, not Tilden, not Vines. He has looked like a champion since he was 9 years old."

The indisputable fact, however, is that Dennis Ralston is not the U.S. champion. He is not even ranked, because an operation kept him from playing enough last year. Tennis has set up the throne, waxed it and polished it for him, and still something keeps Dennis from sitting on it. The something is his own quixotic disposition. He seems, at times, to be a man firmly arrayed against himself. It is not only that he has a bad temper, and that he is his own favorite target. He also has trouble concentrating on his game. His brooding has cost him more tournaments than the average top player has won.

Ralston's personality problems would be far less of a handicap in any other sport, but in amateur tennis the tiniest indiscretion on the part of a player is visited with a show of official housemother pique, which only compounds the inner turmoil of a touchy player like Ralston. He repeatedly has been in trouble for disturbing domestic and international tranquillity by throwing his racket and making "menacing gestures" at the crowd. What manner of ruffian is this?