Debutantes Who Didn't Have A Ball

It was 8:20 by the clock in London's Royal Albert Hall last Saturday night when Pam Shriver, playing with doubles partner Chris Evert in the seventh, last, and deciding match against Great Britain for the Wightman Cup, split the intimacy and dignity of the historic concert hall with a schoolgirlish shriek of dismay. A lob from Sue Barker had soared over her tousled head and landed far out of reach in her backhand corner. The score was now 15-40, with Shriver serving, and two match points for the home team of Barker and Virginia Wade.

Shriver got a pat of encouragement from Evert, who at the advanced age of 23 was a motherly figure among such teammates as 16-year-old Shriver and 15-year-old Tracy Austin. But then Wade returned Shriver's next serve with a thunderous topspin forehand that Pam could barely spoon up with her outsized Prince racket, and Barker, as she had done a number of times during the match, moved in and clubbed a simple forehand volley winner between the two Americans. The U.S. gamble on youth had failed, and the underrated British had won the Cup for only the 10th time since the annual competition started with a 7-0 U.S. whitewash at Forest Hills in 1923.

The Americans had won by the same lopsided score last November at Oakland, Calif., and last week, after the first match at Albert Hall, in which Evert crushed Barker 6-2, 6-1, it looked as though the U.S. was again off and running. Evert's only lapse in that match was losing her serve in the first game of the second set. But Barker's hope was a fleeting one, and she went to pieces with unforced errors and double faults on crucial points.

When Shriver, the gangling high school student from Lutherville, Md. who was making her Cup debut, then came on stage before the 7,000 partisan fans, she was naturally jittery. Since losing to Evert in the finals of the U.S. Open in early September, she had played only two tournament matches, and neither was against a mature, ranking player. Her concentration had been on her school work, some of which she had brought with her to England. To top it off, she had the sniffles.

Shriver's opponent was Michele Tyler, herself hardly a dodderer at 20 and a relative newcomer to big-time tennis but a major British hope for the future. The first set was a tight one, which Shriver won 7-5, and she broke Tyler's serve to start the second set. Then Tyler began banging winners from the baseline, passing Pam on her frustrating visits to the net. Shriver began commiting errors, with both her backhand and volley going awry, and Tyler won the next two sets, and the match, 6-3, 6-3.

On Friday night, with the score now 1-1, the other U.S. Wightman Cup debutante, Tracy Austin, the youngest ever to play in the competition, faced Wade, the 1977 Wimbledon champion. Austin, who recently turned pro and had won a tournament in Stuttgart just a week before, seemed cool and confident—for the first set, anyway. It took her less than half an hour to beat Wade, 6-3. Ginny's backhand was acting up, and it seemed that the U.S. would move one match closer to the Cup. But Wade finally pulled herself together to take the seesaw second set 7-5. Now the pressure from the old pro began to affect the brand new one. Austin did move from 1-3 to 3-4 in the final set, but she just couldn't make it all the way, losing the next two games and the match.

An interested spectator during these three matches was Billie Jean King, who made the trip as player-coach of the U.S. team. Considering herself too decrepit for singles at 34, she decided to play only one doubles match. After a 30-minute break. King teamed with Austin against Anne Hobbs and Sue Mappin, and the U.S. polished off the Britons in the first set 6-2.

In the second set, King, Mappin and Austin were all broken early, but Hobbs held and the British led 3-1. The Americans broke Mappin to tie it 3-3. Again the British broke Austin to go ahead 5-4 and win the set when Austin drove a forehand into the net. The third and deciding set was a 6-2 waltz for the U.S., and the score was now tied at 2-2, at the end of the second day.

Saturday's three-match schedule began disastrously for the British as Evert, admittedly "playing the best tennis of my career," simply ate up Wade 6-0, 6-1 in 54 minutes. Evert, who had been practicing during her stay in England with her new beau, John Lloyd, a member of-the British Davis Cup team, was hitting the lines and corners on every shot. In the first four games of the first set, Chrissie lost only five points, breaking Wade at love in the fourth game.

The second set began with more of the same faultless play by Evert. She took the first seven points and won the first two games. There was murmuring among the audience when Wade broke back in the third game. But the lapse seemed to strengthen Evert's game and will even more and Wade, still having trouble with her backhand, crumpled completely as Evert dropped only five points in the last three games. Quiet again prevailed.