ABSTRACT
The Grass Court Circuit, played at the older cricket and tennis clubs along the Eastern Seaboard between Boston and Philadelphia, still constituted the heart of the American game. The upper-class, Tennis Circuit melting pot so nicely described by Bill Talbert continued down to the end of the amateur era. Tilden might have met two future champions who were in his part of the draw, but both lost to lesser players, the new sensation from California, Ellsworth Vines, in the third round, and Fred Perry, then a little-known Englishman, in the fourth. Billie Jean and Bobby were not too different when they were young kids in Southern California. While the five great, world-class Californians—Vines, Budge, Riggs, Kramer, and Gonzales—dominated American tennis between 1930 and 1949, there was also a solid core of lesser champions always ready to defeat them at any time.
