BUDGE IN THE NEWS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 98, 22 October 1938, Page 8

BUDGE IN THE NEWS

Once tennis players reach the top of the tree they do not seem to experience any difficulty in keeping the searchlight of publicity trained steadily on them. If they are not dazzling the crowds at Wimbledon or Forest Hills with the brilliance of j their play, they are keeping sports promoters, pressmen, and the public generally wondering whether they are going to continue to "play thej game for \he game's sake" or yield to the temptation of those fabulous sums which they are offered from time to time to join professional troupes. J. D. Budge, the youthful American star, who stepped into F. J. Perry's shoes as amateur champion of the world when Perry became a professional, is now the centre of all sorts of rumours. He is reported to have played his last game as an amateur, he is reported/ to have been "holding out" for^ 100,000 dollars when offered a paltry 75,000 dollars, and he is reported to have signed, several weeks ago, a contract to play for a year for 50,000 dollars. And this is the same Budge who, in July last, when asked if he were turning professional, declared, "That is entirely out of the question." Perhaps the statement means as much as the many refutations made by Perry before he finally joined the professionals. Now it is Budge's turn to keep everybody guessing and to keep himself in the news. In more ways than one, he is proving a worthy successor to the great Perry.