The Lively ghosts of Wimbledon - 1937 Davis Cup match between Germany's Baron Gottfried von Cramm and American Don Budge was extraordinary

ON June 30, 1937, a phone call came from Berlin. At first Baron Gottfried von Cramm decided not to take it. After all, he and the American Don Budge were about to leave the locker room and walk out to Wimbledon's Centre Court to play the fifth and deciding Davis Cup match, Germany versus the United States (the winning team was expected to defeat the British, the defending champions). Then the Baron changed his mind. Wondering about the call might just distract him. He went to the phone.

Adolf Hitler was on the line. The Baron was a conspicuous despiser of his regime, but Hitler offered warm encouragement anyway. Of course Hitler knew that if Cramm won, the Davis Cup would go to Germany. The 1938 matches, in Berlin, would be a Nazi extravaganza, swastikas all over the place, strength through joy.

Cramm listened and finally signed off politely. "Ja, mein Fuhrer," Budge heard him say.

Cramm was an Adonis from an old family, and had been a tennis child prodigy. He had played often with King Gustavus of Sweden. The top Nazis certainly differed dramatically from their own Nordic ideal -- think of Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Eichmann --but Cramm epitomized it. He was six feet tall, handsome and blond, and had cold blue eyes. Don Budge was as American as Cramm was German. No rival to Cramm in looks, he was a tall, homely, slope-shouldered, freckly redhead from Oakland. A precocious child player, he had come up through the famous Perry Jones system in California, which taught good behavior as well as good tennis.

When Cramm finished talking with Hitler, he and Budge walked together to the Centre Court and into the history of both tennis and sportsmanship. Walter Pate, the American captain, said that no other man living or dead could have beaten either player that day.

Very few things have changed at Wimbledon since Budge played Cramm that day in June. There is a second honored entrance now, the Perry Gates, in addition to the old Doherty Gates -- a nice symbol of the continuity between past and present. When you enter through the Perry Gates you encounter a very good life-sized statue of Fred Perry, the last world-champion male player whom England produced.

It is good to think of Perry here today, along with the Dohertys. Between 1897 and 1906 the great Doherty brothers, Laurie and Reggie, turned Wimbledon into an international event. They were so good that fine players flocked from abroad to challenge them on their home turf.

It is difficult now to say just how good in modern terms the players of that distant era really were. Yet we know that Bill Tilden, at fifty, could still press Budge, 22 years his junior; that R. N. Williams, who almost went down with the Titanic in 1912, took a famous 6 - 0 set from Tilden; that Maurice McLaughlin was marvelous, and so back before the Great War and almost to the Dohertys. My guess is that the old players were terrific. And now they gaze down at us from their old black-and-white photographs. Some of them have mustaches and striped cricket caps. They all wear white trousers, either linen or sharkskin, and they have those oddly shaped rackets: Norman Brookes, Dwight Davis, Richard Sears, the famous Renshaw brothers, Bill Larned, and maybe most hauntingly of all the great Anthony Wilding, killed on the Western Front in 1916. Wimbledon is full of ghosts.

As we walk through the Perry Gates or the Doherty Gates, nothing really essential will have changed. The Royal Box will be crowded. The Centre Court and the adjacent grandstand will look old-fashioned. The crowds will be festive and orderly. Above all, the players must wear "largely white," and there is still the grass -- and always will be. The prestige of Wimbledon remains so great that, unlike the U.S. Championships -- formerly at Forest Hills, now at the disastrous Flushing Meadows -- the Wimbledon tournament can hold the line on white, and on grass courts.

The issue of grass is an important one. Grass is not only more pleasant on the eyes and feet but makes for a different and subtler tennis. Because of its texture, spins of different kinds matter more. So do changes of pace and a subtle, soft-angled shot. Wimbledon will always have its grass tournament, because without the grass it wouldn't be Wimbledon any more.

NOT many pounds sterling had been bet on Baron von Cramm when he faced Don Budge that sunny afternoon on the Centre Court, a light wind blowing. A consensus held that Budge was unbeatable on grass.

There had been an immense improvement in Budge's game since the 1936 season, and here we have an important point to notice. Budge had taken five months off to make changes in his shots. In January 1937, he had noticed how Fred Perry achieved power and forward court position by taking the ball on the rise, just six or eight inches after its bounce. Today, for touring professionals, scheduled year round all over the globe, there is no such thing as months off. But during the winter of 1937, Budge went home to California to work at hitting the ball on the rise. He had always been powerful, but when he perfected that technique he could be overwhelming.