The Courier-Journal from Louisville, Kentucky • Page 29

rr The Courier-Journal, Tuesday morning, July 3, 1979 Racing Deaths Classified Comics Sports results, 582-4871 Austin nips King, reaches semifinals against Navratilova SPORTS flpiwww jpaim 1 sst -Ofr j. nnmiiMiiiwwiigniiiiiiii .11, win JmS 11 hi 1 llliiilliiilllM iiliiii llllllllll the pulsating 122-minute duel. "She does some weird things that most people don't do. That's her way of getting psyched up. "I couldn't let it bother me." It was vintage King out there tough, resourceful and demonstrative.

The court veteran never was guilty of gestures that could be construed as gamesmanship, but she kept up a constant conversation with herself. When she scored on a delicate shot she would look at the sky and hold her heart. Once, so deeply involved in concentration that she walked to the wrong side of the court to receive service, she corrected herself and muttered loudly, "Oops! Sorry." She made signs in the air, kissed her racket, chewed herself out when she made a tactical blunder or a poor shot. "I hit a lob which the linesman called good," Austin said. "Billie looked at the umpire and said, 'Out! and the umpire changed the call." Austin was asked if the victory was the most satisfying of her career.

The teen-ager thought a while and replied, "No, I guess beating Chrissie (Chris Evert Lloyd) in the semifinals when I won the Italian at Rome." Both Austin and King agreed that the vital game in the match was the third-game of the final set when, with the score 2-0, King, on service, four times was within a point of making it 3-0. "That would have been hard to come back from," admitted Austin. "Tracy played her best game there," said King. "She had four winners on return of service to save the game. My own game deteriorated from that point.

I began blowing some easy volleys." King said physically she felt fine, but was not mentally tough enough. "I played shockingly when I got in a position to win it," she said. "I wasn't patient when I should have been patient. When I should have been aggressive, I stayed back." Auociattd Press WIMBLEDON, England Down 0-2 and a point away from losing another game in the final set of her center-court match against the seasoned Billie Jean King, Tracy Austin gritted her teeth and gave herself a pep talk. "I told myself I had to fight harder," the 16-year-old Austin said.

"I couldn't keep telling myself that I was playing a woman who had won 19 Wimbledon matches and everything else. I had to put all that out of my mind." On King's next service, the little girl from Rolling Hills Estates, drilled a forehand down the sideline to save the game. She won two games, survived four game points against her in the vital fifth game, and went on to score a classic quarterfinal victory in the Wimbledon Tennis Championships. The score was 6-4, 6-7, 6-2. Now Austin will go against the powerful defending champion, Martina Navratilova.

Navratilova eliminated Dianne From-holtz 2-6, 6-3, 6-0. She has now won 10 of 13 matches with Fromholtz. Chris Evert Lloyd, the Wimbledon champ in 1974 and 1976, had no trouble running her record against Wendy Turnbull to 11-0. Lloyd won 6-3, 6-4. Lloyd has not dropped a set in five matches.

Evonne Goolagong, the 1971 champion, knocked Virginia Wade out of the tournament 6-4, 6-0. The packed Wimbledon gallery delighted in the battle between the 35-year-old King, winner of six ladies' singles titles and 13 doubles crowns at Wimbledon, and the pig-tailed California prodigy who wowed the fans as a 14-year-old in 1977. The highly competitive, ingenious King, trying for a record 20th Wimbledon crown, used every shot in her bag and a few histrionics, all natural to her personality in her thwarted bid for survival. "She distracted me at times, she made me really mad," Austin said after Associated Press Tracy Austin scrambled to hit a forehand against Billie Jean King yesterday in a quarterfinal match at Wimbledon. Austin won 6-4, 6-7, 6-2l U.S in the swim, despite stormy KnighU In all, from swimming and diving events, the U.S.

gained seven gold and 12 other medals and has a leading total of 10 gold and 18 medals overall. Canada was second with two gold and 11 overall, followed by Argentina with' two gold and five overall. Cuba has won four medals, none gold. Knight, from Indiana University, provided a stormy incident when he was ejected after collecting his fourth technical foul in the lopsided victory over the Virgin Islands. Associated Prats SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico The deep and talented United States swimming team, led by teen-age sensation Tracy Caulkins, turned a faltering start into a cascade of medals yesterday, the first day of competition in the VII Pan American Games.

And U.S. basketball coach Bobby Knight, who is no stranger to hot water, got off to a highly visible start by drawing four technical fouls and being ejected as his team was defeating the Virgin Islands 136-88. The swimmers and divers scored three one-two sweeps the maximum sweep in these hemispheric Olympics that limit a single country's entries to two in each event. The U.S. won all seven swimming events contested and set Pan Am Games records in five of them.

That does not include the three times the men's 200-meter freestyle record was broken (twice in qualifying heats), nor the two times the 16-year-old Caulkins broke the women's 200-meter individual medley record. The Americans were leading 110-75 late in the game when Knight charged onto the court to protest that a charging foul should have been called against a Virgin Islands player. "They took away the charge," Knight howled. "You've got to be kidding," he shouted at referee Calvin Pacheco of Puerto See U.S. Page 6, Col.

4, this section IsP age aiming the wrong way ususiraeB" The greatest for shot at heavyweight title? Eracara program ewer Billy Reed fi I Courier-Journal sports editor That somebody could be Gerry Cooney, 23. The 6-foot-5, 221-pound Cooney last week ran his professional record to 19-0 by knocking out Tom Prater in Madison Square Garden's Felt Forum. It was his 17th knockout, and it came against a decent fighter who has been in the ring with the likes of Holmes, Scott LeDoux, Coetzee and Duane Bobick. Afterward, Prater said that Cooney "can fight anybody right now," and Cooney's co-manager, Dennis Rappa-port, even went so far as to predict that Cooney would wear Ali's crown "within 18 months." Those were the kind of statements being made by New York promoter Butch Lewis when Page made his pro debut last Feb. 16.

Now, though, Page's future seems to be murky, at best. What hap- See IS PAGE'S Page 5, Col. 1, this section weight division have made it abundantly clear that Page might be just as good as any of the guys mentioned as Ali's likely successors. South Africa's Kallie Knoetze got clobbered by Big John Tate. Then Larry Holmes almost got beat by somebody named Mike Weaver.

Then Leon Spinks foolishly played right into the gloves of South Africa's Gerrie Coetzee and got himself knocked out in the first round. That left Tate and Coetzee to fight for the World Boxing Association (WBA) version of the title. The winner of that fight, presumably, might then fight Holmes, the World Boxing Council (WBC) champ, for the title of all the world. What all this means is that the title is more wide open than it has been since Ali went into exile. And that the time is right for somebody fresh and talented to come along and take control.

Post Time 7:30 P.M. When Muhammad Ali was stripped of his heavyweight championship in 1967, a tournament was held to determine his successor. The winner was Ali's boyhood friend from Louisville Jimmy Ellis. Now, a dozen years later, it's not inconceivable that another Louisvillian Greg Page eventually will hold the title that Ali finally surrendered last week. Page, 20, has the ability.

The only question is whether he ever will get the chance. Recent developments in the heavy- wwrs i minimi i urn i uMiiimiiii annum i in i urii ii Wiiar'irf' Si Rardin's no-soap to Suds braces Bourbons THRU SEPTEMBER 24 For a Change of Pace any Monday through Saturday. Harness Racing It's a great way to spend a summer's evening. Glass Enclosed and AIR CONDITIONED For Your Comfort Saturday, Sept. 15 $200,000 fi LJ tilt 1 Third Leg of "Triple Crown" for 2-Year-Old Pacers.

1 1 ma V. 1 7 IF lVP Already A Classic! MAKE YOUR TICKET ORDER NOW! By JOEL BIERIG Courlar-Journal A Tlmts Staff Writer Thomas Wolfe surely would have advised him against it, but then, Tom never played an inning in the American Professional Slo-Pitch League. Donnie Rardin considered the woeful state of his employers, the Cincinnati Suds, and decided to have his bat, glove and earplugs shipped back to the Kentucky Bourbons. Who said you can't go home again? "I don't know if you want to call it intuition or what," Rardin says, "but I thought it was the best thing to do." No one told him the Bourbons would be carrying a 25-7 record into tonight's 7:30 doubleheader against the Suds. No one told him the Suds would be arriving at Bishop David Field with an 18-16 mark, eight games behind first-place Kentucky in the Central Division race.

All he could rely upon was Instinct, and instinct told him the Bourbons would be more potent than the Suds. Instinct and Bourbons owner Law-See RARDIN Page 3, Col. 1, this section Sorry, No Children Under 12 Admitted i lU SVILL DALE OWENS, Director of Publicity GARY BUXTON, Director of Racing 4520 Poplar Level Rd. I Wm. H.

King President Gen. Mgr. 964-6415 RESERVATIONS Phate by Patrick L. Pfiistar Donnie Rardin: One-year exile from Bourbons was a wise move..