Contents

12 Basketball at Its Toughest
Their coaches don't speak, their players hit hard and a dandy feud rages between the Celtics and the Lakers

18 A Swiss Surprise at Innsbruck
The Austrians won the pre-Olympic ski meet on their home grounds, but a Swiss did scare them

22 The Cowboy Who'd Be King
California's Rex Ellsworth, already owner of the largest racing stable in the world, bids to dominate U.S. tracks

32 Battle of the Hottest Sticks
The shadowy confraternity of pool hustlers holds its annual hot-and-heavy world championships in Illinois

38 Jump, Twist and a Record
With fiber-glass poles, vaulters are going up and up. They are happy, so are the fans, and the end is not in sight

50 The Sand Shots
In this part of his instructional on the short game, Jerry Barber shows how to get out of bunkers

54 Invasion from Santo Domingo
The Dominican Republic sends about 50 baseball players to our major and minor leagues this year. Here's why

The departments

8 Scorecard
38 Track & Field
45 Bridge
47 Motor Sports
50 Golf
62 For the Record
62 Basketball's Week
64 19th Hole

Acknowledgments on page 68

Cover photograph by Phil Bath

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Next week

Baseball is back and Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers' superb pitcher, talks of the big question of the spring—his injured ringer. Bill Charmatz paints the lighter side of spring training.

An amber light on Route 89 indicates Panguitch, Utah (pop. 1,435), where basketball is a fever in the community life-blood. John Underwood tells of a town obsessed by a team.

Clothes for boating in 1963 display the color, versatility and flair that ski fashions achieved earlier. They arc shown in color in a number of Western Hemisphere harbors.