In 1962, there was still no real money to be made out of tennis. Nonetheless, I returned to the freedom of the circuits with utmost eagerness. With a selection of well-timed sideways movements, a few dollars could be squeezed out of the amateur officials, and the summer sunlight was available to everyone.
To add to the excitement, Abie and I were back on the Davis Cup team. The third member was a young newcomer, Cliff Drysdale. For some time he had been alarming us with some very mature tennis; then he suddenly accepted a scholarship to Lamar Tech in Texas, where he studied for about a year. We met him at Geneva airport, as our first match that year was against the Swiss team, to be played in Lausanne.
Diary Notes: 1962
At Geneva airport, we wait for Drysdale, whose plane gets in two hours after ours. Abie is on the move again and very excited. Beers are ordered while we wait.
‘And thank Christ we’re playin’ the Swiss,’ he is saying to me. ‘Even you’re not goin’ to get nervous playin’ the Swiss. Glorious bloody holiday. Those Swiss can’t play for sour nuts. Too many mountains. They’re so used to slopes that when you give them a flat surface they can’t stand up straight. Come in to net leanin’ over to the side! All you have to do is pass them down the side they’re leanin’ away from!’
Abie hasn’t changed. If anything, he’s got worse. At his insistence, we are both wearing jackets and ties.
‘You dress like a peasant, you get treated like a peasant,’ he says. Looks in the mirror, straightens his tie, gives himself a smile and says: ‘Jesus! I wonder what the poor people are doin’ today?’
Cliff ’s plane eventually arrives. The swing doors open, and there he is.
‘Holy Hell,’ says Abie, ‘look at Drysdale!’
There’s no doubt about it. To put it very mildly, he looks dishevelled. Lamar Tech T-shirt, crumpled mackintosh, cotton slacks soiled with several layers of aircraft cooking. Two rackets, wrapped in a towel; a split-open suitcase out of which more towels are oozing.
‘All he’s got is towels and a raincoat,’ Abie mutters.
Cliffie approaches with a wide smile. He has extraordinarily good looks.
‘You gentlemen look eminently affluent,’ he says. ‘I assume that we’re on the same team!’
‘He assumes we’re on the same team,’ says Abie. ‘Idiot! Let’s get out of here before they stick you in quarantine!’
The drive to Lausanne is superb – a soft, brilliant spring afternoon. Cliff sits in the back, all young and dirty, paying no attention to Abie’s raving about ‘showin’ a bit of class’. He has, he informs us, only one jacket and no ties. Tonight in our room Abie informed me that he thought it was going to be ‘one hell of a problem gettin’ Drysdale into some kind of shape’.
The fact that before the week was out he’d spat a mouthful of water onto Budge Patty’s shoes added weight to Abie’s opinion. Budge had been appointed referee for our match, as he was living in Lausanne at the time. I, personally, was delighted by this news, as he had been one of my early heroes, and I had secretly admired the marvellously debonair way in which he dressed, spoke and generally presented himself. Budge had also been one of the game’s great opportunists, with the almost occult ability to produce winning shots exactly when they were most urgently needed. He had an excellent service and forehand, and perhaps the best forehand volley of all time, but the rest of his game was unimpressive, with some unorthodox goings-on on the backhand side. Nonetheless, he’d won the French Championships on clay and the same year beaten Frank Sedgman to win Wimbledon, and he seemed to me to be a very illustrious referee to have for our match against the Swiss.
To this day I am unsure of the exact duties of a Davis Cup referee. They have to be of neutral nationality and they sit in a chair at the foot of the umpire’s stand, looking grave and wise. I have also always suspected that they are all-powerful and able to overrule, as a last resort, any decisions made by the umpire or linesmen. However, in none of the Davis Cup matches I’ve played have they ever overruled anything; merely agreed with everybody after brief consultation, before returning to their seats to look wise again.
Against the Swiss nothing controversial happened. We won quite comfortably, and Claude Lister decided to let Cliff play the final singles to gain experience. This he proceeded to do with great skill, and Abie and I realised that he was soon to be our best singles player. During changeovers, between games, Cliff had developed the American habit of rinsing his mouth out with water, then spitting it out onto the court. This he proceeded to do, but added a technique of his own which comprised a tremendous gargling exercise, followed by head-shaking and an enthusiastic expectoration of fair velocity and erratic direction. It was one of those blasts that drenched Budge Patty’s Guccis. Budge hardly reacted really, just looked pained and tucked his feet under his chair, as though it didn’t surprise him in the least that any player as carelessly got up as Cliff would spit on his shoes. But it annoyed me to have one of my heroes spat on by our junior member. Abie was also displeased.
‘Jesus, Forbsey,’ he said to me. ‘We’re goin’ to have to explain to Drysdale that he is not in a friggin’ American university any more. I mean, we’re gonna have to spend a week or two civilisin’ him.’
Not that Abie himself didn’t have a little habit of his own which involved irresponsible spitting. He used, on occasion, to make rumbling noises deep down in his throat, then arrange his face into a thoughtful look before suddenly turning to one side and emitting a blast of something that resembled a dubious oyster at the foot of some tree or shrub.
‘At least I don’t do it on people’s shoes,’ he said cryptically when I reminded him. Then we both began to shake with laughter, remembering the time when we’d driven from London to Bournemouth in a little Mini Austin which Abie had hired. Sitting beside Abie on the front seat, I’d detected the familiar rumbling sounds and then seen him surreptitiously unroll the window. I knew that a blast was imminent, and was thankful that he’d remembered to roll down the window. At the precise moment of expulsion, a man in an open red sports car had shot past him without hooting. Abie’s oyster must have got him fair and square, because he swerved wildly before righting himself and turning to alternately wipe his eye and shake his fist at us.
The week in Switzerland was a particularly happy one for me. I’d escaped the entombing atmosphere of my arms shop and been granted a week of mild tennis in one of the world’s most civilised spots. Moreover, I was equipped with a new and special pair of Zeiss sports-framed spectacles, which at long last produced for me a clear and sharply-etched tennis ball. Life was bright again.
Gavin Duncan was safely ensconced with Jack on the old farm, and I was to meet Valerie in Paris.
I was twenty-eight years old.
Diary Notes: 1962
Rome again. The Foro Italico. Nothing here has changed. Emerson singing in the shower, Woodcock practising serves, Pietrangeli moving about in a very superior attitude. He is playing beautifully, and has invented a new method of helping linesmen make favourable decisions on close calls. This consists of placing a ball on the spot where he would like the linesman to believe the ball has bounced. Here in Rome, where he is regarded as at least a god, the method invariably works to perfection. Two new Yugoslavs on the scene called Jovanovic and Pilic. Jovanovic is dark and stocky, and Pilic tall and distinguished-looking in a cruel sort of way. Also a sprinkling of Russians and Romanians. Sombre fellows, with heavily loaded minds – filled, no doubt, with dark red thoughts. Who knows what goes on behind that iron curtain of theirs?
I had begun writing again – tennis articles, mainly for Gladys Heldman, who was then in the process of building her magazine, World Tennis, into a super publication. Tennis articles are generally boring and difficult to write, so that, in an attempt to brighten them up, I used to search for unusual ways to describe tennis wins and losses.
My players used to get ‘flattened
’, ‘razed to the ground’, ‘hammered into the turf’, ‘ground to powder’, ‘ravaged’, ‘pummelled’, ‘badly mauled’ and sometimes ‘put to the sword’, or even ‘fire and the sword’. Sometimes nautical terms like ‘swamped’, ‘sent to the bottom’, ‘scuttled’ or ‘harpooned’ would creep in. When Ray Moore beat Emerson in Johannesburg, he ‘holed him below the waterline’, and Emerson ‘floundered’ at 5-3 in the final.
In the same tournament, Christine Truman (later Janes) by ‘being British and remaining at her post under fire’, held Maria Bueno to three sets, and one would expect to find written at the foot of her score-sheet the words ‘killed in action’. In another tournament, Christine had ‘waded indomitably towards the title, waist-deep in volleys’. This was after Maria had ‘gunned down’ all comers on the way to the final, not bothering to remove ‘the bodies of her opponents’ from the court.
In one of my articles a young player got ‘crapped upon from a dizzy height’, but Gladys Heldman cut it out. She was a callous cutter-outer, was Gladys. Generally speaking, when writing her articles one had to be brief and do away with players swiftly and mercilessly. She disliked ‘fine writing’, and ruthlessly carved her way to what she considered to be the crux of the matter. Detailed stories were often stillborn in one’s mind – like the time Warren Woodcock played Boro Jovanovic in Rome that year.
All the players went to watch, of course, and, as the match lasted all afternoon, one could watch it in a sort of serialised form; besides which it was during one of the periods when Woody’s service was acting up, making it, in his own mild words, ‘very trying to get the ball into play’. At these times, it was as though a spanner of particularly evil character had got into the works of his service – works which, at the best of times, appeared to contain at least one or even two spanners. Things took place completely at random and it became, for Woody, a matter of intense effort and concentration to get the ball aloft and have it rendezvous with his racket, the head of which arrived at contact point only after a tortuous journey through an unexplored region behind his back.
‘Sometimes,’ Woody explained to me philosophically, ‘I have to throw the ball up first and then start my swing, and at other times I have to start my swing first and then throw the ball up. And the worst of it is, I don’t know when or why!’
His service remained, apparently, a permanent mystery. At the time of the Jovanovic match, a further complication had crept in. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, the throat of his racket had begun to make contact with the back of his head – not on every swing, but often enough to create tension.
‘It’s very disturbing,’ he said in his grave, serious way, ‘not to know when you’re going to get hit from behind. It makes it very dangerous to go for an ace!’
‘An ace!’ Abie Segal rejoined with derision. ‘What’s an ace, Woody?’
‘I sometimes serve aces, Abie,’ said Woodcock with dignity.
‘Yes, aces,’ said Abie. ‘Your opponents wait so long for the ball to arrive that they think the point must be over, and so they cross over! Then the ball arrives and passes them, and you think you’ve served an ace!’
Jovanovic, Woodcock’s opponent, also had a poor service – one which used to remind me of someone digging an overhead trench, if that were possible. Both players, therefore, relied upon steadiness, guile and determination to carry them through. The result was a sort of prolonged trench warfare. Both were expert gamesmen, both determined to win, both willing to stop at nothing. Inevitably, the match went on and on. Single points lasted for several minutes. The court surface, red and heavy, became tilled, ploughed up, until one felt that potatoes could easily be put in. All close line calls were disputed on principle, and every conceivable trick was used. A steady, insidious tension built up, softened by a strange dignity – the granting of each to the other a grudging status.
In Rome, the courts are laid out in pairs, and between matches courts are dragged, then drenched with hoses similar to those used by firemen. At 10-9 in the fourth set, with Woodcock serving for the set, the match on the court adjacent to that on which Woodcock and Jovanovic were playing, ended. In a flash, the groundsmen went into action, unreeling their hoses and turning on the water at full blast. Tremendous tongues of spray and spume leapt about the court. Simultaneously, Woodcock commenced his service game, so intent upon getting the ball into play without hitting himself on the head that he hardly noticed the flying spray on the court beside him, simply treating it as another distraction to be endured and overcome. Jovanovic, high and dry at his end, said nothing, merely playing out the points, probably wondering at Woodcock battling the elements so stoically. The game ended dramatically when at Jovanovic’s advantage, a carelessly directed tongue of spray drifted across on the wind and Woodcock, having missed his first service, tossed the second into the mist, hit himself on the head and served a double which bounced on his own side of the net before it got to Jovanovic.
The umpire called the score: ten-all, Jovanovic to serve. Woodcock looked very grave. Jovanovic gathered himself together and got ready. As he took the balls to serve, the groundsmen began to hose his end of the adjacent court. Jovanovic paused in mid-swing, caught the ball and appealed to the umpire.
‘Tell them,’ he said, ‘not to hose this end of the court while I serve.’
The umpire obeyed and the groundsmen obediently turned off the water. Woodcock was thunderstruck.
‘Boro!’ he said. ‘You have to let them hose the court!’
‘Why?’ asked Jovanovic.
‘They hosed when I served,’ said Woodcock.
‘I can’t serve with water flying,’ said Jovanovic.
‘I had to serve with water flying,’ said Woodcock.
‘Maybe you like water,’ said Jovanovic. ‘I can’t play with water.’
‘You’ve got to try,’ said Woodcock. ‘If there was water for me, there has to be water for you!’ He walked up to the umpire in his loping way and tapped the chair with his racket.
‘Mr Umpire,’ he said, ‘make them spray while Jovanovic serves!’
The umpire gave a start and conducted a brisk conversation with himself in a clatter of Italian. Then he turned to Woodcock and said in a formal voice:
‘They spray next-a game, after the-a service of Jovanovic.’
‘But then,’ said Woodcock in a pained voice, ‘they’ll be spraying on my side again!’
‘Then-a,’ said the umpire laconically, ‘we talk again-a!’
With a wounded look, Woodcock returned to his post. The game was once more on.
After Rome, we made a little excursion into Germany to play at Düsseldorf and Cologne. Whereas in Rome the atmosphere had been spaghetti, stucco, caramel custard and pandemonium, Germany was the land of the spiced sausage, new and orderly tennis clubs, dark coffee, kirschkuchen, and the smell of brown cigars. In Cologne, the club was on the Rhine. Barges moving and the smell of river water on the wind. German waitress girls with puffed sleeves and bodices spilling out little glimpses of breast. All smiles. We would sit back in our chairs, sip apfelsaft and watch the river, and I could lazily jot down little paragraphs about the things that amused:
Diary Notes: Summer 1962
Warren Woody has equipped himself with a lovely new wife called Dagne, out of whose womb, not very long ago, there appeared a baby. Dagne. Scandinavian, and the image of Woodcock himself. I have a strong theory that self-centred people, such as tennis players, often choose mates that look the same as they do. So Woodcock now has an entourage. Dagne seems to be exactly as dreamy as Woodcock. Occasionally they even temporarily mislay the baby, each thinking the other has it. Then there’s a great hue and cry, with all the other players forming a search party to look for ‘Woody’s baby’. When it has been found, it often lies in its carriage next to Woodcock while he plays poker. Sometimes he shows it his cards and discusses them with it in whispers, with his
lips right next to its ear. It lies there, quite good, sucking its fingers and staring up at full-houses and straights and wild aces. The bottom end of the carriage is filled with bottles of various kinds, and all players have instructions that if they come across the baby being restless, they are to insert a bottle.
Yesterday, Abie and I arrived at the courts at ten o’clock in the morning, all set for a good, solid workout. About two and a half hours, Abie said. After about half an hour, Woodcock meandered into the grounds, pushing the baby in its carriage. He arrived at our courtside, watched us for a few minutes, and then said:
‘Abie, would you watch the baby for a while?’
Abie, who was doing streams of backhand volleys said, ‘Sure,’ without losing concentration. Woodcock wandered away. After about half an hour, the carriage began to wobble and make funny noises. Abie, poised for a serve, stopped.
‘What’s happening to Woody’s pram?’ he asked.
‘Probably the baby,’ I said.
‘And where the hell is Woody?’ asked Abie.
Woody wasn’t about. We stopped playing and, approaching the pram cautiously, peered inside. The baby was eating its foot. It took one look at Abie and emitted a terrifying bellow. I grabbed a bottle from the selection at hand and inserted the tip. Immediately the bellowing stopped, and vigorous sucking ensued.
‘Holy Hell,’ said Able shakily. ‘I didn’t realise you could just plug up a baby like that! God damn! Just look at that kid go! Like a vacuum cleaner!’
He paused and looked about nervously.
‘Now, where the hell is Woody? I mean, a man just can’t go about leavin’ babies lyin’ around where people are tryin’ to practise!’
I looked at my watch. It was eleven-thirty in the morning. At three, a taxi drove up and Woody and Dagne alighted. By then the baby had done everything even remotely conceivable for someone so small: inexorably drained all the bottles; bawled powerfully for half an hour. Done one large motion and several small ones and then, when the napkin supply was exhausted, wet Abie’s tennis shorts. At last, exhausted, it had fallen fast asleep about ten minutes before the arrival of the Woodcocks.
A Handful of Summers Page 15
