A Handful of Summers

by Gordon Forbes

  We both watched in silence as he gingerly unlocked the door and opened it. Immediately inside it hung my raincoat on a hanger. Rodney gave it a contemptuous punch.

  ‘Fooled you, you bastard,’ he said to the coat. ‘Thought you were going to get us, hey? Hadn’t counted on my friend here, had you?’

  Now, thirteen years later, the unreality of that particular situation still occasionally strikes me – Rodney Laver, chatting to a raincoat in the middle of a far-off night in Boston!

  We slept, eventually. So badly did I want to disassociate myself from the incident that, when I awoke, I found myself still with the faint hope that the whole thing might yet prove to be a dream within a dream.

  ‘I dreamt I had a dream last night,’ I said to Rod when he finally awoke.

  ‘Your dream couldn’t have been as bad as my dream,’ he said with deep conviction.

  ‘Bad, hey?’ I asked.

  ‘Nearly crapped myself,’ he said cryptically. ‘Going to pay a lot more attention to what Abe Segal says from now on. Now I realise why he sometimes behaves as though he’s got someone after him! Always looking over his shoulder, these days, is big Abie. Now I’m beginning to understand why!’

  We went down to breakfast after I had asked Rodney not to tell of the incident. Governor Furcolo looked up as we entered.

  ‘Morning,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Quite a night, wasn’t it?’

  I was speechless, but Rodney found words.

  ‘Something happen in the night?’ he enquired carefully.

  ‘God-darned sailfish,’ said the Governor.

  ‘Sailfish?’ Rodney looked puzzled.

  ‘Been hanging on that wall for nearly eight years now, and last night – down he came. Made a mighty bang, too. We kinda thought you might have heard it.’

  ‘You hear a bang in the night, Gordon?’ he said.

  ‘Can’t say I did,’ I muttered.

  ‘Broke a piece off his tail,’ said the Governor. ‘I’ll have to get it glued up.’

  My private theory was that the banging of the heavy cupboard door had dislodged the sailfish, but it could never be proven. I consoled myself with the thought that there was just a chance that by some remarkable coincidence the fish had chosen that particular moment to drop off the wall. Just a very small chance. But we never found out.

  Our match was scheduled for about three that afternoon, on one of the centre courts. The weather was sunny, the grass fast and from the very outset I had the feeling that Cliff and I might just play very, very well.

  We held firm until four games all in the first set, then dropped service and lost 6-4 in a very conventional sort of way. At about six-all in the second set, it occurred to me that we were containing the game and that it was not, as I had been afraid, running away with us. If anything, Rodney was perhaps too much the individual ever to be as great at doubles as he was at singles. While he made some shots so quick and stunning that he left everyone, including his partners, with severe cases of dropped jaw, he also sometimes confused things by playing unconventional shots – things like drive volleys, topspin lobs for service returns or colossal groundshots from the back of the court, when he should have been at net. He also sometimes advanced to net behind his own lobs, quite confident apparently of volleying back his opponent’s smashes, which he sometimes did.

  Men’s doubles is a game where certain rules should always be stuck to, and these rules seldom allow for the spectacular, usually demanding firm, if sometimes tedious, positional play while openings are looked for. Rodney, being a law unto himself, firmly believed in making his own openings by sheer weight of shot. The result was hair-raising for his opponents. If he happened to be on form, they spent a good part of the match collecting balls and protecting their persons. If not, he was vulnerable to solid resistance. Fred Stolle was a great doubles player, orthodox, intelligent and hard to penetrate. We became locked in mortal combat that day, and played for hours. I remember that Cliff and I won the second set at 12-10 and then, as though annoyed by our effrontery, Rodney and Fred snatched the third out of our hands at 6-2. Rodney’s pre-match prediction was perfectly accurate. The ball was moving about like lightning. Fred’s service led me to believe that he was conducting some fresh experiments in rocketry; Cliff hit tremendous two-handers and Rodney startled all three of us in his usual mercurial way by flashing about and pulling every conceivable shot out of his hat. At two sets to one down, it seemed likely that Cliff and I were about to suffer one of our gallant defeats, but to our surprise we latched onto the fourth set and stuck like limpets. At 10-9 for us we found ourselves with points for the set, won a hand-to-hand volley exchange, and heard the score called at two sets all.

  By the time the fifth set began, we’d been playing for over three hours and still the match hung in the balance. With the score at twelve-all in that set, dusk was coming on and a heavy dew had begun to settle, making the court surface very slippery. At fifteen games all in the fifth, with the light fading fast, I held my service after several deuces and we changed ends leading 16-15. As we towelled off, the umpire turned to us and announced that we were to play only one more game, a decision which, I remember thinking, was decidedly strange, as it put a lot of pressure on Fred, whose turn it was to serve. On the other hand, to return Fred’s service, on a greasy grass court in fading light was also not the easiest thing imaginable. We took up our positions in silence. It was one of those occasions when a match catches the imagination of the public. The stands were packed with players and spectators, excited by the fact that the top-seeded pair were in trouble.

  Fred opened proceedings with a clean ace to Cliff on the right-hand court. He then served a huge double-fault to me, the first ball hitting the tape of the net and the second narrowly missing my heel.

  As I moved to take my position for the next point, Rodney caught my eye and murmured something about Fred giving his second ball too much of a nudge. At fifteen-all Fred served a flat bullet of a first ball down the middle to Cliff, who apparently anticipated it, for he stepped into it and hit a two-hander down Rodney’s tramlines so hard that the point was over before Fred had recovered from his service swing. This time Rodney’s murmur was drowned by the roar of applause, but I saw his lips moving and guessed that he was discussing Cliff ’s ‘nudge’ with himself. At 15-30, Fred served an ace to me. At thirty-all Cliff mistimed his two-hander so that instead of a clean return the ball went off the throat of his racket with a wooden clunk, hit the tape in front of the oncoming Fred, then fell over on his side and disappeared into the grass. Fred rolled his eyes upwards. The crowd roared, the umpire called out the score at 30-40, and Cliff and I found ourselves with a match point against Laver and Stolle at 16-15 in the fifth set, on a damp grass court and in the dark to boot. In absolute silence I got ready to receive.

  Fred’s first ball narrowly missed Rodney’s head, and someone in the crowd laughed nervously. His second was so deep that for a fleeting moment I thought he had served a double. But the ball hit the line and presented me with an awkward skidding backhand which I managed to dig out of the corner with a late slice like a nine-iron in golf. My shot drifted slowly towards the net, seeming to climb slightly as it went, with me closing in behind, while Fred approached the net from his side, with a worried look on his face. With a final surprising spurt, the ball cleared the net and settled into the grass at Fred’s feet, leaving him an appallingly difficult half-volley. He got it back, but not well enough, and Cliff pounced with his two-hander and knocked it off. Game, set and match to Drysdale and Forbes: 4-6, 12-10, 2-6, 11-9, 17-15.

  The actual moment of victory after a long and tense confrontation is filled with different emotions. For me, the strongest of these has always been a feeling of profound relief. The exultation and satisfaction, I found, only came later. There is a fair amount of agony in a finely contested tennis match. Nerves and body are simultaneously engaged under maximum stress an
d held that way, and there are few players who can honestly claim to enjoy such intense competition. This match, though, had thrilled and excited me beyond words. There could be no finer sportsmen than Laver and Stolle.

  We enjoyed the cheers of the crowd, the cold beers in the dressing-room and the excited post-mortems, but there wasn’t time for prolonged celebration.

  In the semi-finals the following day against Antonio Palafox and Raphael Osuna, the fortunes of the previous day were reversed. We lost 12-10, 11-9, 11-9, and found ourselves only twenty-four hours later sipping beers in the same dressing-room. Only, the mood had changed from celebration to introspection. The gods who dished out major doubles titles had not, it seemed, included us on their lists. And so we went on to New York, with a fresh layer of memories, to try again.

  We arrived at night and at first, from the aircraft window, the city was just a skyline, far off and soaring. But the next morning was sunny and I rose quite early and walked up Fifth Avenue as far as the park, and that was when the jumble of adjectives drifted through my head. But mere adjectives were only the beginning. Why is it that, in the mind, New York stirs and stuns more than any other city? Creates for itself an image which is untouchable – out of reach of ordinary people? Perhaps it’s the sheer size of it – the geometry of its planes and verticals, which sweep up and fracture the familiar sky. One is anonymous in New York. Totally, absolutely anonymous. I walked the avenue that morning feeling, as I have never felt before, that I was quite alone. Yet there were the names of places and stores, so familiar that I felt I knew them well – Brooks Bros., Abercrombie & Fitch, Bonwit Teller, Macy’s, Tiffany’s. At the corner of Forty-sixth Street, as I stood waiting for the lights to change, a fat pigeon flew overhead and a large, wet dropping struck me fairly on the forehead and nose. Later I realised that there must have been something symbolic about the hit, but, at the time, I felt helpless and foolish, and highly relieved when a young girl who turned out to be an Israeli student produced a wad of Kleenex and set about clearing away the debris. By the time it was gone and we had both agreed that it must have been a very large pigeon, we decided to find a coffee bar to help me recover my spirits.

  After coffee, up towards the park, we entered on impulse a superb and lofty church. It was huge and quiet inside with silences hanging about everywhere, in great pools. Suddenly the organ began to play rich and splendid Bach – the notes and chords carving away the silence in great slices until the church was full of interwoven sounds. It was strange and unforgettable, that first introduction to New York, and ever since then I have always respected the place and longed to become a part of it.

  All the visiting players were accommodated at the Vanderbilt Hotel on about Thirty-fourth Street. I was relegated to sharing a room with Cliff Drysdale again, while Rodney was ensconced in the suite of honour, where he immediately became inundated with tennis gear and, in fact, apparel of all kinds, to the extent that, at one stage, it was almost impossible to get into his room. Cliff made a facetious remark about my ‘rejoining the common people’ as I entered our room, but I shut him up immediately by reminding him that I, by being billeted with Laver, had made a decisive contribution to our best-ever doubles win by scaring the wits out of him the night before. Roy Emerson also turned up at the Vanderbilt, having just completed the Middle Eastern circuit. He was as cheerful as ever, spilling grins and greetings all over the place. And so we all gathered for the United States Nationals, at Forest Hills.

  It was hot and rainy for nearly a week at first, and practice courts were at a premium. Besides, officialdom at Forest Hills was at the time as unhelpful as it could be. Players, generally, were treated as interlopers. Lunches, served in a damp marquee, were boring and ordinary, and, if one wanted something better, service at the main clubhouse was unfriendly and expensive. Only the faithful white towels were plentiful. The official in charge of allocating practice courts seemed about a hundred years old, and so absent minded that apart from the names Laver and Emerson, he seemed unable to remember any others. Players were pests, and his first reaction to requests for courts seemed to be that there were none available. I soon discovered that the only sure way of getting one was to arrange to play with Roy Emerson. Roy could walk up, pat the old bloke on the back and with his customary grin, ask for a court.

  ‘Name?’ the old fellow would grunt.

  ‘Emerson,’ Roy would say.

  ‘Ah, Emerson. Take court nine. Here are the balls,’ and off we’d go. When I mentioned this to Roy, he looked at me sceptically.

  ‘He’d give you a court,’ he said.

  ‘Not a hope,’ I replied. ‘I’ve tried.’

  ‘Bet you a dollar he will, Bastard,’ said Roy. He was going through one of the phases during which he used ‘Bastard’ as a broad-spectrum nickname. He’d walk up to friends with a cheery smile a call out ‘Hello, Bastard, how’s it going?’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘We’ll go up to him, you ask for a court. Tell him you’re Forbes, and see what happens.’

  ‘You’re on,’ said Roy.

  We approached the desk and Roy asked for a court in the usual way.

  ‘Name?’ enquired the old man.

  ‘Forbes,’ said Roy. ‘Gordon Forbes, the famous South African.’

  ‘No courts,’ said the old man gruffly. ‘They’re all full.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ I intervened quietly. ‘He’s playing with me. I’m Emerson!’

  ‘Ah, Emerson,’ he said. ‘Yes, well, court thirteen is about to come off. You can have that one!’

  We took the balls and went off to practise, laughing delightedly.

  ‘You see,’ I teased Roy, ‘the name he knows, not you personally!’

  For some reason that incident must have stuck in the old fellow’s memory, for the next day when Roy went to ask for a practice court, giving his name as Emerson, the old man looked up at him sharply.

  ‘You’re not Emerson,’ he said. ‘You’re Forbes.’

  ‘Can’t be Forbes,’ said Roy. ‘Not thin enough to be Forbes. You have to be pretty skinny to be him.’ He bent his arm sharply and pointed to his bicep. ‘See that?’ he said. ‘That’s a muscle. Forbes doesn’t have any of those!’ At that moment I arrived on the scene. The old man looked up at me, then at Emerson, then back to me.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked gruffly.

  ‘Emerson,’ I said.

  With a contemptuous glance at Roy, the old man handed me the balls.

  ‘Come on, Forbes,’ I said to Roy. ‘Let’s go and practise!’

  Thereafter, nothing would persuade the old bloke that I wasn’t Roy Emerson. Emerson, he regarded as a lowly South African of meagre talent.

  ‘Hope that old bastard doesn’t have anything to do with the draw,’ was Emerson’s wry comment. ‘It’s bad enough being Forbes in practice; wouldn’t like to be him in a match!’

  The weather cleared, the sun came out, hot and steamy, and play got under way on damp, heavy and not-too-even grass courts. Forest Hills can be desperately humid. By the end of the warm-up one is wet through, and physically, there, matches are largely a matter of keeping one’s body lubricated. Allen Fox used to spend about half an hour before each match quietly eating salt tablets and glucose, to ‘hydrate himself’.

  Rod Laver was by far the best amateur in the world at that time, under any conditions and on any surface. He didn’t even need to ‘hydrate himself’. No one has ever played tennis more positively than he. He controlled his matches absolutely; quietly, simply, modestly even, but also superbly, with a control so rigid and purposeful that it seemed that every shot he made was part of an unwavering scheme to win. Other players guided their strokes. Rodney fired his at predetermined points. It was not simply a matter, as he used so often to claim, of just ‘keeping the ball in play and giving the loose ones a bit of a nudge’. More accurately, his game was a grand, deliberate and inevitable road to victo
ry.

  When he was young, he was a wild and woolly player. Every ball got well and truly hit, and I remember laughing at some of his early matches, watching his forehand and backhands flying out of control into the backstop. Yet never did Harry Hopman, the great Australian strategist and Rodney’s adviser, suggest that he play more carefully. ‘One day,’ he said to me, long ago, as we watched him spray balls over a particularly broad front, ‘he’s going to start hitting all those shots in and then, my boy, what a player he will be!’

  That year, at Forest Hills, the shots all went in. Rodney won his Grand Slam, and Hopman’s prophecy came true. What a player he was.

  I find with surprise that I haven’t, except in passing, written of Harry Hopman. It is impossible really to contemplate that era in tennis without considering him. His influence totally dominated it. Over a period of a dozen years, he presented to the world a succession of champions of such character and class that without him, this section of the game’s history would have been quite different. He was a genius at the art of winning tennis; had uncanny ability in the key aspects of producing champions; was able to spot potential in players at a very early age; and, having spotted it, he was able to develop it, nurture it, protect it and force it to grow. His methods of extracting the most effective game from his players were enterprising and diverse. He would coax, bully, praise, berate, encourage, inveigle, persuade and sometimes rant and rave. His disciplines were rigid, his sympathy for weakness was scant, his training schedules verged on slave labour. He wanted tough, confident and fearless champions, and he dedicated himself totally to developing these qualities from the varying personalities of the players in his charge. His collective results are undoubtedly one of the great sports-training achievements of modern tennis.

  Beginning with Sedgman and McGregor, he produced a series of champions of such remarkable ability and character that nearly all of them have found niches in tennis history. Look: Lewis Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Rod Laver, John Newcombe, Neale Frazer, Roy Emerson, Ashley Cooper, Tony Roche, Malcolm Anderson. Even his lesser players were successes by most standards: Rex Hartwig, Mervyn Rose, Ken Fletcher, Bob Mark. Others too. Of course, it is not true to say that without Hopman these players would not have become champions. What is unquestionably true is that he profoundly affected their game and their lives. Never in sporting history has there been a line of such noble champions.