A Handful of Summers

by Gordon Forbes

  I played particularly well at Forest Hills that year. I beat Niki Pilic, Fred Stolle, Alex Metreveli and Billy Knight on consecutive days, then neglected to hydrate myself properly and lost to Raphael Osuna in the quarter-finals. Osuna lost to Laver, who won the tournament, defeating Roy Emerson in the final and thus achieving his Grand Slam. During the weeks after Forest Hills I went with Donald Dell to Washington to stay at his parents’ house on 5204 Battery Lane.

  Even then, Donald was the true law man, always ready for a debate, always looking for logical conclusions. With him the perfect guide, we roamed about Washington seeing all the sights. Now, of course, as a result of some inspired crystal-ball gazing in the late sixties, he has become a tennis millionaire, acquired a blonde wife of rare form, and gotten a little heavy round the middle. But he is still unquestionably the same Donald Dell!

  After Washington, Donald and I went on to play a tournament in Tuscaloosa in the heart of Alabama. Devastatingly hot. By means of some cunning negotiations Jason Morton, who ran the tournament, had obtained as his top seeds Rod Laver, winner of the Grand Slam, and Whitney Reed, the eccentric American No.1. Whitney was one of the few players of that particular era who was almost totally unorthodox. For him all the age-old clichés concerning footwork, balance, transference of weight, follow-through or controlled backswing meant nothing at all. His main concession to transference of weight, for instance, was to tuck his tongue into one or other of his cheeks and let his arms, legs and eyes do the rest. For a year at least he was the United States’ number one player, and during this period he conducted his life in such an unorthodox way, both on and off the court, that it is fair to assume that many of the more staid USLTA officials fervently wished that he had taken up some other form of sport.

  At Tuscaloosa, Laver and Whitney Reed were the star attractions, and Donald and I were brought in as semi-final cannon-fodder. We toiled. The heat and humidity were barely endurable and the grass courts brave, but suspect.

  I dutifully reached my semi-final against Reed and suddenly began to play really well, defeating him in the three sets, while in the other half of the draw Rodney melted down Donald. In the final, then, it was Forbes v Laver.

  ‘It’s a good thing,’ said Rodney mildly, ‘that we’re not rooming together. If what happened in Boston is what you do to opponents before doubles matches, I wouldn’t want to go to sleep anywhere near you before a singles final!’

  My form carried through to the final. Although it is perhaps fair to assume that Rodney eased up a little after his Grand Slam victory, we nonetheless played a long and exciting four-set match. Moreover, it was simply not in Rod’s make-up to lose unless he was forced into it. I won in four sets, playing what was to be the most consistent match of my career.

  And won a silver casserole. Which Jason Morton forgot to send home to me.

  It was important then, and thrilling, and the papers made quite a fuss, but now it doesn’t seem to matter much. None of the things which seemed so important then, now matter very much.

  America was all that I’d wanted it to be. Not frightening or sinister or even too impersonal. Just a wide, wide country filled with people who wanted to be friendly and who generally believed in themselves. Good people. A remarkable nation.

  Ten

  Diary Notes: 1964

  A new and sombre thought has recently crept into my head and lies like a shadow at the back of my mind – somewhere, something is going wrong. My game just absolutely won’t ‘lift’ itself that last fraction or two. And whereas before there has always been an inside feeling that it will suddenly, one day, lift its head, just recently that feeling has been fading. I search for it anxiously; rummage around in my thoughts, and sometimes I can’t find it anywhere; finding instead a few fresh traces of despair. My tennis elbow, it seems, is now a permanent fixture, and the right eye sees two of everything. These things nag at me, depress me, tie me down.

  What will become of me when the game is over? Thirty years old. The time has come to move again. To move again – but whither?

  In defence of that little far-off requiem of despair, let me state that in 1964 there was still no sign of real money to be made from playing tennis. Only the handful of greats could turn professional and earn respectable fortunes – and that little paragraph in my notebook indicated that it had suddenly occurred to me that I was not going to be a ‘great’. So, whither, as I so dramatically asked, was I to move?

  The trouble with being a sportsman of the kind that I was, is that you become accustomed to and familiar with the good life. You travel about the world, stay at fine hotels, meet worldly and wealthy people, moneyed people, international people; and so, unless you keep your feet firmly attached to the ground, you are inclined to believe, finally, that you are a part of their world and not just a borrower of it. It is a very strange illusion, and if the feet are actually allowed to leave the ground (a hard thing to prevent), the return to earth invariably produces a fairly heavy thud.

  On the tennis circuits there were always a handful of people who followed the players from tournament to tournament. They were fascinated by the aura of the circuit. They wanted so badly to become a part of the inner circle of tennis that they copied, exactly, the movements and mannerisms of the players; dressed, ate and spoke as the players did, and even carried their rackets in the same way. In the locker rooms they would casually mention that their backhands were ‘coming good’, as they might have heard Malcolm Anderson say to Hopman. They’d whittle at their racket grips, as Laver did, wear four sweatbands and talk of serving people wide on their forehands. The only thing they couldn’t do very well was play tennis. They’d get on court, spin their rackets the way the champions did, look up for the sun, test the breeze, do a knee-bend or two, exhale fiercely, like Dannon did, and choose a racket out of several. Expertly they’d take things to the brink of the game itself, and then everything would fall apart. The whole show would wobble and collapse. Tennis itself could not be bluffed. For years I had watched these people with amusement and a mild sort of contempt. Now, I found the tables turned. Outside the world of tennis, the clumsy athletes were often kings!

  It didn’t take long for me to discover that I was not particularly skilled at anything except playing tennis. As a tennis player I was wanted everywhere; as anything else, the need for me diminished rapidly. Rich people got distant looks on their faces when I spoke of my fears for the future.

  ‘But there must be plenty of opportunities,’ they would say, vaguely. ‘Try the big concerns; something in public relations, or perhaps the sports business or the petrol companies. They always seem to need people.’

  I had numerous interviews, all of them arranged for me by my influential friends.

  ‘Certainly, Gordon, old fellow,’ they’d say to me. ‘I’ll arrange that you talk to the chairman of the group. Old Buster Miles. A great friend of mine, old Buster. Jolly good chap, really. Loves his tennis, too. We ride together, d’you see?’ and they’d beam at me as though ‘Old Buster’ would solve all my problems.

  I would listen diligently and follow up all the leads. They always ended with interviews. I’d wait in lobbies, turning over the pages of business magazines and tugging at my collar with a forefinger. Then get shown into offices and find myself facing polite personnel managers. Tea would be brought in.

  ‘Now, Mr Forbes,’ they would say, ‘Mr Miles has said that you might be interested in a position with our group. You’re our famous tennis player, I understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ I would say. ‘I suppose I am.’

  ‘Well, what is it exactly that you have in mind?’

  Not only did I not know exactly what I wanted to do, I hadn’t the foggiest idea. I wanted them to tell me. I wanted ‘Old Buster’ to take me to the inside of his big, quiet office, to sit me down in a leather chair and say:

  ‘Gordon, my boy, I have just the kind of thing that I believe you co
uld handle. A completely new venture. And with your name and approach and my business experience, I am convinced that we cannot go wrong!’

  ‘I’m not sure, exactly,’ I would hear myself saying to ‘Old Buster’s’ tenth-in-command. ‘I’ve never worked for a big company. I’ve worked in a sports store. I’m good at talking to people, and I write a lot. I thought that perhaps Mr Miles might have some ideas.’

  ‘Yes, well, Mr Miles has asked me to talk to you. Throw some of your ideas about, you see?’

  ‘I see,’ I would say with a sinking heart.

  ‘Have you any sales experience?’

  ‘Not really,’ I would say. ‘I’ve sold sports stuff in the stores where I . . .’

  ‘Any qualifications? Degrees, diplomas of any kind?’

  ‘No, not really. I passed school and then went farming. Then I played tennis –’

  ‘Yes, we know all about your tennis. You have no business training, then?’

  ‘I’ve said that I have no training.’

  ‘I see. Well, I hardly know what to suggest. Sales, perhaps. Do you think that you would enjoy selling our products?’

  ‘What are your products?’ I would ask.

  ‘Earthmoving equipment,’ they might say, or plastics, or fertilisers and insecticides.

  My stomach would turn and I would sit in an uncomfortable daze, trying to picture myself selling strange-sounding equipment, while they would be winding up the interview.

  ‘Contact us in about a week. I will have a word with Mr Miles about you. Perhaps something will turn up. I do suggest, however, that you give the matter a bit of thought yourself.’

  Religiously, after some time, I would phone up, and eventually hear the same impersonal voice:

  ‘Not at this point in time, Mr Forbes. We’re in the process of consolidation, you see; however, we have your name on our files. Perhaps at a later stage we may . . .’

  They were all the same, those interviews. Some firms were genuinely sympathetic, others patient, all of them polite. Some were refreshingly frank. The man at the great Anglo-American Corporation which I thought must have something that I could do, listened very carefully to all I said, made copious notes, then looked me fairly in the eyes.

  ‘What you really want, Mr Forbes,’ he said, ‘is that we give you a salary, an office and a typewriter and leave you undisturbed?’

  I don’t think that he ever realised how close to the truth he had come.

  ‘Yes!’ I wanted to say to him. ‘Yes! That is exactly what I want!’ But instead I murmured, ‘I do see your point. I’m not very experienced at the things you do in here.’

  By the time I’d interviewed a dozen or so firms, it occurred to me that all I was succeeding in doing was getting my name on people’s files. I began to realise that I was as far removed from their world of making money as they were from my world of tennis. There were skills required, and I didn’t have them. I didn’t even know the meaning of things like equities, debentures, options, budgets, sales promotions, mailing-shots or cash flows. After one particularly discouraging interview, I met Abe Segal for a tennis game. I was in a low mood, I remember, and ended my tale of woe by saying, ‘Bloody cash flows. What the devil is a cash flow, anyway?’

  Abie thought for a moment, then said that a healthy cash flow was something that was achieved when his wife went out shopping.

  ‘Ask Heather,’ he said with a snort. ‘She’ll tell you what a cash flow is!’

  But it was Abie who eventually found me a job, that spring in 1964.

  ‘I got a friend,’ he said, ‘who’s got a factory that makes lights. I told him that with your name you could sell more lights than he could ever make!’

  When I looked a bit woebegone and uncertain, he said firmly, ‘Look, Forbsey, there’s none of those big deals you’ve been talkin’ to who are going to come up with anything except hot air. There are no hand-outs in this life, buddy. You’re going to have to take a selling job, so you may as well sell lights. You go out there and talk a lot of crap about beer or petrol and nobody’ll know you’re alive. You’ll be just a number, buddy. This way, when you sell lights, you sell lights, and people will know that you sold them. It’s exactly like tennis. Nobody throws away any matches. You gotta get out there and win them. Then people talk to you!’

  Abie may not have known all about debentures or preference shares, but he did know about life.

  And so I began to sell lights – architectural and industrial lighting fixtures, to be precise. I was paid R50 each month, was to receive a five per cent commission on what I sold, and was given a customer list, a catalogue, a price list and a crash course in sales. There are few occupations in the business world as chastising as hard selling. It is not recommended for people with airs and graces. A rueful sense of humour is almost essential, maniacal laughter should only be indulged in after working hours, and tears of frustration should be saved for private moments when no one is about.

  Uninteresting stuff. Countless people have had to earn livings by selling things. It was, as Abie had said, just like tennis. A matter of ‘staying in there’. Hanging on and letting the waves break over your head. In any case, he made things a lot easier for me. He knew half the people in Johannesburg, and many of them well enough to instruct them curtly to: ‘Make goddamn sure and buy Forbsey’s lights!’ And the ones he didn’t know, Owen Williams did.

  To my surprise, I actually began to get orders – small ones at first, but getting progressively larger. It became quite interesting to add them all up at the end of each month and work out five per cent of them.

  Diary Notes: 1965

  Today is month-end and the occasion for a wide variety of disasters. For a start, sales budgets have not been reached and Pearson, the sales manager, is very nervous. What will the MD say, he wants to know? Time is running out. It’s like being down two breaks and thirty-love in the fifth. Turnover must be drummed up. Frantic phone calls. By five, we’re all exhausted, but Pearson is still making shots. One last phone call, he says, but the telephone girl is gone. Feverishly he picks up one of the two phones on the front desk and dials. Listens. Waits. The other phone gives an urgent ring. He picks it up impatiently.

  ‘Hello,’ he barks, with a receiver to each ear. A very funny look comes over his face, and he quietly replaces both receivers.

  ‘I just phoned myself up,’ he says. In his panic he had dialled his own number.

  He picks up his coat and briefcase.

  ‘When a man phones himself up for an order it’s definitely time to go home!’

  We all agree.

  My first big contract came by way of an inspiration supplied by Roy Emerson, who was playing tennis in Australia at the time and who was, no doubt, quite oblivious of his contribution to my sales effort. During my last season of tennis, Roy had gone through a period where everything he did was ‘with feeling’. If he hit a great passing shot, it was ‘with feeling’; if a steak which he ordered was particularly tasty, it had been served ‘with feeling’. Once he even emerged from the toilet with a smile on his face and told me that he ‘had passed a motion, with feeling’!

  So: I had not been ‘selling lights’ for very long before it was decided that I should handle the mining houses. The reason was simple enough, though quite invalid. I was about the only non-Jewish member of the lighting company and, as the mining houses4 were generally very Anglo-Saxon in character, my bosses decided, optimistically, that my nose was the most suitable shape to deal with those venerable establishments. What pleased me most was that the mining industry did, in fact, use large quantities of lighting fixtures. I began calling industriously, pestering every engineer and buyer who was even remotely involved in the purchase of mine lighting and making a general nuisance of myself.

  At last I was asked to quote on what appeared to me to be a very large project – the interior lighting for a new
gold-mining reduction plant. There were hundreds of fixtures involved and I compiled the list with growing excitement. The total value emerged as R20,000 – R1,000 of which would be my commission, should I be successful. A fortune!

  For days I worked at the tender, accumulating leaflets and drawings and trying to work out the best methods of presentation. At last it was ready and I rounded it off with a covering letter into which I inserted a few extravagant phrases about the excellence of the mining house concerned, and how we valued the opportunity to tender on their requirements. I dropped the fat brown envelope into the tender box an hour before the tender closed, and prayed.

  The next afternoon I was summoned by phone to a meeting to discuss the tender.

  ‘Does that mean,’ I asked cautiously, ‘that I might be awarded the contract?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ came the reply. ‘All tenderers are being consulted.’

  Dubious news. I put on my best suit and presented myself. I was shown into a conference room full of sombre-looking engineers, only one of whom I knew.

  ‘Mr Forbes,’ said the most sombre-looking one of all, ‘we have received your bid.’

  He went on at length to explain that the price and quality of the equipment in my offer were almost exactly the same as my competitors.

  ‘It would appear,’ he said finally and very sternly, ‘that some kind of price-fixing agreement exists between the various lighting companies.’

  ‘I know of no such thing,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Then can you give us any reason at all why this corporation should favour your fittings ahead of those offered by your competitors?’