Arthur Ashe

by Raymond Arsenault

  Later in life this near obsession with time management would become one of Arthur’s personal hallmarks and an object of wonder among his friends. Morgan’s example stayed with him, most obviously in his particular passion for keeping calendar notebooks. What became an uninterrupted tradition of writing everything down began at a press luncheon that he and Morgan attended in 1964. As they drove to the luncheon, Arthur “noticed a note pad on the front seat, and asked him about it.” “Ideas come into my head and I jot them down,” the coach explained. Arthur was impressed and a bit embarrassed he hadn’t thought of this useful practice on his own: “Here I’d had business school training and a million appointments to keep with reporters, school authorities, tennis dignitaries and my own friends, but I was trying to carry them all in my head. I bought myself a calendar book, for appointments as well as ideas.”24

  Arthur’s heart-to-heart talk with Morgan came early enough to ensure he would be more than ready to focus on the task at hand once the 1964 intercollegiate tennis season began. The upcoming varsity season figured to revolve around the parallel rivalries of UCLA and USC, and Ashe and Ralston. At the beginning of the spring semester, both schools had three legitimate stars—Ashe, Pasarell, and Reed for UCLA, and Ralston, Tom Edlefsen, and Bill Bond for USC. But USC soon lost Edlefsen to academic ineligibility, just after he had upset Ashe in the quarterfinals of the USLTA National Indoor Championships. Edlefsen’s victory demonstrated how strong his combination with Ralston might have been, though USC remained formidable even without a rising star occupying the second singles spot.

  By the third week of the intercollegiate season the UCLA Bruins had a growing sense they could challenge the Trojans’ dominance. After UCLA overwhelmed Pepperdine College and the University of Redlands in the first two dual meets of the season, Ashe and Pasarell played extremely well in a narrow loss to Ralston and Chuck Rombeau in the semifinals of the Pacific Coast Men’s Doubles Championships. At the Southern California Intercollegiate Championships in Pasadena, Ashe and Pasarell lost the doubles final to Ralston and Bond, but in the singles final Ashe defeated Ralston in a gritty match that stretched to 8–6 in the final set. Successfully defending his Southern California singles title and doing it against Ralston was no mean feat, and Arthur was understandably ecstatic in victory. By mid-March, the entire UCLA tennis team had reason to feel good about their prospects of winning an eighth national title for Coach Morgan. No other UCLA program had won even half as many national championships as the tennis team, and the university’s athletic program was known first and foremost for tennis—or at least it had been until the recent, unexpected success of Bruins basketball.25

  UCLA had long been a regional powerhouse in basketball, finishing first in the Pacific Coast Conference six times since John Wooden had taken over the Bruins’ coaching duties in 1948. But the big break in the history of UCLA basketball came in the winter of 1963–64, a remarkable season that marked the dawn of a new era in UCLA sports. During the next twelve years, Wooden’s incomparable Bruins enjoyed an almost unimaginable run of success on the basketball court, winning ten national championships. This near invincibility began in December 1963, and with each passing week of the season, as the victories piled up, the excitement among UCLA students and alumni grew to feverish proportions. By January the undefeated Bruins had somehow become the consensus number one team in the nation. Nothing in the university’s history had ever gripped the campus with such emotional fervor, and the stars of the team—Walt Hazzard, Gail Goodrich, Keith Erickson, and Fred Slaughter—assumed godlike status among the Westwood faithful. From midseason on several sportswriters began referring to Wooden as the “Wizard of Westwood,” a sobriquet that would follow him for the rest of his career.

  In March, after finishing the regular season 26–0, Wooden’s undersized but talented team had an opportunity to achieve something that only two teams in NCAA history had accomplished—winning a national championship with a perfect record. The final game, played against Duke, was close during the first half, as Arthur’s good friend Fred Slaughter struggled against the Blue Devils’ towering front line. But in the second half the Bruins pulled away, winning 98–83 in the highest-scoring championship game in NCAA history. Arthur was thrilled by the UCLA basketball team’s storybook season, and as soon as the team returned to campus he celebrated with his deliriously happy friends Hazzard and Slaughter. Named the NCAA tournament’s most valuable player, Hazzard, the slick ball-handling magician who made the team go, could hardly contain himself. The senior guard was a champion of champions, and no one could take that away from him.26

  This was the kind of glory that Arthur and his tennis teammates dreamed about. Unfortunately, on March 21, the same day the basketball Bruins won the national championship, the tennis team lost a dual match to the Southern California All Stars, 6–3, despite Arthur’s victory over Whitney Reed, once the top-ranked player in the nation. The mixed results continued a week later at the Thunderbird Invitational Tournament in Phoenix, where Pasarell won the singles title for the second straight year but Arthur lost badly to Ralston in the semifinals.

  UCLA’s prospects brightened considerably during the next two weeks, as the team won dual meets with the University of Arizona, Stanford, Cal-Berkeley, and USC. Played on April 11 before an overflow crowd at the UCLA courts, the upset victory over USC represented the Bruins’ first head-to-head triumph over the Trojans in three years. It also snapped the Trojans’ 32-match victory streak, but perhaps most amazingly, UCLA won even though Arthur lost to Ralston 6–4, 6–0. Two weeks later, at the Athletic Association of Western Universities (AAWU) tournament held at Ojai Valley, the Bruins once again defeated the Trojans, and this time they did so with Arthur outlasting Ralston in a tight match.

  Arthur’s win at Ojai Valley was one of the high points of the season, though it turned out to be his last victory over Ralston at the collegiate level. Over a two-week period in early and mid-May, he lost to the USC senior three times in singles and once in doubles. No matter how well he served and volleyed, he couldn’t seem to overcome Ralston’s “piercing backhand” and steady play. In the end, Ralston was the only collegiate player to have a winning overall record against Arthur, who won only three of their ten college matches. Arthur took some consolation from the obvious benefits of a rivalry that made him a better player. But he nonetheless looked forward to Ralston’s June graduation and was glad to see the last of his nemesis on the college circuit.

  When the regular dual meet season ended in late May, Arthur and the Bruins had one more chance to bring Ralston and the high-flying Trojans down to earth. The traditional mid-June NCAA championship tennis tournament—held at Michigan State University in East Lansing in 1964—was the truest test of the crosstown rivalry, and if the Bruins could win there all of the recent disappointments would be avenged. Ashe and Pasarell would have to play the best tennis of their lives, while Ralston would have to falter. This was a tall order, and in the end it was beyond the Bruins’ capabilities. While Ashe and Pasarell played well enough to make it to the singles semifinals, both lost, Ashe to Ralston in straight sets, and Pasarell to the Big Ten champion Riessen in four. When Ralston went on to defeat Riessen in the singles final and then teamed with Bill Bond to beat Ashe and Pasarell for the doubles crown, USC secured the team title over runner-up UCLA by a single point, 26–25.27

  Coming so close but losing in the end to their archrival for the third year in a row was a bitter pill for the Bruins to swallow. But Ashe and Pasarell had no time to dwell on their disappointment. Within a few hours of the loss to USC, they were in Detroit boarding a jet bound for London. Though unseeded, they were scheduled to play both singles and doubles on the grass at Wimbledon in two days’ time.

  Arthur was thrilled to be back at Wimbledon, in part because as a member of the U.S. Davis Cup team he now received travel and expense money from the USLTA. During his first visit to Wimbledon, he had been all but overwhelmed by the Brits’ pomp and pageantry. Thi
s time he had a better idea of what to expect, and he was ready to play.

  Arthur’s performance in the singles competition went well in the first three rounds, as he defeated Milan Holecek of Czechoslovakia in four sets, the Texan Cliff Richey after falling behind two sets to none, and his doubles partner Bill Bond in straight sets. But the luck of the draw turned against him in the fourth round when he faced the number one seed, Roy Emerson, who had defeated Arthur’s friend Donald Dell in the opening round. Arthur would have loved to avenge Dell’s loss, but Emerson, the eventual tournament winner, took full advantage of his young opponent’s inexperience on grass to win in straight sets 6–3, 6–2, 7–5.

  In the doubles competition, Arthur and Bond did not even reach the third round, yet their loss in the second round to the powerful Australian team of John Newcombe and Tony Roche was one of the most memorable matches of Arthur’s career. This was his first opportunity to play on Centre Court, the most famous venue in tennis, and he did his best to make the most of it. “That famous dark-green Wimbledon stadium is round and the stands are roofed, since rain falls in England in June,” he reported in his 1967 memoir, Advantage Ashe. “The stadium seats 18,000—more than Madison Square Garden—all around that one little center court. When it’s full you think everybody in the world is there, and the court is like one postage stamp at the bottom of a big fishbowl.” He was also impressed by the “ritual you go through if you’re to play on the center court.” As he explained, “You enter through a little back door, and when you step out on the grass you turn and bow to whoever is sitting in the royal box. I don’t remember who was there that day. Bill and I were keyed up for a tough match. . . . We wanted to play the best tennis of our lives. That’s how the Wimbledon center court hits you.”

  The wide-eyed and inexperienced Americans did not play well enough to win. But they gave all they had in a five-set marathon—the longest match yet in Ashe’s career and one of the longest in Wimbledon history. With Ashe and Bond down two sets to one, the fourth set turned into a test of stamina ultimately won by the Americans, 22–20. Even though Newcombe and Roche won the fifth set and the match, Ashe and Bond also won a victory of sorts, establishing themselves as a legitimate threat to one of the best doubles teams in the world.28

  Facing the mighty Australians in both singles and doubles was daunting, but for Ashe the greatest challenge of the 1964 Wimbedon tournament turned out to be political. Nothing taxed him more than a controversy surrounding white South African participation in the tournament. Prior to a scheduled match between Alex Metreveli of the Soviet Union and South Africa’s best player, Cliff Drysdale, Metreveli defaulted “as a gesture of protest against South Africa’s racial laws.” And when István Gulyás of Hungary learned his assigned doubles partner was the South African Abe Segal, he dropped out of the competition. This coordinated protest by two Soviet bloc citizens attracted considerable media attention, inevitably drawing Wimbledon’s only black player into the fray.

  When asked about the controversy, Arthur made his opposition to the anti–South Africa protest crystal clear. “I don’t think you want political protests of this kind in sports. . . . I would play Segal any time,” he told the press. “I have to look at him as an individual. I can’t look at his government and say because his country is that way he is that way also.” Arthur’s comments received plaudits in some quarters—including The Pittsburgh Courier and his hometown paper, the Richmond Times-Dispatch. But there was enough negative response to make him think twice before speaking out in public again. Sam Lacy, the veteran sports editor of the Baltimore Afro-American, issued a stinging rebuke, arguing: “It is unfortunate that Ashe couldn’t have just gone on and played the role of a juvenile as a 19-year-old tennis player. . . . That he presumes to [be an] expert on international politics clearly demonstrates that he is either educationally puerile or politically naïve. . . . Ashe is quoted as saying ‘I would play Segal any time.’ Not if you were in Pretoria or Johannesburg or Cape Town, son.”

  A decade later as an anti-apartheid activist, Ashe would come to see the wisdom of Lacy’s position, but for a time he defended the remarks he made during the Drysdale-Segal episode. “I never ask South African players their feelings about their government’s racial policies,” he wrote in 1967. “But I’ve kidded a lot with Segal and Drysdale, and with Rhodesian champ Roger Dowdeswell. If I had the chance, I’d play in South Africa. For one thing, I hear the expense money is generous. But I’m not crazy enough to try to go.”29

  Despite the unexpected South African diversion, Arthur regarded his second Wimbledon as a success, largely because he enjoyed himself immensely throughout the fortnight. With a little money in his pocket compliments of the USLTA, he spent several evenings at the Victoria Sporting Club, which in his words featured “gambling, lots of girls, and good food.” He, Pasarell, and Dell played roulette, winning just enough to feed their habit, and later at the tournament’s end he attended the “grand ball where the new men’s and women’s champs are the ‘king and queen’ ”—and where they are accorded the honor of having “the first dance with each other.” “I enjoyed the ball,” he recalled, “imagining that some day I’d be king.” Eleven years later he would get his wish.

  Arthur’s post-Wimbledon plans took him to Budapest, Hungary. He and two other Americans received “expense money, lodging, and transport” from the Hungarian tournament organizers. “But that was all,” he later reported, adding: “You go behind the Iron Curtain for the new experience, not luxury or dough. We took a sightseeing bus all over the city, and wherever we went people would point and stare at us. I don’t think they stared because I was a Negro. . . . It was our clothes that attracted their attention. ‘We can tell Americans by the way they dress,’ somebody said.” While their tournament results were uneven, the visiting college boys had quite an adventure in Budapest, highlighted by Ashe’s twenty-first birthday party, a raucous affair hosted by Suzy Kormoczy, Hungary’s best female player, who gave him a beautiful crystal vase as a birthday present.

  Arthur had such a good time in Hungary that he had mixed feelings about going home. Part of him, he later admitted, would have loved to join the lucky players who were setting out on “the plush European circuit” that featured “nice hotels, swimming pools, five-course meals” in tournament cities such as Baden-Baden in Germany, St. Moritz and Gstaad in Switzerland, and Bastad in Sweden. But his severely limited financial backing would not support an extended stay in Europe. His only realistic option—and even that represented a financial stretch—was to follow the Eastern United States summer circuit played on grass. He had never won a tournament on grass—in fact, he had never even come close. Nevertheless, he had gained some confidence from his respectable showing at Wimbledon. With his strong serve and topspin backhand, he had good reason to believe that sooner or later he would become comfortable enough to win on the slickest of surfaces.30

  The 1964 Eastern grass circuit began in late July with the Pennsylvania lawn tennis championships held at the Merion Cricket Club. But Arthur’s first stop of the summer was the National Clay Court Championships held in Illinois. Still jet-lagged from his European trip, he fought his way into the round of sixteen, only to lose to, of all people, Abe Segal, the white South African mentioned in his controversial Wimbledon statement. Even though the thirty-six-year-old Segal was nearing the end of his career, the crafty left-hander gave his inexperienced opponent fits on the soft clay.

  Arthur fared somewhat better the next week when the play shifted to the fast grass at Merion. After breezing through the first two rounds and defeating Clark Graebner in the third, he came up just short in the quarterfinals against Chuck McKinley, who had eliminated him from the tournament the previous year. Playing in 90-degree heat, Arthur served and volleyed well and came within a point of winning the first set. But McKinley ultimately prevailed.

  A week later Ashe had a second chance to show what he could do on grass when the tour traveled to South Orange for the
Eastern Grass Court Championships. Here he began to hit his stride. After defeating Rod Susman of St. Louis in the third round, he came up against Ralston in the quarterfinals. The two collegiate rivals had never faced each other on grass, but as the number one seed Ralston was a heavy favorite. In the first set, the match went as predicted with Ralston winning 15–13, but in the second, won by Ashe 6–1, the underdog played inspired tennis. With the normally steady Ralston repeatedly double-faulting and committing numerous unforced errors, Ashe closed out the the match 6–4. Gracious in victory, he conceded he had taken advantage of a stale opponent suffering from fatigue and “the tournament grind.” “He’s only human,” he told reporters, “he’s got to take a rest.” Equally gracious, Ralston countered that Ashe had carried the day primarily by hitting “great shots.”

  Whatever the reason, Ashe had just won one of the biggest matches of his career. And he was not done yet. In the semifinals, he defeated the defending champion Gene Scott, and in the championship match he dominated Graebner, winning three sets to one. The Eastern grass court title was not only his first triumph on grass, it was also his first tournament title of any kind since early June. The significance of the win, achieved at one of the most exclusive private clubs in America, transcended tennis.31

  When the journalist Lincoln Werden pointed out the obvious fact that Ashe was the “first Negro” to win the Eastern, he must have had some sense of the incongruity between the black Virginian’s triumph in an elite enclave and the dire news coming out of Mississippi. For six weeks, federal investigators had been searching for the remains of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney, three Freedom Summer volunteers who had disappeared in Neshoba County in late June. On August 4, two days after Arthur’s victory at South Orange, their mutilated bodies were found buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi.