Ashe, though pleased with America’s successful defense of the Davis Cup in 1972, was not happy about another development in the Davis Cup saga: the movement to readmit South Africa to Cup competition. The primary rationale for readmittance was South Africa’s recent loosening of racial barriers in women’s tennis—most notably Goolagong’s participation in the 1972 Federation Cup tournament held in Johannesburg, and the appearance of several nonwhite women at the trials held to select South Africa’s team.
None of the nonwhite women made the team, but several influential ILTF and Davis Cup leaders interpreted the girls’ eligibility as an “encouraging gesture.” When several of the girls were allowed to register for the upcoming South African Open, USLTA president Robert Colwell and British LTA secretary Basil Reay praised South Africa’s new attitude, and Colwell even called for sanctions against nations refusing to play South Africa in Davis Cup competition.
The idea that these cosmetic changes represented a meaningful break from apartheid seemed ludicrous to Ashe, who was still effectively barred from playing in the South African Open. But with few exceptions Davis Cup officials felt otherwise. In July, at a special committee meeting in Helsinki, delegates voted 5–2 to readmit South Africa to Davis Cup competition, with only the Soviet and Indian delegates opposing readmittance. Two years later, an all-white South African team would actually win the Cup after the Indian government refused to let its team take the court in the final round.
All of this left Ashe deeply conflicted. While he did not want the world to be fooled by misleading propaganda or manipulated by a South African government determined to misrepresent what was happening inside its borders, he did not believe in isolating the apartheid regime from the rest of the world. He still preferred engagement and dialogue to banishment and enforced silence, though his patience was growing thin. For him and the growing number of activists dedicated to the liberation of South Africa, the prospects for a true resolution of the troubled nation’s racial dilemmas appeared dimmer than ever.6
It was a strange summer for Ashe, who had more time on his hands than usual. Temporarily relieved of the frenetic international travel schedule imposed by the French Open and Wimbledon, he stayed closer to home. In between brief tournament trips to Connecticut, Missouri, New Hampshire, Washington, D.C., and Kentucky, he found time for family, politics, and other passions. He attended political rallies for George McGovern and even raised money for him by offering to hit a few volleys with anyone willing to donate $100 to the campaign chest.7
He also spent time promoting the NJTL and other inner-city tennis programs. He was thrilled the NJTL was finally catching on and that the game of tennis was losing some of its elite image. “After all these years as a country-club sport played by the very rich,” he announced in late July, “tennis is now moving into the mainstream of the American sports scene. Just think, 30,000 kids, black and white, learning the game.”
His own game had been subpar for most of the summer, but at the end of July he broke out of his slump with a singles title at the First National tournament in Louisville. A week later, at the U.S. Pro championships in Boston, he lost a close semifinal match to Okker in singles and teamed with Lutz to reach the doubles final against Roche and Newcombe, who won. He played even better in Cleveland and Fort Worth—the last two tournaments leading up to the U.S. Open—and pronounced himself ready to tackle the world-class field at Forest Hills.8
Just prior to the Open, Ashe participated in a pro-celebrity tournament benefiting the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Foundation, an organization that aided underprivileged children living in inner cities, Appalachia, Chicano communities, and Indian reservations. Held at the Forest Hills Stadium and billed as “A Day of Stars and Tennis,” it was the kind of high-profile fund-raising event he had been advocating for years. The participants included Laver and other leading pros, plus a host of celebrities ranging from Bill Cosby and Dustin Hoffman to Goldie Hawn and Dinah Shore. The entire Kennedy clan was on hand, from Robert Kennedy’s widow, Ethel, to Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts. It was a glorious day for Ashe, who talked tennis and politics with Ethel Kennedy and her sister-in-law Eunice Shriver while helping to raise nearly $100,000 for a good cause.9
The entire affair put Ashe in a good mood, just what he needed on the eve of the Open. It had been nearly a year since the contract and independent pros had competed in a Grand Slam tournament, and the pre-tournament excitement was palpable. The crush of players seeking entry into the tournament had prompted an increase in the men’s draw from 128 to 148, and in the women’s draw from 64 to 80. Advance ticket sales had broken all records, delighting tournament director Bill Talbert. “I’ve been around tennis for forty years,” he exclaimed. “I’ve had some very exciting moments. But the family has outgrown the house.”
Seeded sixth behind Smith, Rosewall, Laver, Nastase, and Newcombe, Ashe faced the Pakistani star Haroon Rahim in the first round. Easily advancing to a second-round match against Bob Maud of South Africa, he played on the Grandstand Court, where an earlier match had pitted the 1971 U.S. Open runner-up, Jan Kodes, against Alex “Sandy” Mayer Jr., an unheralded twenty-year-old amateur from nearby Wayne, New Jersey. When Mayer upset Kodes in five sets, winning the final set 6–1, the fans sensed they were in for a wild tournament.
Later in the afternoon Ashe defeated Maud in straight sets, and he went on to defeat the Australian Ross Case and Lutz in the next two rounds. But all around him the top seeds—notably Laver, Rosewall, Newcombe, and Okker—were falling. Ashe himself was involved in a minor upset when he outlasted Smith, the number one seed, in the quarterfinals. Trailing two sets to one and facing match point in the fourth, Smith double-faulted to end the match. Afterward one reporter described the upset as the return “of the Ashe of yore, the one with only tennis on his mind.” In recent years, the reporter explained, the 1968 Open champion had paid a price for “dividing his time between tennis and social concern.” He had become “an articulate spokesman for minority groups” and had taken “on hundreds of personal interests,” but in the process he had lost his number one ranking among American players. Now he was back, the dominating “Mr. Cool, with a repertory of a whippy forehand and a bludgeoning serve.”10
This interpretation made good copy, but it did not reflect the truth. Ashe was actually busier than ever attending to his off-court interests. On September 8, the day after his victory over Smith, he helped to launch the newly formed Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), which replaced the ITPA. In the works since mid-April, the ATP brought together fifty male players from sixteen different nations, all willing to pay $400 a year in dues for the services of Kramer as executive director and Dell as legal counsel. Cliff Drysdale was elected the ATP’s first president, and Ashe agreed to serve as vice president. Following the formal announcement of the group’s founding, Ashe explained to the press that he and his peers were “tired of being stepped on by two elephants,” WCT and the ILTF. ATP would “unite, promote, and protect” the common interests of the players.11
The founding of the ATP was the biggest story to come out of the 1972 U.S. Open. But the unexpected success of several ATP stalwarts was also noteworthy. Teamed with Roger Taylor, Drysdale won the doubles title, and three of the four singles semifinalists—Ashe, Richey, and Gorman—were American ATP members. The only non-American to survive the quarterfinals was the Romanian bad boy Ilie Nastase. After Ashe defeated Richey in the first semifinal match and Nastase defeated Gorman in the second, the final presented a striking contrast of styles and personalities. The frequently outrageous Nastase was as hot as Ashe was cool, and even his close friends never knew what “Nasty,” as he was often called, was going to do next. Asked prior to the match how he would beat Ashe, he wisecracked “with my racquet—over his head.”
In the actual match, Nastase’s antics stopped short of violence, but just barely. During the first set, which Ashe won 6–3, the Romanian repeatedly dropped his racket in exasperation—once afte
r Titus Sparrow, a black service linesman, called a foot fault. Later in the set, when a close service call went against him, Nastase feigned disbelief and threw a towel at one of the linesmen. At that point, it looked like Ashe was on his way to a second U.S. Open title, but as the match progressed Nastase ratcheted up his game. Always formidable on grass, he eventually took command with a remarkable display of shotmaking. Although Ashe rallied to win the third set in a tiebreaker, Nastase closed out the match with convincing wins in the two final sets.
At the presentation ceremony, Ashe graciously accepted the $12,000 second-place prize money and praised Nastase’s artful play. Yet he couldn’t resist offering a few words of advice. “When Nastase brushes up on his manners,” he counseled, “he’ll be an even better player.” “Ilie and I are good friends off the court,” he added teasingly, “although I must say his table manners are just like his court manners.”
Two weeks later, Ashe and Nastase ran into each other again, this time on a walkway at the Los Angeles Tennis Club. Lost in thought about an upcoming match, Ashe walked right past the Romanian without acknowledging him. Always a talker, Nastase could not let the incident pass without a bit of gentle needling. “Hey, Negroni,” he yelled, using the Romanian term for black man. “I thought you were my friend. How come you tell those reporters that I need manners? Can you believe, in Romania they ask me ‘What kind of man is this Arthur Ashe?’ and I tell them, ‘Fine fellow.’ Now what am I going to say if you tell reporters that I need better manners on court. Bad manners? Not me! Hey, Negroni, let’s be friends again.” After a brief double take, Ashe laughed and walked on. Over the years he and Nastase would have a series of run-ins, but he could never stay mad at the Romanian rogue for very long.12
For Ashe, losing to Nastase at Forest Hills was, ironically, one of the high points of 1972. In addition to earning him one of the largest paychecks of the year, making the finals restored his confidence and led to a noticeable uptick in his play. One week later, he defeated Emerson in the championship match at the Montreal International tournament. It was only his second tournament title of the year—and his first in nearly six months.13
The quality of Ashe’s play slipped noticeably in late September and early October, darkening his mood and temporarily shaking his confidence. Then, on October 24, just as he was about to leave for a month-long tour of Western Europe, he received news that his boyhood idol Jackie Robinson had passed away at the age of fifty-three. After twenty-five years of bearing the burdens and responsibilities of being Major League Baseball’s racial pioneer, Robinson had succumbed to heart disease and diabetes. Since Ashe shouldered similar burdens and both men were UCLA graduates, he felt a special affinity for the great Dodger infielder. He couldn’t help but ponder his own mortality, wondering what the possible consequences of his own solitary struggle might be. Even so, he refused to let Robinson’s early death get the best of him. His best option, he decided, was to seize the day and not worry too much about a medical future largely beyond his control.
Refocused, Ashe soon began to hit his stride on the European circuit. Mercifully, he was in Sweden in early November when George McGovern suffered a landslide loss to Richard Nixon. Feeling more comfortable with the socially progressive politics of Western Europe than with the seemingly reactionary majority of his own country, Ashe had several weeks to commiserate with friends and acquaintances beyond America’s borders. From Sweden, he traveled to the Netherlands, another nation that shared his opposition to the Vietnam War. Playing in Rotterdam, he made it all the way to the finals before losing to Dutch favorite son Tom Okker.
A week later he was in Rome, where he celebrated the end of the European circuit and the Thanksgiving holiday by defeating Lutz in the championship match. The first-place prize money of $25,000 was the largest payday of his career, raising his 1972 on-court earnings to nearly $120,000 and making him the second biggest money winner on the tour. In terms of victories, it had been a disappointing year, with only three tournament wins and only six championship match appearances; and for the first time in his career his overall winning percentage had dipped below 70 percent. But, as he told the press in Rome, it was “nice to end the season on a positive side.” He also took the opportunity to express his—and the ATP’s—commitment to sharing the wealth. “That chunk of money made this my biggest payday,” he informed the reporters. “But the present prize-money breakdown gives too much money to a man at the top.”14
Ashe began the new year of 1973—his fifth on the professional tour—with high hopes. Although he was approaching thirty—a forbidding milestone in the tennis world—he was confident his best years lay ahead. Perhaps most important, the game of tennis as both a profession and a sport appeared to be entering a golden age of open competition and popularity. With the ATP securely in place, the tennis wars in abeyance, prize money rising, and the popularity of the game soaring to unprecedented heights, a bright future beckoned.
It was, after all, the long-awaited Centennial year of modern tennis. A century earlier, the modern game had reportedly been born in Wales thanks to the efforts of a British soldier, Major Walter Clopton Wingfield. Although later research would bring this claim into question, the designation of 1973 as the official centennial was uncontroversial at the time. It was to be a year of renewal and unity, with everyone coming together to celebrate the occasion. “This May Be the Year for Tennis Without Politics,” a January 7 New York Times headline proclaimed. Unfortunately, the realities of life and labor soon intervened. As Bud Collins would later write, “1973 was the game’s most peculiar year,” a period of expansion marked by bitter, internecine conflict and “unprecedented labor strife.” Before the year was over, the tennis world would be ripped apart by boycotts, lawsuits, and both real and ritualistic battles over gender and racial inequities.15
The year of tumult began quietly enough with the introduction of WCT’s new January-through-May format. Sixty-four pros divided into two groups of thirty-two competitors played in parallel tours, designated A and B, with each tour consisting of eleven $50,000 tournaments. Ashe was assigned to Tour B, the weaker of the two tours, while several of the strongest players—including Smith, Laver, and Emerson—played in Tour A. Ashe’s toughest opponents turned out to be Rosewall, Riessen, and Roger Taylor, who joined him in Tour B’s top four finishers. In May, they squared off against the top four in Tour A in a $100,000 WCT Masters tournament in Dallas.16
While he eventually finished among the top four, Ashe’s performance during the inaugural Tour B season was inconsistent and generally disappointing. Following an especially bad patch in January and February when he was eliminated in the first round at Milan and Copenhagen, and in the second round at Cologne, he finally won his first tournament of the year in Chicago in early March. The following week, at the World Cup tournament in Hartford—sponsored for the first time by Ashe’s future employer, the Aetna Insurance Company—he lost convincingly to Emerson in singles, and he and Riessen later lost to Emerson and Newcombe in doubles, insuring that the Aussies would win the Cup for the second straight year. Always keen on beating their archrivals, Ashe and his disappointed teammates were jolted by their 5–2 loss, which did not bode well for the Americans’ chances of retaining the Davis Cup later in the year.
A week later Ashe gained a measure of revenge by beating Rosewall in the semifinals at Merrifield, Virginia, even though he went on to lose the championship match to Okker in a third-set tiebreaker. After six weeks of play, WCT’s Tour B had six different winners, demonstrating a remarkable parity. At both Houston and Cleveland, Ashe lost to Rosewall in the quarterfinals. In Charlotte, he made it all the way to the finals only to lose to Rosewall for a third straight week, once again running afoul of the tiebreaker format by losing the last six points.
Going into the final week of the tour, Ashe had only one victory to his credit. Yet his overall play put him in second place behind Rosewall. In the eleventh and final tournament, held in Denver, he fought his w
ay into the championship match. But in the final he suffered one of the worst defeats of his career, losing 6–1, 6–1 to Mark Cox, a twenty-nine-year-old Cambridge-educated Englishman whom he had defeated handily on several occasions.17
Following the discouraging loss, few observers thought Ashe would be much of a factor at the WCT Masters tournament. But he surprised almost everyone by returning to top form and nearly taking home the top prize of $50,000. In the Masters semifinal, he outlasted Rosewall in a grueling five-set match, winning the final set 6–2 after losing the fourth 1–6. Although he lost his edge in the championship match against heavily favored Stan Smith, the winner of six of Tour A’s eleven tournaments, taking home the second-place prize money of $20,000 took some of the sting out of the loss, as did the fact that the championship match featured two Americans after two years of dominance by Rosewall and Laver.18
From Texas, Ashe traveled to Las Vegas for the Alan King–Caesars Palace Classic, a $150,000 tournament co-sponsored by the ATP. Billed as “the world’s richest single tournament,” the Classic was designed as a showcase for the ATP’s rising importance to the game of tennis. Unveiled in January 1973 along with plans to set up ATP “tournament bureaus” in the United States and Europe as liaisons “between the players and promoters,” the lucrative tournament sent a clear message to the ILTF and WCT: the ATP could not be ignored or taken for granted.19
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