Connors skipped the Wimbledon Ball, but Arthur arrived early and stayed late. Beaming for the cameras and accepting congratulations from a bevy of friends and admirers, he celebrated in style, on and off the dance floor. Following tradition, he danced the first dance with the women’s champion, Billie Jean King. Though disappointed with his less than courageous stand on women’s issues in the past, King couldn’t have been happier for Arthur after his triumph over Connors. She wasn’t alone. Congratulatory telegrams and letters poured in over the next few days, and Arthur, enjoying a rare week away from the court, spent several hours, including part of his thirty-second birthday, reading them.
One letter, written by Barbara Jordan—the eloquent, deep-voiced African American congresswoman from Texas—praised his “humility” as well as his performance on the court. But Arthur knew she was being too kind, that in fact he had not been especially humble in the flush of victory. Nor had he been especially gracious to Connors in the post-match interview, though he soon tried to make amends. In a July 7 interview, he insisted Connors was not only “the best tennis player in the world,” but also “basically a nice guy.” He also denied the Wimbledon final had been a “grudge match” and minimized Connors’s role in the controversial libel suit. “I don’t really think Connors is doing it, filing the suit,” he told a group of reporters in Pittsburgh. “I think it’s his manager, Bill Riordan. A 23-year-old kid doesn’t go around suing people. If left to his own devices, I don’t think he would be saying the things he’s saying.”36
Arthur had never had much respect for Riordan, whom he had known since the late 1950s, but he had more reason than ever to be contemptuous of the slick promoter’s way of doing things. Two days earlier Riordan had tried to explain away Connors’s loss with the claim that his client had suffered a serious injury during the first week of the tournament. “The doctor had a good look at Jimmy last night and said he was amazed he was able to walk, let alone play tennis,” said Riordan. “Something about torn ligaments in his right shin area. Jimmy didn’t want anybody to know because it might sound as if he were making excuses.”37
Whatever his physical condition, Connors didn’t think much of Riordan’s post-Wimbledon commentary. Ashe had been trying for months to drive a wedge between Connors and his manager, in the hope of deescalating the tennis wars, and in the aftermath of Wimbledon the strategy began to succeed. In mid-July, at Connors’s request, Riordan reluctantly dropped the libel suits against Ashe and the ATP directors. For the time being, Connors remained Riordan’s client, and the suit against the Commercial Union Assurance Company was still pending. But there was a definite thaw in the icy relationship between Connors and the tennis establishment.38
The key element in what would later be called the tennis “détente,” aside from Ashe’s efforts, was a changing of the guard on the U.S. Davis Cup team. Although Ashe, Dell, and others urged the American Davis Cup committee to give Dennis Ralston another chance as captain, three straight years of losses (1973–75) were too much disappointment to ignore. On July 31, Tony Trabert replaced Ralston as the U.S. Davis Cup captain, triggering widespread speculation that Connors would soon join the team. He had sworn he would never play for Ralston, who was closely associated with the ATP, but Trabert, the 1955 Wimbledon champion, was thought to be more independent. “I plan to talk to Jimmy personally,” Trabert announced, “and tell him what I have in mind to clear the air. I think we can work things out. . . . I hope he plays. It would be sad if he didn’t, sad for the team, sad for the country, and sad for Jimmy himself.”39
On a personal level, Ashe was sorry to see Ralston go, but he was pleased that Trabert’s appointment opened up new possibilities for compromise with Connors. Riordan, by contrast, called Trabert’s appointment “an American tragedy,” predicting that the new captain, who had publicly criticized Connors earlier in the year, would be no more acceptable than Ralston had been. As it turned out, Ashe was right and Riordan was wrong. When Trabert named the 1976 U.S. Davis Cup team on September 6, Connors was on it. Asked about Riordan’s earlier prediction, Connors displayed the kind of independence that Ashe had been hoping for. “I guess Bill thought it was best to say that,” he told the press, “but I like to speak for myself.”40
Connors had reason to be in a good mood. Two weeks earlier he had accepted a lucrative out-of-court settlement from Commercial Union, ending the WTT lawsuit. And Trabert had acceded to his demands related to his participation in the Davis Cup competition. Connors had sought assurance he would “play no matter what the situation or surface,” and Trabert had agreed: “I told Jimmy that I want to use the best team I can from start to finish and win the Cup. I told him he’s the only player we have who deserves to play in every match on every surface.” This blanket promise did not sit well with the rest of the team, including Arthur, who was left off the squad scheduled to play Venezuela in the opening round of the North American Zone in mid-October. But he came around to the view that it was a small price to pay if Connors’s participation did indeed make a difference. The important thing was not who played where or when, but rather to bring the Cup back to the United States.41
EIGHTEEN
KING ARTHUR
THE CONTROVERSIAL AGREEMENT BETWEEN Trabert and Connors did not amount to much in the end. By the time the U.S Davis Cup team took the court against Venezuela in October, the tennis world was no longer held hostage by Connors’s ego. Nor was it dominated by the specter of an unmatchable talent. Connors was still the most feared player in the game, and he would remain so until John McEnroe’s meteoric rise in 1979. But he was clearly beatable, as Ashe had proven at Wimbledon, and as Manolo Orantes would demonstrate in the finals of the 1975 U.S. Open in September.1
As both Connors and Ashe discovered, it was a new day at the U.S. Open. The 1975 tournament was the first U.S. national championship at Forest Hills to include night play, and the first to use the 12-point, win-by-two tiebreaker, as opposed to the dreaded, sudden-death nine-point version. Most jarringly, earlier in the summer the newly named USTA (the L for Lawn had finally been dropped) had removed the traditional grass from Forest Hills and replaced it with a claylike surface called Har-Tru, confounding grass and hard court specialists like Ashe. A year earlier, when officials had introduced the idea of a new surface at Forest Hills, Ashe had opposed the soft-court option, predicting a “catastrophe” for serve-and-volley specialists. He proposed putting down a “medium-fast” surface instead and warned, “No American will win his own country’s championship if we don’t.” Ignoring the warning, USTA officials installed the Har-Tru courts anyway.2
Ashe didn’t expect to fare very well on the new surface, and he didn’t, losing to Eddie Dibbs in the fourth round—in straight sets in ninety-eight minutes. On the same day, Laver, another aging serve-and-volley star, lost almost as convincingly to Borg. Connors, thought to be nearly invincible on all surfaces, played well enough to make the final. But Orantes, a twenty-six-year-old Spaniard who had grown up on clay courts, tore Connors up in three quick sets. One observer, amid cries of “Olé! Olé! Olé!” and “Viva Orantes,” likened Connors to a hapless bull being taunted by a matador, while another quipped: If Orantes wins, “do you think they’ll give him one of Jimmy’s ears?”3
Ashe was not amused and even felt a little sorry for his fellow American. He was convinced that more than an unfriendly surface had brought Connors down. Writing in 1981, he viewed the 1975 Wimbledon upset as a pivotal moment, not only in Connors’s career, but also in the broader scheme of top-level competitive tennis. “Looking back,” he concluded, “I believe my victory over Connors that day was the most significant singles match of the seventies. I fully believe that if Connors had beaten me, he would have also won the U.S. Open that fall . . . and that Bjorn Borg would not have won five straight Wimbledons. If Jimmy had won our match, he might have found a way to beat Borg, and Borg’s ascendancy would have been delayed, or maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all. If the time isn’t right,
many balloons get burst in sports.”4
As smart as he was, Ashe was not a trained historian. So it is hardly surprising his analysis reflected a certain amount of reductionist oversimplification. Yet, in an important sense, his assessment of Wimbledon 1975 was correct. His victory over Connors was not just another athletic accomplishment to be stored away in the record books and the memories of serious tennis fans. It was also, as Richard Evans wrote in 1990, “a triumph that spread happiness and satisfaction throughout the sporting world because it turned a good man and fine sportsman into a great champion.”
In a retrospective essay written in 1985, World Tennis magazine columnist Steve Flink offered a similar judgment: “Not only was Ashe’s triumph the most astonishing verdict in modern times at Wimbledon, but his glorious . . . performance was met with universal acclaim by a sporting public that had long appreciated his elegance of style on and off the court. I’ve been involved in tennis in different capacities for 20 years and can think of no event that has brought such joy into so many lives.” Ashe’s personal experiences confirmed Flink’s assessment. “I might be standing in an elevator or walking down a street, and somebody comes up to me and says something about it,” he reported. “Among whites, they say it was one of their most memorable moments in sports. Among blacks, I’ve had quite a few say it was up there with Joe Louis in his prime and Jackie Robinson breaking in with the Dodgers in 1947.”
On a more functional level, Ashe’s Wimbledon victory came at a time when the trajectory of his career was in doubt. Whether the upset at Wimbledon changed Borg’s, or even Connors’s, life in any fundamental way is debatable. But there can be no doubt that it changed Ashe’s life almost beyond recognition.5
Most obviously, the public—and even many of his colleagues on the tour—treated him differently after the Wimbledon victory. Suddenly he seemed to be an object of public and private fascination. He had always stood out physically—and to some extent culturally—from the majority of touring tennis professionals. And he had long been accustomed to being in the public eye. But now he was no longer just a star athlete. In the wake of Wimbledon he was a bona fide celebrity, with a face and story line worthy of magazine covers. Now even nonsports journalists wanted to interview him, to inquire about what he was thinking and doing both inside and outside the lines. Suddenly he couldn’t go anywhere without being noticed or asked for an autograph or a snapshot with a fan. Two days after his Wimbledon victory, he appeared at a shopping center in Pittsburgh as a representative of Catalina sportswear. Expecting a modest turnout, he was genuinely shocked when “fifteen hundred fans mobbed the store.” Later in the week, he encountered similar scenes in Cleveland and in St. Petersburg and Tampa. “All these trips were planned long before I won Wimbledon,” Ashe told a St. Petersburg Times reporter, “but the interest in me has suddenly mushroomed.”6
Ashe and Catalina made a lot of money that week, and as the summer progressed he began to realize fame at the highest level involved considerable material benefits. He had anticipated enhanced respect after joining the “very exclusive club” of Wimbledon champions. But it took him a while to grasp the monetary implications of his new status. “Like many other athletes,” he later explained, “I had clauses in my contracts that provided for extra compensation if I reached the semifinals or finals of important events, including Wimbledon. My exhibition fees almost doubled, which meant I could make the same money in half the time.”7
Ashe never complained about making too much money. But he could not help but notice the disjunction between his new wealth and status and his performance as an athlete. He found his post-Wimbledon life more than a little puzzling, because on the court he was essentially the same man who had entered the 1975 draw as the #6 seed. While he was clearly one of the world’s best players, he had not separated himself from the field or even achieved a number one ranking. He still thought of himself as essentially a challenger—a confident and talented player, but certainly something less than a dominating champion. There was pride in the Wimbledon triumph, but no swagger. He still embraced a realistic and measured sense of his strengths and weaknesses; he was capable of brilliant shotmaking, but, as he knew all too well, he remained erratic and susceptible to lapses in concentration. And he continued to depend on a unique style of play that combined physical ferocity and psychological control. He still hit the ball hard whenever possible, and he was as polite and gentlemanly as ever.8
He also continued to come up with roughly the same results. Despite his lingering heel problem, he had played well during the six months prior to Wimbledon, and he did the same afterward. He spent the rest of 1975 playing and often winning on the Commercial Union Grand Prix, a lucrative forty-two-tournament circuit that had begun in May. Offering $4 million in total prize money, the 1975 Grand Prix stretched across nineteen different countries, ending in December with the Grand Prix Masters round-robin championship in Stockholm. The top eight players qualified for the Masters tournament, and by the end of September, when Ashe defeated Guillermo Vilas at a tournament final in San Francisco, he was second in the total point standings. The $16,000 in prize money raised his 1975 on-court earnings to $256,850, one of the highest figures in tennis history. And he was not done yet.9
Scheduled to play in five more tournaments before the end of the year, he now had the $300,000 milestone in his sights. But it wasn’t going to be easy. The 1975 Grand Prix was one of the most grueling and tightly packed tours in the annals of tennis, and Ashe and his rivals were growing weary by the time they arrived in Paris in late October. Week after week, the competition was as rigorous as the travel schedule, even though only half of the best players were present at any one tournament. While Ashe was playing in Paris, for example, Rosewall and Newcombe were playing halfway across the world in Manila.10
In Paris, Ashe expected Ilie Nastase to be his toughest competition. In the semifinals, he tried to outlast the Romanian baseliner in a contest of “long rallies from the backcourt” but soon found himself two sets down. Switching to a serve-and-volley strategy in the third set, he turned the tide and pulled off one of the greatest comebacks of his career, winning the last three sets 6–3, 6–3, 6–4. By the end of the nearly three-hour match, both men were exhausted, and it showed the next day when Ashe faced Tom Okker in the final. After winning two of the first three sets, he faded noticeably and lost in five.11
A week later, at the Swedish Open, he once again played well but lost to Adriano Panatta of Italy in the quarterfinals. From Stockholm, he traveled to Edinburgh and then on to London, where he lost to Eddie Dibbs in the semifinals. A late addition to the schedule and sandwiched between Stockholm and Johannesburg, the London tournament led to frayed nerves and a general unraveling of the tour’s traditional decorum. Nastase, after losing his passport in a Stockholm nightclub, arrived in Edinburgh twenty-four hours late, and Tanner, who arrived after midnight and suffered a forty-one-minute straight-set loss to Buster Mottram later the same morning, labeled the tight scheduling “ridiculous,” accusing the sponsors of “clearly breaking the rules by scheduling play on weekends at both the beginning and end of tournaments.” Surprised by his easy win, Mottram happily went on to the next round, where he questioned so many line calls during his victory over Ray Moore that the two men almost came to blows in the locker room after the match. “If you behave like that against me again,” the normally mellow South African told Mottram, “I’ll stick my steel racquet down your throat.”12
In Johannesburg, there was no sign of such ragged nerves, only the normal strains and stresses of the apartheid-afflicted nation. After coming up short in his first two efforts at the South African Open, Ashe was more determined than ever to win a major singles title in the troubled land that had tested his civility. With the defending champion Connors bypassing the tournament, Ashe was the top seed. Yet after a few minutes of erratic play in a third-round match against the unseeded South African Pat Cramer, he was out, eliminated in three sets. Paired with Brian Go
ttfried, he fared better in the doubles, making it to the semifinals before losing to Charlie Pasarell and the West German Karl Meiler.13
After coming up empty in South Africa, a weary Ashe took the long flight back to Europe for the Commercial Union Grand Prix Masters round-robin playoffs. By the time he arrived in Stockholm, he was noticeably out of sorts and uncharacteristically negative during a pre-tournament press interview. Acknowledging he was dead tired, he confessed he was simply “not interested in playing tennis now.” In the future, he would cut down his schedule to more manageable proportions. He saw his upcoming opening round match against Nastase as a “damn near impossible task,” a statement more prophetic than he knew.14
Playing against Nastase was always a trial. But in Stockholm the Romanian’s antics actually began in the hotel bar the night before the match. Already holding forth for a group of journalists, Nastase started in on Ashe as soon as he entered the bar. “Ah, Negroni,” he exclaimed, “how you feeling? Good, I hope. Tomorrow night you will need to feel good.” Having heard this kind of needling before, Ashe simply smiled and sat down on the bar stool next to Nastase. But the Romanian couldn’t leave it at that. “Such a good serve you have, Negroni . . .” he continued. “But it does not matter because I beat you anyway. Tomorrow I do things to you that will make you turn white. Then you will be a white Negroni.” As the bar filled with nervous laughter, all eyes turned to Ashe, who calmly slid his drink toward Nastase, telling the bartender, “That’ll be on Mr. Nastase’s check.” As Richard Evans described the scene, Ashe then “slipped gently off his stool; tapped Ilie on the shoulder by way of recognition and, with a satisfied grin on his face, walked out. It was the kind of exit only Arthur Ashe could have pulled off with quite so much dignity and timing.”15
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