The 60s

by The New Yorker Magazine

  Graebner slams his racquet down onto the turf. He shouts, “God damn it, Arthur, you’re so lucky!” To anyone who can halfway read lips, the sentiment goes out over national TV. Ashe stands quietly. He does not show the pleasure he must feel. He bounces the ball six times with his racquet, and he shoves his glasses back up his nose. “Graebner is now completely infuriated,” Dell continues. “Look at him—the Greek tragic hero always getting pushed around by the gods. He really sees himself that way, and it’s his greatest weakness.” Graebner has been known to do a great deal more than slam his racquet down, spit sour grapes, and take the Prime Mover’s name in vain. He has been a behavioral case study in a game in which—at least among Americans—brattishness seems to be generic. Apparently, he feels that he can accurately assign blame outside himself for almost every shot he misses, every point he loses. He glowers at his wife. He mutters at other people in the crowd. Airplanes drive him crazy. Bad bounces are personal affronts. He glares at linesmen. He carps at linesmen. He intimidates ball boys. He throws his racquet from time to time, and now and then he takes hold of the fence around a court and shakes it violently, his lips curling. He seems to be caged. The display of misery that he can put on is too convincing not to be genuine. If his opponent makes a great shot, Graebner is likely to mutter a bitter aside, then turn and say “Good shot” with mechanical magnanimity. He has shouted four-letter obscenities at people in the grandstands, and in the Australian National Championships one year he told an umpire to shut up. At Longwood in 1966, he swatted a ball at a linesman about twenty feet away from him. The ball didn’t harm the man, perhaps because it didn’t hit him.

  Ashe is detached about Graebner in a way that some tennis players are not when they talk about him. “When things go wrong, Clark can’t seem to resist saying or doing something that shows dissatisfaction, to put it mildly,” Ashe says. “I think it has sunk in that he sometimes offends people, and I can see him fighting it, trying to correct it.” Tennis players frequently compare Graebner to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the essence of what they say being that he is a completely different, friendly, smiling person away from a tennis court, and that off the court of late he has obviously made a particular effort to be nice. Graebner’s friend Warren Danne has always enjoyed his company off the court, but says that “Clark has behaved like an ass on the court since he was eighteen.” Dr. Paul Graebner, Clark’s father, argues that Clark is merely ignoring an irrational ethic. “Just because someone once wrote that this is a gentleman’s game, you have no right to blow up like any full-blooded desirous person,” Dr. Graebner says. “Tennis is a business. Tennis isn’t fun. The opportunities tennis gives are tremendous, but not at no cost to the individual.”

  “He has gone out of his way to be a good boy,” his mother says. “Basically, I don’t know of any better boy all around than Clark has been. He was never a problem, never a bad teen-ager.”

  “He has always tried to be what we have wanted him to be, what he felt he should be, what he felt we would have liked him to be,” his father says. “He makes friends wherever he goes. He has more friends than you can shake a stick at.”

  “Someone should have sat on him when he was young,” Clark’s wife, Carole, says. “Officials threatened him but did not act. No one blocked him.”

  “He’s very German,” Warren Danne goes on. “I don’t think I’ve met anyone in this country who’s more German than Graebner—clean, positive, always moving forward. I don’t think he debates alternatives. He sees things one way and acts.”

  There is perhaps something Germanic about Graebner on a tennis court. His kills are clean, but when he kills he tends to overkill. His overhead is hit with his whole arm—no mere flick of the wrist. The arm comes down like the moving part of a paper cutter. “One fell swoop of the arm and the ball is gone,” Ashe says. “And I think he enjoys hitting his forehands as hard as he can. He can hit them harder than anyone else playing, I think.” Graebner likes to hit drop shots, and when other players race to them and make desperate gets he stands at the net and crunches their feeble returns—a standard thing to do, except that other players sometimes believe that the direction the ball takes indicates that Graebner is trying to kill them. They have stopped in the middle of matches to ask Graebner what he thinks he is doing. “Graebner will sometimes literally hit the ball through you,” Ashe will say. “If you don’t get out of the way, he’ll hurt you with it.”

  Graebner has won cups for sportsmanship. At crucial moments in crucial matches, he has stepped to the umpire’s chair to say that a point apparently his should be credited to his opponent, because his racquet ticked the ball. After hitting the ball at the linesman in 1966, he was suspended from the United States Davis Cup Team. The team—Ashe was on it—went to Pôrto Alegre without Graebner, and the United States lost miserably to Brazil. “Clark felt that this was a way that God was looking out for him,” his wife reveals. “Instead of being away when we had our first baby, he was at home and he was not in on the disgrace of losing in Brazil. He has always been very religious.” The day he was suspended happened to be Clark Graebner Day in Beachwood, Ohio, his home town.

  “Arthur’s manners have always been quiet and restrained on the tennis court,” Graebner says. “What I wonder is: Would he have been that way if he had been white? For me, there was always the spoiled-brat thing. I probably was a brat, to some extent. People have called me—and a lot of others—spoiled brats. Would it have been the same for Arthur? He has had to master the restraint of his emotions on the court. In fact, I think he works too hard at trying to keep his cool. He comes off the court after winning a title and gives it the cool play. It’s not human to be that cool. He is penned in. Feelings need an outlet. I hope he is not going to lose his cool by trying to keep his cool.”

  Ashe was trained, in large part, by Dr. Robert Walter Johnson, of Lynchburg, Virginia, who has given much of his life to the development of young black tennis players. For many years, within the strict dimensions of Dr. Johnson’s approach to white tennis, Ashe played under the disadvantage of stifling his reactions, of never complaining, of calling close ones against himself. Now the training is paying off. When things get tough, he has control. His latent confidence—his cool—works in his favor. Even in very tight moments, other players think he is toying with them. They rarely know what he is thinking. They can’t tell if he’s angry. It is maddening, sometimes, to play against him. He has said that what he likes best about himself on a tennis court is his demeanor. “I strive to cultivate it. It’s a conversation point. It’s a selling point. ‘He’s icy and he’s elegant. Imperturbable.’ What it is is controlled cool, in a way. Always have the situation under control, even if losing. Never betray an inward sense of defeat.” He once lost in the finals of the Australian National Championship when a foot fault was called against him on the last point of the match. Almost any other American player would have instantly turned into flaming gasoline. Ashe came very close to it, but he kept control. “You must expect four or five bad calls a match,” he says. “A match can be won or lost on a bad call.” About as close as he will come to complaining is to stare evenly for a moment at a linesman. In an extreme case, he may walk to the point just outside the line where he believes his opponent’s shot landed and draw a little circle around the spot with the handle of his racquet.

  “I used to have a hang-loose attitude,” he will say. “That suggests a don’t-care attitude. If I won, fine; if I didn’t win, too bad. But you just have to care—about anything you have to do. You appreciate excellence for excellence’s sake.” It is part of his cool that he almost never lets himself say or show how much he loves the game he plays, but one has only to watch him on the courts at West Point, playing with the cadet varsity tennis players, to see the extent of his athletic generosity and his affection for what he is doing. He gives away points when he knows that the cadets will not suspect him. He plays at a minor pace with a spectacular suggestion of high effort. He mixes encouragement
with instruction and humor in an unending stream of words across the net. “When you run for a ball that’s real wide, you run as if you were going to take one more step when you get there. One more step and you would have had it,” he will say. Or, “One of the best shots against a man at the net is to hit it right at him. If he’s standing there and you hit it hard right at him, what the hell is he going to do?”

  As a cadet’s good shot goes past him, he shouts, “That’s just too tough!” But, of course, he is realistic with the cadets. He doesn’t want to hurt them, or waste his own effort. So he always wins. “I am really happy in this game sometimes,” he will admit. “One time I am really happy is when the last point is over in a tournament and I have won. Five minutes later, however, it’s all gone.”

  He lifts the ball and hits a deep, flat serve at Graebner down the middle—too deep. Fault. He goes up to serve again, deciding, “I might try to fool him by hitting to the other side, even if I waste a point.” He hits a slice so hard and with such sharp placement, close to the sideline, that the ball jumps cleanly past Graebner’s racquet for a service ace. “Way to go, Art, baby,” Ashe says to himself, and he walks to the umpire’s chair and reaches for a cool, damp towel. Game to Lieutenant Ashe. He leads, seven games to six, second set.

  “I don’t know how deeply rooted Arthur’s feelings are. I would guess they are getting deeper at the moment. He’s going to be very wrapped up in civil rights. He’s got to come through that first. The question is: Is he going to make a business out of civil rights, or is he going to be a businessman and give time to civil rights? Is he going to be a devotee of a belief, or is he going to attend to a business career? He works now, part time, for Philip Morris International—a job he got as a result of tennis. I got my job with Hobson Miller through tennis, but even without tennis I would have had a good job, through my background and social contacts. With his poor, liberal, Democratic background, he has to be always striving to get ahead, striving for recognition, and he is achieving something daily through his tennis conquests. I think he’ll stay with Philip Morris. I think he’s too selfish not to want to be somebody at the age of thirty-five. Of course, he’s never going to be chairman of the board, or president. He’ll be a brand manager, or a vice-president in charge of marketing, making fifty or sixty thousand a year. That’s an easy way to go. It’s a lot easier to make half a fortune than a whole fortune. Even though Arthur is well accepted in a place like Philip Morris, he’s never going beyond that level. I accept Arthur any way, but many people don’t. He’s accepted only because he’s a tennis player. If the West Side Tennis Club rejected Dr. Bunche, they’re going to reject him. Meanwhile, he’ll get married around age twenty-eight and have three kids. I think he’s too smart to marry a white girl. That’s a headache. If he marries a white girl, who’s going to house him? He’ll live in a very lovely residence somewhere, but I don’t know where. I don’t know where a Negro executive lives in New York. I don’t even know. I don’t know where they live. I just don’t know.”

  “I think I might live in Europe for a while. In Spain or Sweden. I go out now and then with a Swedish tennis player. Her name is Ingrid. She really enjoys life. It’s unbelievable. If two people are in love, they’re cowards not to get married. In general, though, I lean toward a Negro girl. It’s easier. I haven’t the slightest idea what I am going to be doing twenty years from now. Graebner will still be in New York. His daughter and his son will have gone to the best private schools. His son will be at Princeton or Yale. Clark will be a member of the Knickerbocker Club, or one of those. He’ll just be living the quiet, middle-class life. He’ll be the president of that paper company if he tends to his knitting. I’ll probably be something like Jackie Robinson, involved in business and politics. I’d like to be in business for myself. I have my hopes—for financial security, for three or four children. What else is there to life besides a family and financial security?”

  “If I could, right now, I would join the Racquet Club or the River Club, but these things take time and can’t be hurried. I don’t want to be just a fifty-to-sixty-thousand-a-year man. I don’t know if I’m shrewd, but if I see an opportunity I’ll try to take advantage of it. If I had to bet on it, I would say I have a good opportunity to be a millionaire by forty, or perhaps even somewhere on the thirty-five-to-forty plateau. I’ll be living in Manhattan, Greenwich, or Scarsdale then. My kids will have gone to Chapin, Spence, Trinity—the best schools—and on to Lawrenceville, Williams, Vassar, Northwestern. Carole will be active in the Junior League—that type of circle. I’ll be the president of Hobson Miller and on the board of Saxon Industries, the mother company. I’ll play tennis a little, and, hopefully, belong to the Racquet Club and the River Club. Hopefully, I will have made a lot of money. One thing I’ll always try to do is keep religion in the forefront of the children’s minds. That I regard as very, very important. If you lead the type of life that the Lord wants you to lead, He’ll give to you. Things come to those who profess and believe.”

  Graebner, standing with Ashe by the umpire’s chair while exchanging ends, rubs sawdust on his racquet handle to dry it and keep it from slipping in his grip. “Thank God I never have trouble with my handle,” Ashe remarks, and returns to the court. Graebner eventually follows, and serves. The ball is too fast to be playable. Ashe gets his racquet on it but deflects it low, into the net. Fifteen-love.

  Graebner serves wide. Ashe stretches to hit a crosscourt backhand. Graebner volleys from his own backhand—a deep, heavy ball. Ashe flips a lob into the air. Both players now make tactical errors. Graebner decides that the ball is on its way out, and fails to pick the overhead out of the air. The ball drops safely within the baseline, and Graebner desperately sprints around it and drives it with his backhand. Ashe, meanwhile, has watched all this in fascination and has forgotten to go to the net to position himself to destroy what has to be a vulnerable return. As it happens, though, Graebner’s shot lands several inches out of bounds. “I’m one of the luckiest guys around,” Ashe tells himself. Fifteen-all.

  Graebner rocks and hits, and Ashe lets the serve go by. He thinks it ticked the cord and is a let. He waits for official confirmation of this, but none comes. The serve is an official ace. Thirty-fifteen.

  Ashe says nothing, and walks to the other side of the court to await Graebner’s next one. He sends it back down the line. Graebner, coming to the ball about a foot behind the service line, volleys it on his forehand—into the net. “Can you imagine me hitting a shot like that?” Graebner asks himself. “Lazy. Lazy. Bad volley. I was too far back. I should have been in another two feet.” The set itself is now hanging on one or two threads. Graebner has the commanding advantage of the serve. Ashe has the unnerving advantage of being within two points of winning. The pressure is total in both directions. Graebner glances at his wife, Carole, who is sitting in the Marquee, a covered grandstand at the east end of the lawn. She is holding her fists up—a signal that means “Come on, now. This is a big point.” Thirty-all.

  Graebner rocks. Hits. Fault. He serves again, safely, in the middle of the box, and Ashe, who has not moved in on the serve, hits a backhand up the middle—so far so conservative on both sides of the net. Graebner half-volleys to Ashe, on the baseline, in the middle. Ashe loosens. He drives the ball to Graebner’s forehand. Graebner punches back hard a volley down the line. Ashe is on it with speed, his racquet back. He hits a flippy backhand, acutely angled crosscourt, with lots of top spin and lots of risk. There is no possibility of Graebner’s getting near it but every possibility that the shot will go out. It’s a liner. It leaves chalk dust in the air. Ashe turns, in the cascade of applause for his sensationally incautious shot, and walks away from the court. He withdraws into himself, his back to the court and to Graebner. Thirty-forty. Set point.

  “Look at him going away from the court, away from the situation,” says Donald Dell. “Believe me, he never does that. He’s nervous. Think of the pressure on him. And still he hits a shot like that
one. That’s why he’s a great tennis player. It’s like a pro quarterback when he is down six points, third and twenty on his own forty, forty-two seconds to go, and he throws a pass into the end zone. The big play at the right time. He not only tries it, he makes it.”

  Graebner hits his big serve to Ashe’s forehand, and Ashe drives the ball into the umpire’s chair. But the serve was a couple of inches out. Graebner serves again, and Ashe’s low, underspun return drops in the service box. Graebner moves up and hits to Ashe’s backhand. Ashe gets set to hit. He can do anything out of his backhand backswing, and now he seems to be preparing for a dink or a drop shot. But he is faking, to draw Graebner in. Graebner runs for the net. Ashe lobs. Graebner is moving one way and the ball, above him, is moving the other way. It drops fifteen inches inside the line. The set is over. The match is even.

  “He fooled me completely. I had no idea,” Graebner says to himself.

  Ashe is saying to himself, “I think I’m going to win it all.”