It was a big day for underdogs. The Akron Beacon Journal ran with the headline, “Is Marita Next Superstar?”
Not a typo.
The story of the first round was 17-year-old Californian Marita Redondo, who came through qualifying at the Akron Open to earn a meeting with Evonne Goolagong. Goolagong had reached the final round at four of the previous five majors, and onlookers thought Redondo looked “awed” by the superstar she now faced. The Filipino-American teenager later admitted she was nervous–but she got over it. She beat Goolagong, 6-3, 7-5.
With the benefit of hindsight, the press corps would have focused a bit more on Martina, not Marita. 16-year-old Martina Navratilova was playing just her fourth tournament in the States, and her opening match was her first encounter with Chris Evert. Evert was only two years older, yet she had already reached the final four at both Wimbledon and the US Open.
They pair would go on to play 80 times, three-quarters of them in finals. Akron provided a modest stage for the women to begin what would become one of the greatest rivalries in sporting history.
At least the cameramen were well deployed for the match:
Navratilova lost, 7-6, 6-3, but it was probably the best she had played thus far as a pro. After Evert seized an early break, Martina got it back, and the Czechoslovakian even came within two points of the first set, serving at 6-5, 30-love. A decade later, on an indoor surface like this one, the match would have been over. But in 1973, Chrissie was as cool under pressure as ever, snatching four points in a row from the Navratilova serve to force a tiebreak, then winning the first-to-five breaker, 5-1.
Keeping Evert close was all that most of her peers on the USLTA circuit could manage. Chrissie had just lost a nail-biter to Virginia Wade two weeks earlier in Dallas, but Akron would kick off a run of five tournament victories in a row before Margaret Court finally stopped her at Roland Garros.
Meanwhile, Marita Redondo would have to settle for a handful of trophies on what was left of the amateur circuit. While she would compete into the early 1980s, the Goolagong upset remained her most prominent victory.
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This is the first installment in what I fear will be an ongoing series about 1973, perhaps the most consequential season in modern tennis history. Check back throughout the year for the latest news from, uh, fifty years ago.