Arthur Ashe had good reason to be confident. Entering the final of the United Bank Classic in Denver, he had beaten Mark Cox seven times in eight tries. The two times they met on the 1973 WCT circuit, Ashe had conceded eight games–combined.
“For some reason, I always play pretty well against him,” Ashe said after whipping Cox in the Charlotte semi-final a week earlier. “His game complements mine better than my game complements his. Mark has no junk in his game; he just hits nice, flat, fluid strokes.”
But Cox, a 29-year-old Cambridge economics graduate from Leicester, was no pigeon. The left-hander held a permanent place in the record book. His 1968 defeat of Richard González at Bournemouth made him the first amateur to defeat a pro in the Open era. He scored upsets of Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall in the years that followed. To reach the Denver final, he won three-setters over Jan Kodeš, Brian Fairlie, and the big-serving Roscoe Tanner.
(How hard did Tanner hit a tennis ball? One fan with baseball on his mind suggested that if Hank Aaron didn’t break Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record, they ought to give Tanner a bat.)
Playing for the Denver title on April 29, Cox’s “nice, flat, fluid strokes” often proved unreturnable. Ashe’s typically booming serve went awry, and he was forced to come in behind too many weak offerings. The Brit feasted, hitting what Arthur called “winners and winners and winners.” The match was even more lopsided than Ashe’s recent wins: Cox took the final, 6-1, 6-1.
While the surprise victor could hardly complain about his $10,000 winner’s check, the triumph was bittersweet. It was the final week of the WCT’s 1973 circuit. The top four players in Group B–the gang in Denver–advanced to the tour finals beginning May 9th in Dallas. Rosewall, Ashe, and Marty Riessen already had their spots locked up. Cox’s points from the Denver title moved him into a fourth-place tie with countryman Roger Taylor. The Dallas berth was decided by the two mens’ head-to-head record. Cox and Taylor had played once in 1973, a quarter-final in Copenhagen back in February. That match went to Taylor in a third-set tiebreak.
So by the slimmest of margins, Taylor, not Cox, would head to Texas to meet the best of Group A: Laver, John Alexander, Roy Emerson, and the hottest man in tennis, six-time winner Stan Smith. Cox would have to settle for a flight to Italy and an early start on his clay court campaign.
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This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.
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