jsackmann – Page 17 – Heavy Topspin

May 20, 1973: The Early Life of Brian

Whether it was the money, the climate, or the awkward spot on the tennis calendar, the $150,000 Alan King Classic at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas was a goldmine for underdogs. Top seeds Stan Smith and Rod Laver lost their opening matches. Numbers three and four, Ken Rosewall and John Newcombe, fell in the second round. Only two top-ten seeds reached the quarter-finals, and one of them–Cliff Drysdale–went no further.

The desert heat–often touching 95 degrees–favored the biggest hitters in the game. Laver lost to six-foot, four-inch Dick Crealy, and Newcombe went out to another Australian, Colin Dibley, who once cracked a 148 mile-per-hour serve. Roscoe Tanner, owner of the liveliest arm among the Americans, ousted both Rosewall and Drysdale.

The tournament, along with its record-setting $30,000 prize, seemed to belong to Arthur Ashe. The last seed standing, he was coming off a near-miss to Smith at the previous week’s WCT Finals. Having learned the game in Virginia, he had no problems with a blistering sun. His serve could be every bit as unhittable as Tanner’s.

Just when the resident gamblers thought they had figured out the pattern of the Alan King Classic, Brian Gottfried screwed it all up. A curly-haired 21-year-old counterpuncher from Trinity University in Texas, he moved quietly through the draw, beating Clark Graebner, Charlie Pasarell, and Dibley to reach the semis. He straight-setted another veteran, Cliff Richey, for a place in the final.

What Gottfried lacked in power and pizzazz, he made up for in other ways. His second serve was only slightly weaker than his first. He executed well at the net, even if he didn’t come in behind many serves. Until recently, he had been the third-ranked player on the Trinity squad; he was already gaining a reputation as one of the circuit’s hardest workers.

Ashe liked to joke that after Gottfried skipped practice for his wedding, he doubled his workout the next day to make up for it.

On May 20th, it wasn’t just hot, it was windy. The finalists coped with gusts up to 25 miles per hour. Ashe was never known for playing with a wide margin of error, and it cost him. The favorite double-faulted twice on break point in the second set.

Across the net, Gottfried was unfazed. He broke serve twice in the first set and three times in the second. “I just decided to keep banging the ball hard against his serve… and it worked out,” said the new champion, who won the match, 6-1, 6-3.

It was, by far, the biggest title of Gottfried’s young career. He had won the Johannesburg WCT event, another upset-ridden week, but that championship didn’t quite count: He won the final by walkover when Jaime Fillol was ill. Gottfried won the Vegas doubles, too, for a one-week take of $35,000, more than doubling his career earnings. He had turned pro just nine months earlier.

Arthur, as usual, was eloquent in defeat. “He was hitting out there like there was no wind,” he said. “I wasn’t.”

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Also this week:

You didn’t think they would hold a tournament in Las Vegas without an appearance by the king of the hustlers, did you? Bobby Riggs took part in a one-day “Hall of Fame” doubles tournament played in conjunction with the Alan King Classic. With partner Gardnar Mulloy, Riggs beat Don Budge and Dick Savitt in the opening round, but lost the one-set final to Richard González and Frank Parker, 6-2. “What did you expect?” Bobby chirped. “Those guys had 12 years on us, 103 to 115.”
Evonne Goolagong picked up her fifth title of the year at the Mercedes Benz Open in Lee-on-the-Solent, England. It was a minor event against primarily British competition. The rewards were even less distinguished: The day before Gottfried collected his $35,000, Goolagong received her winner’s check for $312.

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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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May 18, 1973: Missing in Action

The week before the French Open, the 1973 Davis Cup really got rolling. 16 European Zone nations and a passel of famous names squared off in head-to-head ties scattered from Cairo to Oslo.

Many stars made their first Cup appearances of the season when the ties opened on May 18th. Ilie Năstase won in straight sets as Romania took on Tom Okker and the Netherlands. Czechoslovakia’s Jan Kodeš made quick work of his Egyptian opponent, Ibrahim Mahmoud. Manuel Orantes of Spain turned in the best performance of the day in Båstad, Sweden, defeating 16-year-old Björn Borg with the loss of just four games.

There were surprises, too. Great Britain boasted two standouts from the World Championship Tennis circuit, Roger Taylor and Mark Cox. Yet on clay in Munich, they fell to a 0-2 deficit against West Germany. The British stars lost to Karl Meiler and Jürgen Fassbender, respectively.

The day’s heroics belonged to the overlooked Soviet player Teimuraz Kakulia, who outlasted his Hungarian foe, Balázs Taróczy, 1-6, 6-0, 6-8, 7-5, 7-5. Alex Metreveli made progress on the Soviet Union’s second victory, but Kakulia’s three-and-a-half-hour struggle had pushed it so late that his teammate wasn’t able to complete the second match until the next day.

At the start of the weekend, the tie between Yugoslavia and New Zealand seemed to be one of the least important of the lot. (Countries who didn’t belong to an existing geographical zone could choose which one to enter, which is why the Kiwis were competing in Europe.) Neither nation boasted any big-name stars, and whichever side advanced would almost certainly lose to Romania in the next round.

Of course, the two squads themselves didn’t see things that way. The Yugoslavians had looked forward to the return of 33-year-old left-hander Niki Pilić, a Croatian who ranked as his country’s best. Pilić had been a Cup stalwart from 1961 to 1967, helping his team to a zonal final in 1962 and quarter-finals in the three following years. But in 1968, Pilić had signed on with the WCT circuit. That made him a “contract professional,” ineligible for Davis Cup play.

Only in 1973 did that rule finally change. The Australians could once again use Rod Laver, and the Yugoslavians regained their own lefty star, Pilić. Or so they thought. The Yugoslavian captain was under the impression that Pilić had committed to play–or perhaps he simply assumed that every one of his country’s players was at his disposal. Niki would claim that he never made any promises. He entered the Alan King Classic in Las Vegas instead. He lost early and, in theory, could have made it to Zagreb in time for the tie. But he cabled team officials to confirm that he wouldn’t be there.

The hosts could have used him. On the 18th, Boro Jovanović lost a four-setter to Onny Parun. Željko Franulović, the last-minute Pilić replacement, pulled out a five-set victory over Brian Fairlie to even the tie. The Kiwis won the doubles in a rout, and Parun beat Franulović to clinch the victory.

The same day that the Yugoslavians lost the doubles rubber, the federation hit back at its wayward star, suspending him for his “refusal” to play the tie. It was a serious penalty: Without the blessing of his national association, Pilić wouldn’t be allowed to enter the French Open, Wimbledon, and many other prestigious events. His only recourse was to appeal to the International Lawn Tennis Federation, which he quickly did.

Ironically, Pilić, with his competing loyalties, was one of the few top men to enjoy several days of rest before play began at Roland Garros. He didn’t even know whether he would be allowed to enter, but at least he didn’t have to make a mad dash from Las Vegas or Båstad for his first-round match.

While Yugoslavia was out of the Davis Cup, l’affaire Pilić would cast a long shadow over tennis’s summer of 1973. For 70 years, young men had dreamed of one day playing Davis Cup for their countries. Now, as professionals, they would fight for the right not to.

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May 15, 1973: Changing of a Guard

The pace of the tennis calendar in 1973 was unremitting. After the Australian Open, most of the best men played the 15-week World Championship Tennis slate. While the WCT point leaders convened for the tour finals in Montreal and Dallas, many of the others scattered around the globe to play Davis Cup. With one week to go before the start of the French Open, a bit of rest and recuperation must have been in order.

Except… Tennis-loving comedian Alan King set up a tournament at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, to be run by the semi-retired Richard González. Glitz, glamour, and–oh yes–a record-setting $150,000 in prize money. The winner would walk away with $30,000.

Who could say no to that? Aside from European stars committed to play Davis Cup on the Continent, the answer was, approximately, no one. Stan Smith and Arthur Ashe, the last two men standing at the WCT Finals in Dallas, showed up. Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall, too. John Newcombe, who had skipped the WCT circuit in favor of leading the Australian Davis Cup team through its preliminary rounds in Asia, rejoined the fray.

The Vegas event marked a transition for the men’s tour. It was the first tournament run under the auspices of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP), the players’ organization founded the previous September. Until that point, the best players typically competed under contract to a circuit, like billionaire Lamar Hunt’s WCT tour. The alternative was to register as an independent pro and play at events sponsored by national federations around the world. The latter course offered more flexibility, but the real money was in the contracts. Thanks to WCT, Laver was a millionaire, and Smith was $50,000 richer after winning the 1973 Finals.

The ATP didn’t set out to displace the WCT, and it wouldn’t do so anytime soon. The primary goal was to give athletes a bigger say in the running of the sport. It would shift the balance away from the national federations that had controlled players’ fates in the amateur era. Those organizations, together with their parent group, the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF), clung to whatever authority they could.

No federations were involved in the making of the $150,000 Alan King/Caesar’s Palace Tennis Classic.

Whatever independence players could achieve, they could not free themselves from the realities of the calendar. On May 15th, top seed Smith lost his opening match to journeyman South African Ray Moore. The same day, second seed Laver fell to big-serving countryman Dick Crealy, crashing out in a 6-0 third set.

“It’s like playing Forest Hills the week after Wimbledon,” Smith said of the Dallas-to-Vegas transition. It was worse than that: Most of the events of the previous four months had been held indoors. Matches in Vegas were outdoors in 95-degree heat.

Laver had an even better excuse. The 34-year-old was physically spent. After coping for weeks with a back injury that hampered his normally awe-inspiring serve, he didn’t trust his body to make his usual service motion. Against Crealy, he missed more first serves than he made.

For the first time in 15 years, the man needed a break. He told the press after the match that he would take “a few months off.” He would miss the French, the Italian, and quite possibly Wimbledon as well.

The Las Vegas first round claimed one more victim of note: Niki Pilić, the 33-year-old veteran from Yugoslavia. He had opted to chase the $150,000 instead of playing Davis Cup against New Zealand in Zagreb. When Pilić lost in straight sets to American Cliff Richey, no one paid much heed. There wasn’t much interest in the new players’ association, either.

That would change. Within a month, the Yugoslavian and the rebels of the ATP would be the biggest names in tennis.

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May 13, 1973: Man Wins Tennis Match

*A tough day at the office for Margaret Court*

In one version of the story, the idea of Bobby Riggs challenging a leading woman player dated back five years or so, to a casual conversation with Billie Jean King. Riggs, the 1939 Wimbledon champion, and King, the best American woman, thought it would be a lark that they might be able to arrange someday.

By the time Bobby got serious about it, Billie Jean was no longer game. What was in it for her, aside from the $5,000 that Riggs was willing to post? If she won, all she’d establish is that she could beat a pint-sized 55-year-old. If the queen of the Virginia Slims circuit lost, the result would reflect badly on the fledgling women’s tour. Riggs could be a gentleman at close quarters, but when he set out to promote the Battle of the Sexes, he claimed that women’s tennis “stinks. A Riggs victory, he said, would prove that the ladies didn’t deserve anywhere near equal prize money.

Margaret Court accepted the challenge instead, agreeing to a best-of-three match at the remote outpost of Ramona, California. It was slated for Mother’s Day: May 13th, 1973. The clash immediately captured the public’s imagination, and not just within the tennis world. Real estate developers in Ramona kicked in another $5,000 to double the winner-take-all prize pot, and CBS television agreed to broadcast it live.

“This match is unbelievable,” said Riggs. “The eyes and ears of the world are on me. I am the greatest money player in history. I am the finest defensive player in the game. Margaret is the biggest hitter of the girls. What a match! Nobody has a clue how it will go. The mystery of the age. What a deal!”

Riggs was right about one thing: It really did seem up for grabs. Men tended to pick Bobby and women–especially fellow players–lined up behind Court. There were few precedents for a match like this. Don Budge claimed that he made quick work of Maureen Connolly when Little Mo was in her prime. Pauline Betz recalled beating a 55-year-old Bill Tilden. Fred Perry predicted that Court wouldn’t win a single game.

Billie Jean was uncertain. “If Margaret loses,” she said before the match, “we’re in trouble. I’ll have to challenge him myself.”

It was all over in 57 minutes. The kindest analysts said that Court had an off day. Riggs became a “soft wall” and junkballed his way to a 6-2, 6-1 victory. Margaret landed fewer than half of her first serves, and she struggled to generate pace against Bobby’s devilish mix of off-speed stuff. Her forehand was particularly vulnerable. Just a few days before, Budge had told Riggs to attack that wing, as Court’s style of “shoveling” that shot was unorthodox and incorrect.

The result made the front page of the New York Times, a one-paragraph item headlined, “Man Wins Tennis Match.”

For weeks, well-wishers had warned Margaret to ignore Riggs’s chatter and stay wary of his “hustle tricks.” Billie Jean suggested “psychedelic ear plugs.” In the end, none of that mattered. Bobby played his usual game of deadly dinks, and Court collapsed under the pressure. She has been criticized for unwise preparation–she practiced with hard-hitting Tony Trabert before the match–but she spent the entire week before that with coach Dennis Van der Meer, who fed her a Riggs-like mix of junk.

Bobby was gracious in victory. After accepting the winner’s check from John Wayne, he said, “If the match were played on another day under different circumstances, Margaret might easily win by the same score.”

Translation: “Please let me do this again! Please!”

Court said she was up for a rematch. The man-versus-woman concept had proven to be more compelling than anyone had hoped, and Riggs gained a type of celebrity that barely existed when he won the 1939 Wimbledon title.

King caught the match in Hawaii, on her way back from winning a title in Tokyo. When she saw how the spectacle played out, she could only groan. She didn’t trust Court to even the score with Bobby. The next day, she publicly challenged Riggs to a match for $10,000 at her club, the Shipyard Plantation at Hilton Head.

“A match with Mrs. King,” wrote Neil Amdur of the Times, “could rekindle some interest in this format.”

The circus was just getting started.

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May 12, 1973: The B Team Heads South

When the United States opened its 1973 campaign in Mexico City on May 11th, it was already the tenth weekend of the year that featured, somewhere around the globe, a Davis Cup tie. Regional zones around the world progressed on different schedules, and the 53-nation draw made substantial demands of weaker countries. Canada and Colombia held an opening-round tilt in February, and when the Colombians took on Mexico a month later, it was already their third round.

The Americans, by comparison, had it easy. As defending champions, they received multiple byes. A few other countries did as well. The Romanians, among other European squads given first-round passes, wouldn’t get going for another week.

The byes carried a disadvantage, however. Once they took the court, there was no coasting past uncompetitive squads like Canada or Venezuela. The byes also cost Dennis Ralston’s US team the advantage of playing at home. They hadn’t played in the United States for two and half years, and they planned to host Mexico in Little Rock, Arkansas. Mexico protested to the ILTF, which sided with the underdogs. The Americans would head back to Mexico City, where they had swept the 1972 zonal finals just eleven months earlier.

The team that flew south in May 1973 was not the same one that had made the previous trip. Stan Smith, linchpin of the US side, was top seed at the World Championship Tennis Finals in Dallas, contested over the same three-day weekend as the Davis Cup tie. Arthur Ashe and Marty Riessen, the next-best American players, were also in the eight-man WCT draw. 27-year-old Cup veteran Tom Gorman would lead the team instead. Ralston was lucky that Gorman hadn’t played a little better in March and April, or else he might have been in Dallas as well.

In 1972, Gorman had straight-setted Mexico’s Joaquín Loyo Mayo. This year, he found himself opening the tie against a fresh face, 19-year-old Raúl Ramírez. Ramírez had blasted his way through the American Zone, winning four singles and two doubles matches for his country in March. His Davis Cup momentum, combined with his proficiency on clay courts, carried over into the Gorman match. The newcomer made it look easy, defeating the American 6-4, 6-2, 6-3. It was over in less than two hours.

The upset drastically changed the outlook of the tie. Gorman was expected to win both of his singles rubbers. The other American singles options–20-year-old Harold Solomon and 22-year-old Dick Stockton–were less accomplished. Doubles stalwart Erik van Dillen mixed brilliance with a puzzling inconsistency. Suddenly, the Mexicans had a path to victory.

Coach Ralston didn’t relax for three more sets, until Solomon had polished off Loyo Mayo, 7-5, 6-4, 7-5. Solomon’s two-handed backhand and heavy spin were ideal for the surface, his attitude even more so. “He doesn’t have a big serve or volley,” said Ralston. “He’s just tough from the back and he never gives up.”

Knotted at one-all, the visitors were back in the driver’s seat. On May 12th, Gorman and van Dillen beat Ramírez and Vicente Zarazúa, dropping a 14-12 second set en route to a four-set victory. The next day, overshadowed by the exploits of Smith in Dallas and Bobby Riggs in California, Team USA would sweep the rest of the tie. They clinched when Solomon outlasted Ramírez, 8-6, 7-5, 7-5. They would face Chile in the American Zone finals in August.

Having cleared the initial hurdle, Ralston had plenty to look forward to. Smith would likely suit up for the next round, and best of all, they’d finally get a chance to play on home soil.

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May 11, 1973: Meet the New Boss

On the rare occasions that Rod Laver lost his cool, he channeled his anger into the ferocious serve-and-volley game that made him the best who ever lived. Imagine the crowd’s surprise, then, when after making 33 errors in a single set against Stan Smith, Laver smacked a ball into the ceiling of Dallas’s Moody Coliseum.

Despite failing to win a major title since his 1969 Grand Slam, Laver was still considered the strongest player in the world by many pundits and fellow players. But the 1973 World Championship Tennis circuit had dented that reputation. Smith beat Laver for just the third time in ten career tries when they faced off in Atlanta in March. Stan did it again a week later. Two weeks after that, the American made it three in a row.

The Rocket won four titles on the 1973 WCT circuit, but none since mid-March. In the meantime, he struggled with a nagging back injury and watched his rival rack up six titles of his own. Smith headed to Dallas as the top seed and prize money leader of the eight-man field. The draw lined up the two men for a semi-final showdown; after perfunctory defeats of Roy Emerson (by Laver) and John Alexander (by Smith), a best-of-five clash was set.

The WCT Finals didn’t have quite the stature of the majors, but the event was getting there. Ken Rosewall had won classic duels from Laver in each of the last two years. More importantly, both were televised. Perhaps more than any other match, the 1972 title bout, with its fifth-set tiebreak, had established tennis as a made-for-TV sport. The veteran Aussies were more concerned with prestige than ratings, but there was a happy medium: The event was probably the fourth- or fifth-most important on the men’s calendar.

Before Laver could play for the elusive title, he’d have to get past Smith. On May 11th, the American started slowly, double-faulting on set point to give the first set to Rocket, 6-4. In the second, though, he once again showed that he could break the Laver serve. Smith made his move in the seventh game and won the set, 6-4. The third frame was the one that drove the Australian over the edge. After Laver vented his frustration, Smith took the tiebreak, 7-2. The two men traded breaks in the fourth, then the American attacked again in the 12th game to break again and take the match, 7-5.

Two days later, Smith finished the job–on national television–by defeating Arthur Ashe, who had knocked out Rosewall in the semis. Stan’s haul for the four-month circuit reached $154,100.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever have another 17 weeks like this,” he said.

The championship, combined with the defeat of Laver, put to rest any doubts that may have lingered after Smith won the 1972 Wimbledon title. Laver, Rosewall, and others were kept out of the 1972 Championships because of their status as contract professionals. (Smith only joined the WCT tour in 1973.) The Wimbledon field was plenty strong, but no competition was truly complete without the Australian superstars.

“Before today I thought Rod was the best and then Kenny had won the other two WCTs so he had to be right up there, too,” Smith said after securing the title. “Today is the first time I feel comfortable saying I’m maybe the best in the world.”

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May 9, 1973: Side Action

On May 9th, 1973, tennis was four days away from what one Los Angeles-area columnist called the sport’s “biggest day ever.” Fans across the United States could watch the World Championship Tennis final match from Dallas–featuring, perhaps, Stan Smith and Ken Rosewall–on NBC. A few hours later, they could tune into CBS and watch 55-year-old Bobby Riggs challenge Margaret Court in the much-hyped “Battle of the Sexes.”

Riggs called it “the match of the century.” He had ballyhooed the date so relentlessly that he might have believed it.

Everyone knew that the Riggs match didn’t really matter, that a contest between a male has-been and a female superstar wouldn’t settle anything. One Wisconsin newspaper urged its readers to watch the WCT final–that would be real tennis. But no matter how big Smith served, or how beautifully 30-somethings Rosewall and Rod Laver continued to play, the Battle of the Sexes was the event on everyone’s lips.

So, with the big day in sight, what was Bobby doing? At home in Newport Beach, he could’ve walked to a half-dozen tennis courts. But he preferred to drive 120 miles into the desert to the La Costa Racquet Club, where his long-time buddy Pancho Segura was the resident pro. The five-foot, eight-inch Riggs–Court was an inch taller–did a bit of running and played a few sets of tennis, preferably for money. When Bud Collins called for an interview, Bobby offered him a match with “two chairs”–Bud could put two chairs anywhere on Riggs’s side of the court to slow him down.

Most of all, the long-ago Wimbledon champ spent his time working the phones. After retiring as a full-time pro two decades earlier, he had tried his hand at promotion. Results were mixed, but never for a lack of effort. Riggs had a minute for anyone who asked.

If you wanted to bet against him, look no further: Bobby had “plenty of side action” on the match, though he questioned the odds out of Las Vegas that made him a 7-5 favorite. He claimed it was a tossup. “She plays like a man, I play like a woman,” he said. “She’s younger and stronger, bigger and faster. She’s got a better serve, a better volley and a better overhead. She’s got me beat in every department except, maybe, thinking, strategy, experience.”

It was true: Riggs’s brain was the only thing that could keep up with his mouth. “He has one of the quickest, most fertile minds I’ve ever seen,” said Bill Talbert, a former US National doubles champion. “His mind is always darting from one thing to another.”

“Half the time,” added Segura, “I don’t know what he is saying.”

Court, for her part, was lying low in San Francisco. She practiced with coach Dennis Van der Meer and got daily treatments on her legs, which had cramped up the week before at Hilton Head.

One reporter, seeking a fresh angle on the most-covered tennis story of the year, called up Richard González, the 45-year-old legend who had had his share of encounters with Riggs. González was busy preparing for a tournament at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, the Alan King Classic. The event was just a week away. Its purse of $150,000 was yet another prize money record for 1973.

Gorgo’s take on the exhibition that was hogging all the publicity? “I couldn’t care less.”

But like everyone else, González had an opinion. “I sort of think Margaret can win it,” he said. “But I still couldn’t care less.”

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May 6, 1973: It Takes Two

*Left to right: Peter Fleming, John McEnroe, Bob Lutz, and Stan Smith*

For the May 1973 issue of Tennis magazine, five-time US national doubles champion George Lott rated the ten best doubles teams in history. He had plenty of respect for his pre-war peers–Vinnie Richards made the list with two different partners–but he wasn’t afraid to give credit to the strongest lineups in the modern game.

Atop Lott’s list was the Aussie duo of John Newcombe and Tony Roche, winner of ten major titles up to that point. Four more contemporary Aussies made the list: Rod Laver and Roy Emerson came in at sixth, while Ken Rosewall and Lew Hoad ranked tenth.

Missing from the table–an omission Lott might have corrected had he revisited the list a few years later–was the American pair of Stan Smith and Bob Lutz. The two men had led USC to national championships the late 1960s, then burst onto the pro scene with a title at the 1968 US Open. They missed a few years’ worth of opportunities to team up–especially in Davis Cup–because Lutz joined the World Championship Tennis circuit before Smith did. When Stan finally switched sides for the 1973 campaign, the duo could reunite on a full-time basis.

WCT didn’t just have a tour-ending championships–coming up in the second week of May–it had a wholly separate doubles event. This one was held in Montreal, and the winning team would collect $40,000, the richest-ever prize for a doubles-only tournament. Smith and Lutz, with two tournament victories on the season, were the top seeds in their group.

On May 3rd, the American duo overcame a barrage of bad line calls to defeat Niki Pilić and Allan Stone in a four-set first rounder. Two days later, Lutz took the starring role over his better-known partner as the team withstood Laver and Emerson in a four-set match that went through three tiebreaks.

The title match, on May 6th, was a cakewalk by comparison. The challengers, Marty Riessen and Tom Okker, had played well past midnight to defeat Rosewall and Fred Stolle in the semis. Less than 12 hours later, they were back at it. But not for long: Smith and Lutz took the final, 6-2, 7-6, 6-0. Riessen and Okker had to settle for a mere $8,000 apiece.

Where, George Lott might have asked, were Newk and Roche? Roche was coming back from injury, playing a minor-league circuit in the States. Newcombe had taken a break from the weekly grind of World Championship Tennis, so he was ineligible for the big bucks in Montreal. Instead, he was spearheading a group of countrymen in Asia as they fought to regain the Davis Cup. Laver, Emerson, Rosewall, and Stolle were probably more concerned with the action half a world away in India than they were with their own results in Canada.

Concerned–but not worried. After a scare in Hong Kong a couple of weeks earlier, the Aussies were ready for Vijay Amritraj, the dashing Indian youngster. Amritraj and his teammate-brother Anand had the home court advantage in Madras, but not much else. On the first day of play, Newcombe and Mal Anderson conceded just seven games in six sets. While the doubles rubber was closer and the humid conditions favored the hosts, Newk and Geoff Masters sealed the tie in four sets.

The Australians’ relief was two-fold. Indian security forces were concerned that Pakistani terrorists would attempt to kidnap the athletes, a particularly vivid threat just eight months after a massacre of Israeli Olympians in Munich. The visitors were guarded by machine gun-wielding troops, so Newcombe and his teammates spent the trip hunkered down in their hotel rooms. Somehow they managed to muster the focus to get through the tie.

Now, both groups of Aussies–Newk and his buddies at home in Oz, and the WCT crew in North America–could sit back and wait. They had a place in the Inter-Zonal semi-finals, to be contested in November. They wouldn’t even know their opponent for months. Davis Cup ties were spread all over the Continent this weekend: Bulgaria beat Belgium, Norway stopped Denmark, and New Zealand snuck past Austria, to name just three. It was just the beginning: There were three more rounds to go before a European side earned a place against Australia. Davis Cup wasn’t just a measure of skill, it was a test of commitment.

That test was a little tougher to pass each year. Who–aside from Newcombe–would pass up a shot at $20,000 to play a Davis Cup zonal tie in India? Smith captured the ambivalence in a post-match interview. “I suppose it’ll be kind of nice,” he said, “to tell our grandchildren some day that we won the first doubles championship.” After all, the poor kids will be begging for something different after the 100th telling of how Grandpa and his friends won the Davis Cup.

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May 5, 1973: The Drop Shot Queen

*Can’t tell what Rosie Casals will do next? You are not alone.*

The 1973 Virginia Slims tour got some criticism for being so top-heavy. Margaret Court won nearly everything. When Billie Jean King was healthy, it could be a two-woman show. Rosie Casals was perhaps third in line, but even she was a tier below the headliners. In eleven events before the Family Circle Cup, she had reached the semi-final at each one. She went 2-9 in those semis. She was 0-2 in finals–against, of course, Court and King.

Rosie was a shotmaker without compare, a skill that made her and Billie Jean the best doubles team in the world. What held her back–and she readily agreed with this–was the mental side of things. (It didn’t help that she was 5-feet, 2-inches tall, either.) But with a record-setting prize at the $100,000 tournament in Hilton Head, she was able to focus. “You’ll go a long way for $30,000,” she said of the first-place check, “even to the point of concentrating.”

The first sign of the improvement came in the semi-finals, against King. Rosie had lost to her long-time pal 14 times in a row, apart form the famous double default at the 1971 Pacific Southwest. Five of their last seven meetings had come in semi-finals, in which Casals had failed to win a set. This time, however, Rosie kept her concentration and took advantage of a subpar Billie Jean. King acknowledged that she had never really gotten going in 1973.

That set up a final with Nancy (Richey) Gunter, who upset an ailing Court in the quarter-finals. The crowd couldn’t have asked for a better contrast. Gunter was a slugging baseliner; Casals was the creative netrusher. The New York Times called it “a marvelous final that dispelled notions over the inability of women to generate excitement on slow clay courts.”

(That’s what passed for a compliment in the early days of professional women’s tennis.)

It was a high-quality match from start to finish. The fifth game of the first set ran to 14 points, 8 of which were ended by winners. Gunter seized the opener, 6-3, before Rosie’s drop shots took their toll. Casals ultimately hit 30 of them, dragging her opponent into unfamiliar territory at the net–and taking advantage of Nancy’s fatigue from the rapid-fire, four-day event. Gunter spent most of the second set guessing wrong, losing 6-1 as Rosie unleashed droppers off of both her forehand and backhand wings.

Still, Gunter nearly claimed the $30,000. She came within two points of victory at 5-4, 30-15 in the decider. Casals evened the game with a chalk-spitting drop shot, then took the advantage with a passing shot winner when a befuddled Gunter came forward of her own accord. Rosie held for 6-5, then triumphed in a remarkable 43-stroke rally at 30-all in the 12th game. Gunter missed a forehand to give Casals the set and the match, 7-5.

“I didn’t want a tiebreaker,” said the champion. “I don’t think I could have made it.”

Rosie more than doubled her prize money on the year to a total of $58,500. Only Court had won as much in 1973. Only a handful of women had ever done so well from a single year of tennis, and it was still May.

With the match behind her, Casals could finally relax. The wisecracking Californian was as good an interview as ever. Asked who she would like to thank, she had a list ready: “Nancy, Margaret, Billie Jean–and everyone else who lost.”

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May 4, 1973: A British Disgrace

*Virginia Wade, Joyce Williams, and Ann Haydon Jones at Wimbledon in 1969*

The Federation Cup barely registered on the packed tennis calendar. The international women’s team competition was still relatively new: The ILTF launched it in 1963. The arrival of the Open era almost immediately shunted it to second-tier status, as the game’s stars increasingly focused on prize money, none of which was available here.

1973 couldn’t have driven the point home any more clearly. At the same time that women’s teams from South Africa to Norway to Korea competed for the Cup, $100,000 was at stake in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Needless to say, plenty of stars were missing at the quaint, old-world club in Bad Homburg, Germany where the one-week event was held.

Virginia Wade, however, was always ready to wear the colors. She had played every installment of Federation Cup since 1967. She led the British squad to runner-up finishes in each of the previous two years, falling to the hosts–Australia in 1971, South Africa in 1972–each time. Aside from another Cup stalwart, Evonne Goolagong, Wade was the best player there.

She had extra motivation, as well. The British team was well-financed, with cash prizes for players who recorded wins. The arrangement was not entirely novel, but the fact that it became public–even discreetly–was rare.

The Brits knew there were no guarantees, especially if it came down to a final against Goolagong and the Aussies. But Wade’s side had never, in a decade of Federation Cup play, failed to reach the semi-finals. With so much top-tier talent missing, anything less was unacceptable.

The 30-country field was whittled down to eight in a just a few days of best-of-three-match ties. Two nations didn’t play at all: Poland refused to compete because of South Africa’s participation, and Chile’s team didn’t show up at all. (It’s possible they stayed home for the same reason.) There were few early surprises. The United States needed a deciding doubles rubber after an unknown Korean named Jeong Soon Yang upset Patti Hogan. But the Americans weren’t expected to make a deep run anyway: The four-time champions were missing a football team’s worth of stars. Billie Jean King, Rosie Casals, and Nancy Gunter were at Hilton Head, and Chris Evert was finishing her senior year of high school.

On May 4th, Great Britain took on Romania in the quarter-finals. Romania was well-known for its exploits in the men’s game: Ilie Năstase was arguably the best player in the world, and with Ion Țiriac, he had made his country a perennial Davis Cup contender. The women had no such résumé. Veteran Judith Gohn was no threat against someone like Wade, and unknowns Mariana Simionescu and Virginia Ruzici were 16 and 18 years old, respectively.

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Simionescu (left) and Evert in 1980, when both were married to fellow tennis pros

Wade dispatched Gohn with ease, handing off the baton to Joyce (Barclay) Williams, a 28-year-old Scot who had reached the quarter-finals of the US Open two years earlier. Alas, the British number two had no way of preparing for this crucial rubber. Lance Tingay captured the youthful verve of Simionescu:

She exploded into action, this strong, jolly lass of only 16, who laughed when she hit winners, laughed when she had winners hit against her and laughed when she fell over. And what fine winners hers were!

Simionescu’s forehand was “forked lightning,” the best weapon off that wing of any of the women in Bad Homburg. While she was every bit as inconsistent as you’d expect of a hard-hitting, inexperienced teen, she pulled out the victory, 6-3, 6-8, 6-3.

That left the stage open for Virginia Ruzici. Veteran journalist David Gray, who sang Simionescu’s praises nearly as heartily as Tingay did, judged Ruzici to be even more talented. The Romanians played as if they had nothing to lose, and the attack of Gohn and Ruzici snatched the deciding doubles rubber from Wade and Williams, 7-5, 6-2.

More than anything else, the British defeat was a reminder that women’s tennis was–finally–truly global. A dozen years earlier, the only international women’s competition was the Wightman Cup, which pitted the Brits against a United States squad each year. Now there were 28 more nations to contend with, most of them outside the Anglosphere. Romania hardly had a presence in the women’s game just a few years earlier; now they were two rounds away from a Federation Cup title.

This being 1973, though, it wasn’t that simple. Romania, like Poland, objected to the inclusion of South Africa in international sporting competitions. All of the sudden, the surprise victory against the UK set up a semi-final against South Africa. The Romanian coach had instructions from the upper reaches of his government to default such a tie if it arose. The country’s Davis Cup team had done so just five years earlier.

ILTF and federation officials spent the rest of the day in a flurry of diplomacy. For five hours, phone calls and telegrams bounced back and forth between Bad Homburg and Bucharest. The semi-final was rescheduled from Saturday morning to Saturday afternoon to give the negotiations more time. At last, the Romanians agreed to play. The potential for glory was, at least this time, on this stage, greater than the implicit approval of the apartheid regime.

The unexpected political brouhaha had at least one positive effect: It pushed the British loss out of the UK papers. No one was happy about the early exit, but it was easy to forget. This was, after all, just the Federation Cup. There were bigger events in tennis happening around the world, and the next two months would bring a crop of exploits and controversies guaranteed to keep British tennis fans focused elsewhere.

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