jsackmann – Page 7 – Heavy Topspin

Review: LIV and Let Die, by Alan Shipnuck

Many tennis fans are worried about the arrival of money from Saudi Arabia in the game. This week marks a watershed, as the ATP NextGen Finals take place in Jeddah. It’s the first time an official tour event has been played in the Kingdom, though several star players have taken part in the Diriyah Cup exhibition, first held in 2019.

It could have been even more dramatic. For months, rumors swirled that the WTA Finals would go to Riyadh. The women’s tour has struggled to find a stable, well-funded home for its signature event, and the Saudis could solve the financial side in a single stroke. But it was too much, too soon: Enough players bristled at the idea of going to the kingdom that the proposed deal was shelved.

Apart from the fact that Saudi Arabia lacks history with the sport and has no professionals of note, the problem is the kingdom itself. Its leaders were tied to the 9/11 attacks and, more recently, ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman heads an authoritarian, repressive government that is particularly backwards in its treatment of women. No single one of these offenses would be enough to keep the tennis tours away–after all, the WTA recently crawled back to China, and the ATP never left. Still, the way the Saudis and other Gulf nations have used their immense oil wealth to muscle onto the world’s biggest sporting stages and attempt to “sportswash” their public images should give pause to everyone in tennis.

The loudest warning signal is the cautionary tale of the LIV golf tour. (The name is pronounced as in “live free” and represents the roman numeral for 54, the number of holes in the tour’s three-day events.) The Saudis took an existing idea for a new golf tour, then offered eye-watering signing bonuses and record prize money to the game’s stars. The resulting division left the PGA in dire financial straits, drowning in legal bills and struggling to retain sponsors. LIV launched in June 2022, and twelve months later, the rival tours reached a tentative agreement to merge, leaving the 108-year-old PGA as a junior partner.

This is the story of Alan Shipnuck’s new book, LIV and Let Die: The Inside Story of the War Between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. A long-time golf writer, Shipnuck gives us the background on every aspect of the saga, including past disputes between the PGA and its players, the motivations of the stars who jumped (and those who didn’t), and the paths taken by various principals, from Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the golf-loving head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, to PGA commissioner Jay Monahan, to former star and LIV CEO Greg Norman.

The personalities matter: The story could have turned out very differently. Al-Rumayyan is a golf fanatic, which meant that he had a personal stake in Saudi involvement in the game. Monahan, stung by the perceived threat of an earlier upstart, the Premier Golf League, saw LIV as an existential threat and refused to even speak to anyone from the Saudi-backed league, let alone seek a compromise. Norman, despite his status as one of the game’s all-time greats, has always been an outsider. Decades earlier, he had put together a proposal for a rival tour, only to be shot down by the old guard.

I approached this book with a specific question in mind: Could something like LIV happen to our sport as well? It likely could, and it probably wouldn’t even cost the interlopers quite as much money. (LIV spent well over half a billion dollars on signing bonuses alone.) At the same time, it probably won’t. As far as I can tell, the Saudis mainly want to be involved in international sport; it was only the confluence of personalities that led to their takeover of professional golf. So long as the ATP and WTA figure out a way to accept money from the kingdom–and probably host an event or three on Saudi soil–a rival tour would serve no purpose.

The Saudis seem to have two goals as they make one splash after another in the international sporting scene. Neither is new: Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and many others have paved this path before. First, they want to clean up their image so that the international public views them as something other than a backwards, pariah nation. This is about more than just likeability: The less odious their reputation, the more likely that they can pursue international opportunities, whether that means investing in a major company or throwing a party at a famous venue.

Second, the Crown Prince realizes that oil wealth is not eternal and aims to diversify the economy. One prong of that strategy is to transform the kingdom into a major tourist destination. Sportswashing plays a role in this, but there’s more to it than just tidying an image. The nation needs destinations and events. Diriyah Cup was one, and years before LIV, there was a Saudi stop on golf’s European Tour.

Sport serves both goals. That said, a certain kind of sporting event is better than others. The key is star power. It’s one thing to become part of a major international tour, but I doubt many people have changed their view of Kazakhstan due to the ATP 250 in Astana. Much more useful is to be associated with a superstar. LIV would have been dead in the water without a few marquee names like Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson. The last Diriyah Cup featured Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev, and Stefanos Tsitsipas. A Saudi football club offered more than $1 billion for Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappé.

Thus, the Saudis have focused on certain types of events and leagues. One of LIV’s innovations (lifted wholesale from the plans of the Premier Golf League, which never got off the ground) was to limit the number of tournaments so that the best players would face off, week after week. The PGA–like, to some extent, the tennis tours–didn’t do that, at least until LIV forced them to reconsider their calendar and rewards structure. For a promoter who wants a star-studded field, an exhibition is one solution–but it’s just an exhibition. Appearance fees are another approach: There’s a reason why ATP and WTA tournaments in Doha and Dubai tend to be stronger than the typical non-mandatory turnout.

The most straightforward solution is to host an event where the top players are required–or at least heavily incentivized–to participate. The WTA Finals fit that profile, as would an ATP Masters 1000 tournament. The LIV tour was a very expensive way of accomplishing that, as the 2023 campaign included 14 loaded fields, only one of which took place in Saudi Arabia.

If we were talking about some other oil-rich country–say, Nigeria or Norway–the solution would be simple. Local investors would buy an existing tournament license, or the calendar would be tweaked, so that a significant event would take place on home soil. That’s how Saudi Arabia got started in golf, hosting the 2019 Saudi International in King Abdullah Economic City. A women’s tournament was added in 2020, and in 2023, the prize money was raised fivefold to match the men’s purse. Saudi involvement in the Ladies European Tour is a useful template. By 2023, there was another event in Riyadh, as well as an Aramco-sponsored “Team Series” spanning five tournaments in other countries.

The question, then, is whether the negatives of Saudi involvement–primarily its human rights record–will stand in the way of tennis taking a similar path. The number of men who have flown in for the Diriyah Cup suggests that there isn’t much resistance on the ATP side. Winning over the WTA could be more complicated, but on the other hand, few leagues stand in greater need of a capital infusion.

Shipnuck, almost in passing, points out another risk of Saudi investment, and it is one that tennis should take seriously. The kingdom has enormous resources, and it is not afraid to deploy them. But its leaders are also fickle. They understand the concept of sunk costs; they are not afraid to abandon a billion-dollar project when circumstances change. This week, ATP executives will see first-hand the example of the Jeddah Tower, planned to be the world’s tallest building. Construction work was abandoned in 2018, and it resumed only two months ago.

For now, the intangible benefits and theoretical future cash flows of LIV golf outweigh the staggering costs. But it’s conceivable that at some point, the Saudis could simply walk away, leaving a fractured, diminished golf landscape in its wake like an unfinished skyscraper. Should tennis accept the kingdom’s financiers as partners, the risk might be even greater: There is presumably no tennis equivalent of golf-crazed Yasir Al-Rumayyan to keep the money flowing when logic dictates otherwise.

Fortunately, we have an advantage in that we’ve seen what Saudi money can do. By detailing how the golf world sailed off course in such a short period of time, LIV and Let Die is an essential playbook for decision-makers in tennis who would prefer to avoid the same fate.

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November 26, 1973: A Mile In My Shoes

For Arthur Ashe, South Africa didn’t hold any big surprises. At the end of his trip in November of 1973, he told reporters that everything he had read about the country was “accurate enough.” Now, he could only reflect on a whirlwind week in which he accumulated as much first-hand experience of the apartheid nation as he could.

Alas, the tennis went more or less as expected, too. In front of large and adoring crowds at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park, Arthur blasted through the draw, winning four straight matches in straight sets to reach the final round. Particularly satisfying must have been his quarterfinal defeat of Bob Hewitt, who had told him that in South Africa, the blacks were “happy.”

The fans wanted to see Ashe go all the way. It certainly would have made for a better story. But Jimmy Connors, the brash, hard-hitting left-hander, had other ideas. The two men had met for the title at the U.S. Pro in Boston back in July, when Connors pulled out a victory in five sets. The 21-year-old had picked up two titles since the US Open and had already locked up a spot at the year-end Masters; Ashe needed the title here to overtake Tom Gorman for the last place in the eight-man field.

On November 26th, Connors was simply untouchable. His kick serves seemed to defy gravity, his groundstrokes skimmed the baseline, and his passing shots left Ashe helpless at the net. One reporter described it as “the peak of his game.” Arthur, still processing his visit to Soweto the previous day, didn’t stand a chance. It was another straight-set decision, only this one in favor of Connors, 6-4, 7-6, 6-3.

Ashe had some consolation: He and Tom Okker advanced to the doubles final with a five-set win over Hewitt and Frew McMillan. The next day, Ashe and Okker would pick up the title by beating Lew Hoad and Bob Maud.

Having missed his last chance to crack the Masters field, Ashe called it quits on his season. He planned to spend much of his time preparing a report on his historic trip, which he didn’t expect others to readily understand. “You would have to walk a mile in my shoes here,” he said, “to be able to know how I feel about it.”

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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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November 25, 1973: Play On

Tennis never had an official offseason. The global nature of the sport ensured there was always some place to play: Australia in December and January, the French Riviera or the Caribbean (or indoors!) in February and March, then Europe and North America straight through to September or October. Individual athletes could take time off, and many did. But there was never a true break.

The schedule became even more crowded in the early 1970s as promoters seized the opportunities of the Open era and the ensuing tennis boom. Circuits in the United States hit the gas in January and didn’t ease up until May. New destinations such as Japan to Iran plugged gaps in the fall. If a marquee name somehow ended up with a free date, an exhibition could be arranged anywhere from Hawaii to Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin.

On November 25th, 1973, Arthur Ashe had a day off in Johannesburg ahead of his final against Jimmy Connors. He gave a clinic in the township of Soweto, earning legions of new fans and expanding his horizons still further on his historic trip.

Ashe and Connors, it seemed, were the only stars not in action on this day, eleven months after they kicked off their 1973 campaigns. Elsewhere on the 25th:

Rosie Casals beat Billie Jean King for the title at the Lady Baltimore tournament, a charity benefit for, among other beneficiaries, the Medical Eye Bank of Maryland. Both women showed signs of rust, but Rosie’s intensity was hardly dimmed. Angered by a pair of bad calls in the third set, she loudly asked if the linesman had recently donated to the eye bank.
In Buenos Aires, home favorite Guillermo Vilas outlasted Björn Borg for the title at the Argentine Open. The duel had the makings of a classic as it headed to a fourth-set tiebreak with Vilas leading two sets to one. But Borg injured his hand and called it a day. It was the first meeting between the pair, who would face off more than 20 times before the end of the decade, including twice for the French Open title.
Remarkably, that wasn’t the only victory Vilas tallied that day without winning a match point. He and countryman Ricardo Cano had split sets with Ion Țiriac and Jean-Baptiste Chanfreau, the score standing 4-6, 7-5, 3-2 in favor of the latter, when the umpire changed a call that had initially gone against the Argentinians. Țiriac stormed off, handing the semi-final to Vilas and Cano by default.
Jiří Hřebec proved that his Davis Cup heroics were no fluke by winning the South Australian Championships in Adelaide. It was his second title in a month–and his second ever. The 23-year-old Czechoslovakian continued to get help from his teammates: His opponent in the final, Bob Giltinan, was exhausted after a five-setter the previous day against Jan Kodeš. Hřebec won in four.
Even with the 1973 Davis Cup still in play, the 1974 competition was gaining steam. On the 25th, Mexico wrapped up a preliminary-round defeat of Canada, while Colombia edged out Venezuela. Canada was already contesting its second tie for the ’74 Cup; they had beaten the Caribbean/West Indies team in October. Mexico and Colombia would play in December, with the winner advancing to challenge the United States in January.
At the Port Washington Tennis Academy in New York–the training facility run by legendary Australian coach Harry Hopman–several national indoor champions were minted in the 14-and-under and 12-and-under categories. The match of the day decided the 12s title, which Californian Kelly Henry lost in three sets to an astonishing ten-year-old backboard named Tracy Austin.

The stars who weren’t in Johannesburg (or Adelaide, or Baltimore, or Buenos Aires, or Mexico City) were practicing hard. The Davis Cup final was only a few days away, with the Grand Prix Masters to follow. After that, maybe a week or two at home, and the whole cycle would begin again.

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November 22, 1973: Expected Points

Chris Evert played a lot of tennis in her home state of Florida, but at the end of 1973, she had to travel all the way to South Africa to establish her supremacy over Evonne Goolagong and the rest of the Grand Prix field.

For two months, Evert had held a modest lead in the Grand Prix points standings, a table based on the results of the season’s sanctioned tournaments. A lot hung on the word “sanctioned.” The Grand Prix was organized in part to help traditional events attract stars and fend off competition from World Championship Tennis and the Virginia Slims tour, so results from those upstart circuits didn’t count. Goolagong had made a late push by reaching the US Open final, together with titles at the Canadian Open and in Charlotte, where Evert had withdrawn due to illness.

The only Grand Prix event on the ladies’ calendar in the last quarter of 1973 was the South African Open. Goolagong was the defending champion; if she won the title again and Chrissie stayed home, the Australian would claim the Grand Prix crown and its $23,750 bonus. (The runner-up would collect a healthy consolation prize of $16,250.)

Airfare from Florida to Johannesburg wasn’t cheap, but with $7,500 on the line–not to mention another $6,000 for the South African title–it would be foolish to stay home.

On November 22nd, Evert justified the journey. By defeating 17-year-old local Ilana Kloss in the quarter-finals, she secured enough points to put the Grand Prix laurels out of reach, even if Goolagong defended her crown.

It wasn’t easy. Even though Evert hadn’t lost a set since Margaret Court beat her at the US Open and the Floridian won her first two matches in Jo’burg without the loss of a single game, Kloss came out fighting. Under the lights at Ellis Park, the left-handed Kloss pushed Evert behind the baseline and relentlessly attacked the net. She took the first set, 6-2, and after dropping the second, she grabbed an early break in the third. Only at 4-all in the third set did Evert find the form that had won her 84 matches and 10 titles since February. The American won 8 of the last 9 points to advance, 2-6, 6-3, 6-4.

Chrissie was officially the queen of 1973, even if her title came with an enormous asterisk. The dominant player of the season was Court, who won three of the four majors as well as just about every other tournament she entered. But most of those events were on the Slims circuit, while Evert and Goolagong piled up points on the weaker spring junket sponsored by the USLTA. Even without entering many of the Grand Prix-affiliated tournaments, Court finished third on the league table. Bonus money was contingent on participation, though, so the $12,500 third-place check went instead to Virginia Wade, and Court would have to settle for her existing season haul of just over $200,000.

Still, Evert’s star was on the rise. She had reached two major finals, beaten Court at Wimbledon, and led the season series with Goolagong. Few would have questioned her status as the world’s top player on clay. Court and Billie Jean King wouldn’t be around forever, but promoters had little to worry about. With Chris and the wildly popular Evonne holding sway, the game was in good hands.

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November 20, 1973: Good Use

*Arthur Ashe on his 1973 South Africa trip*

Getting the job done between the lines was the easy part. On November 20th, 1973, Arthur Ashe made his first-ever appearance on a South African tennis court, straight-setting a fellow American, Sherwood Stewart.

1973 marked a watershed for the South African Open, as it did in the nation’s sporting scene as a whole. The government loosened its apartheid policies on athletics, if only slightly, by allowing a handful of dark-skinned visitors and permitting a limited amount of interracial competition. The headliners were Bob Foster–an American heavyweight who would fight South African Pierre Fourie in Johannesburg in December–and Ashe.

“Sports is the Achilles’ heel of South Africa,” Ashe said. “Now, I know the government is using me, but I’m using it, too.”

Foster was unabashedly mercenary in his aims. The $200,000 he picked up for the bout was his only interest. He holed up in a hotel room for the duration of his stay, and though he defeated Fourie, he left the country less of a hero to the black population than he had been when he arrived.

Ashe, on the other hand, barely left himself any time for tennis. He met with everyone from local activists to the national Minister of Sports and Recreation. The situation was more complicated than international newspapers made it out to be: Most whites welcomed him (though some admitted they didn’t believe in racial equality), while some blacks objected to his visit, believing it gave credibility to an illegitimate government.

Some things, however, were clear. “It is amazing how few people realize what South Africa really is,” Ashe told Frank Deford, a Sports Illustrated staffer who tagged along. “It is a police state. The greatest, most influential variable here is fear. Wherever I go I see that everybody is afraid.”

The entire trip was, fundamentally, a negotiation. Ashe believed in engagement and recognized that compromise was inevitable. One of the terms he set for his visit was integrated seating at the tennis stadium, and he quickly discovered that his hosts would only go so far. (Tournament director and doubles whiz Owen Williams was stuck in the middle: He may have done more negotiating than anyone.) Some black spectators were given tickets to traditional whites-only area of the grandstand, but the “blacks-only” section remained. Ashe kept most of his gripes to himself, and before leaving the country, he was persuaded to tone down his official statement.

Perhaps all of the off-court contortions turned the tennis itself into an escape. In other circumstances, the pressure would have mounted as Arthur progressed through the draw: He was within shouting distance of a place in the eight-man field at the season-ending Grand Prix Masters, and a title here would push him over the line.

No matter the result, the growing crowds and nationwide adulation meant that Ashe would leave South Africa in triumph. He knew, as well as anyone, the limits of influencing social policy through sport. But his trip represented incremental progress, a step that only Arthur Ashe could have taken.

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November 18, 1973: Cleveland-Bound

When 23-year-old Jiří Hřebec arrived in Australia for the 1973 Davis Cup semi-final, he was coming off the best win of his career: a five-set triumph in Prague over his countryman, Cup teammate, and idol Jan Kodeš. He followed it up–albeit after a three-week break–with another career highlight, an upset win in Melbourne over reigning US Open champion John Newcombe.

Going into that match, Hřebec said, he gave himself a 30 percent chance of winning. That’s confidence for you: Few of the 11,000-plus fans at Kooyong would have given the unknown Czech so much as a 3 percent shot. Yet in four focused sets, the youngster knocked out one of the best players in the game to even up the Davis Cup tie at one rubber apiece.

The Aussies came through a grueling doubles match the next day, and the no-longer anonymous Hřebec was on the hot seat again. On November 18th, he faced none other than Rod Laver in an elimination match. If Laver won, Australia would advance to play the United States for the trophy. If Hřebec pulled off another miracle, the tie would come down to a decider between Newcombe and Kodeš.

On paper, it was a near-guarantee for the lads from Down Under. Hřebec refused to see it that way.

In a tight first set, the Czech made the first move, breaking in the 11th game for a 7-5 opener. He eased up a bit to start the second, and the wily Laver pounced. The 35-year-old Rocket had played seven sets in the previous two days, but he had enough energy to secure two more in succession, 6-3 and 6-4. Hřebec’s game was, according to the Melbourne Age, “not quite so exciting or brilliant” as it had been against Newk, but he didn’t back down, taking the fourth set 6-4.

Once again, Laver immediately seized the advantage after his opponent won a set. In the decider, he broke in the first game and ran out to a 5-2 lead. Hřebec, however, just wouldn’t give up. He needed just five points to break back, then held serve for 5-4. The Australian crowd couldn’t help but cheer on the underdog. Even when Laver took the tenth game to a 40-0 lead and triple match point, Hřebec lashed a cross-court forehand to wrong-foot the Aussie, then came up with one of the best shots of the match, a diving drop-volley that left him sprawled on the ground.

Only then did Rocket fire off an unreturnable serve and complete the victory, 5-7, 6-4, 6-3, 4-6, 6-4.

Laver was unique in the admiration he inspired from opponents. Hřebec declined to speak to the press–his English wasn’t good and besides, it was Australia’s day–but he provided a written statement: “[T]o play the tennis that Laver played today under that sort of pressure was magnificent.”

As for Hřebec, he had turned in his third consecutive career highlight. Never again would an Aussie underestimate him.

Australia had waited a long time to return to the Davis Cup finals. Laver hadn’t played for his country since 1962; Ken Rosewall, incredibly, hadn’t been eligible to suit up since 1956. The competition maintained a ban on “contract” professionals, players who received an annual guarantee from the World Championship Tennis circuit. The restriction had severely limited the pool of Davis Cup players since 1968, but as the economics of the game shifted, stars stopped signing long-term deals and competed strictly for prize money. Laver’s and Rosewall’s contracts had each run out before the 1973 campaign.

After five years in the Davis Cup wilderness due to what it viewed as an unreasonable rule, Australia wanted to win it the right way. Two of the few remaining contract pros, Arthur Ashe and Cliff Richey, were Americans, and both were strong enough to merit a place on the United States squad had they been eligible. Immediately after Newcombe polished off his dead rubber against Kodeš, team captain Neale Fraser invited the Americans to use anyone they wished, including Ashe or Richey.

In two days, the Aussies departed for Cleveland, Ohio, to begin their preparations for the last hurdle. The Davis Cup had, for decades, been the defining competition of the sport of tennis, and no country had mastered it like Australia. The 1973 championship round would, for the first time in years, pit the best against the very best. Laver, revitalized after a frustrating season, was ready to lead one final charge.

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November 17, 1973: Tears of a Clown

A sense of humor, Tom Okker might have pointed out, was overrated.

Ilie Năstase, clown nonpareil and probably the most talented tennis player on earth, was seemingly incapable of staying serious for long. Some of his best performances came against buddy Jimmy Connors, who was happy to joke around as well. Facing a dour opponent like Okker or Stan Smith, however, the Romanian looked to the crowd for approval, forgetting that style didn’t count toward the final score.

Năstase reached the final of the 1973 Dewar Cup at London’s Royal Albert Hall with a glittering, final-set-tiebreak victory over Connors. On November 17th, battling Okker in the championship match, the magic was gone. His legions of teenage British fans adored him regardless of the outcome, and he didn’t seem to care too much either.

Okker, the “Flying Dutchman” and second place in the Grand Prix points race, was one of the few puzzles Năstase couldn’t solve. The two men had played five times already in 1973, and Okker had won three of them. Perhaps the Romanian was tired: London was his 38th week of the year in competition. But, as Lance Tingay pointed out in the Daily Telegraph, the Dutchman had played nearly as much.

The first set was a 6-3 breeze for Okker, marred only by his opponent’s usual antics. In the fifth game, Năstase gestured with his left arm while waiting to connect with a smash, apparently indicating where he planned to hit the ball. Okker protested that it was a distraction, but the umpire didn’t think it was worth a penalty. Indeed, by Năstase’s abrasive standards, it barely merited any notice at all.

The Romanian ran off four of the first five games in the second set, and he came within one point of a 5-1 advantage. But there, Tingay wrote, “his talents died.” Okker’s down-the-line passing shots hit the mark again and again, and Năstase didn’t win another game. Oddly enough for a consensus number-one player, Ilie found himself flummoxed by a challenger. “I can’t beat Okker,” he said after the match.

The victory was worth £3,000, and the title went a long way toward securing even more for the Dutchman in the Grand Prix race. Second place in the season-long competition was worth £15,000, while the third-place finisher earned £11,000. (Năstase had already clinched the £22,000 first prize.) Okker started the week with a five-and-a-half point lead over John Newcombe, and Newk’s loss the day before to Jiří Hřebec in the Davis Cup semi-final meant that he couldn’t match Okker’s 40-point Dewar Cup haul. Both men would have just one more shot to pad their totals: Okker at the South African Open, and Newcombe in the Davis Cup final, if Australia got that far.

Newk’s window had yet to close: Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall won the doubles rubber to give the Aussies a 2-1 edge against Czechoslovakia. But catching the Dutchman was never easy. Unlike his most familiar foe, Okker wasn’t one to beat himself.

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November 16, 1973: Form Horses

Pundits have always said that Davis Cup isn’t about the chalk: the pressure of the international event is such that you can throw the usual rankings, forecasts, and odds out the window. Anyone, regardless of stature, can step up and deliver a big win for his country.

When Australia met Czechoslovakia in the 1973 Davis Cup semi-finals, both captains took a chance. Aussie honcho Neale Fraser picked the in-form Rod Laver over the steadier Ken Rosewall–admittedly, a choice most captains would have killed to make. Czechoslovakia’s leader, Antonin Bolardt, took a bigger gamble, leaving hard-hitting veteran Vladimír Zedník on the bench in favor of Jiří Hřebec, a 23-year-old who had won just eight career matches on grass.

Rosewall understood Fraser’s decision. He acknowledged that Laver and John Newcombe were the “form horses,” and Rocket had beaten him just a few days previously. By choosing Hřebec, Bolardt went all-in on recent results: The youngster had beaten his countryman, Wimbledon champion Jan Kodeš, in a five-set match just before departing for Australia.

On November 16th, both captains looked like geniuses. Laver straight-setted Kodeš 6-3, 7-5, 7-5, in a match defined by stellar serving, questionable line calls, and bad bounces on the Kooyong turf. Both players frequently appealed to the umpire, and several points were replayed. Kodeš seemed to attribute the outcome to poor officiating, but in truth, Laver was in control of every aspect of the match. “I haven’t served so well in years,” said the Rocket.

Fraser was surprised to see Hřebec’s name on the lineup card. “I immediately reckoned that was two rubbers to Australia,” he said. The press box was even more baffled, as reporters couldn’t agree on the pronunciation of his name. It was “Yearie Schebetz,” clarified Rod Humphries of the Sydney Morning Herald.

Three of the biggest servers in the game–Laver, Newcombe, and Zedník–were in the stadium. Yet Hřebec turned in the day’s star performance from the line. He overpowered an inconsistent Newk to win the first set, 6-4, and held on in the second through 16 games before the Australian took it, 10-8.

One-set all, packed house, Davis Cup pressure: This was where experience should have told. Instead, the youngster kept cool and relied on the support of his teammates. “Whenever Newk got close,” said Fraser, “Hřebec would pull out a tremendous shot.” Often it was an unreturnable serve: He tallied 14 aces in the match. Newcombe couldn’t turn the tide, and the unheralded Czech finished the job, 6-4, 7-5.

The tie was suddenly a whole lot more complicated, and both captains would have restless nights. Should the visitors ride Hřebec’s form in the doubles and leave Zedník on the bench? Should Fraser bring in Rosewall in place of a fatigued Laver or an unsteady Newk? The semi-final was supposed to be an Aussie rout, but after the first day of play, it was clear that for either captain, one bad decision could be the end of his nation’s Davis Cup hopes.

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November 14, 1973: Chris Evert (horse)

*Chris Evert, the horse (left) at the 1974 Acorn Stakes*

By November 1973, everyone in the sports world was talking about Chris Evert, the 18-year-old Floridian on the cusp of dominating women’s tennis. For the next couple of years, though, fans hailing the victories of Chris Evert would need to be a little more specific.

On November 14th at Aqueduct Racetrack, a new champion was minted in the Demoiselle Stakes: a two-year-old filly named Chris Evert. Her owner was a Massachusetts clothing manufacturer named Carl Rosen, and Chrissie–the one who swung a racket–endorsed his tennis line. The Wimbledon runner-up and the filly wouldn’t cross paths until the following year, but Evert the tennis player kept tabs on Rosen’s equine protégé.

*My favorite two sentences in the entirety of Wikipedia*

Both Everts would reach new heights in their respective fields in 1974. The Floridian would break through at the majors, winning Roland Garros and Wimbledon in succession. The horse would, if anything, be even more dominant. She won the Filly Triple Crown, the prestigious collection including the Acorn Stakes, the CCA Oaks, and the Alabama Stakes.

The two champions finally came face to face in July 1974 at the Hollywood Park Racetrack, when the tennis player watched her namesake take on Miss Musket in a one-on-one match race. With $350,000 on the line, Chris Evert won by 50 lengths. It was an even more comprehensive victory, and a far richer payday, than Chrissie could’ve managed against Bobby Riggs in the would-be match that–finally–had faded from the headlines.

Back in November 1973, both Chris Everts had plenty of work left to do. While Rosen celebrated at Aqueduct, the Floridian was in Johannesburg preparing for the South African Open. “You won up here,” Rosen cabled to the tennis star. “We hope you win down there.”

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November 11, 1973: Laver the Underdog

*L to R: Neale Fraser, Rod Laver, John Newcombe, and Ken Rosewall*

When Rod Laver and John Newcombe met to determine the champion of the 1973 Australian Indoors in Sydney, the Davis Cup semi-final was just a few days away. It was a safe bet that the Aussies would beat the visiting Czechoslovakians, but it still wasn’t certain who, exactly, would get the job done.

One reporter called the four-man squad of Laver, Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, and Mal Anderson “the strongest team Australia, and quite likely any country, has fielded in the 73-year history of Dwight Davis’s silver bowl.” Australia had won the Cup 21 times, and after a five-year lull in which the nation’s murderer’s row of contract professionals was ineligible, the lads from Down Under were more than ready to take it back.

Newcombe would lead the charge: Captain Neale Fraser was relying on the big-serving US Open champion. That left Laver or Rosewall for the second singles spot. Laver was two years younger, and when he played his best tennis, he was the superior choice. But he had struggled with injuries throughout the year. Until he came through a weak field in Hong Kong at the end of October, he hadn’t won a title since March. In that same span, Rosewall had picked up five.

Luckily for Fraser, he couldn’t have scripted the Aussie Indoors any better. Both veterans waltzed through the draw, progressing to the semis without the loss of a set. On November 10th, something had to give: They met in the semi-finals with, in all likelihood, a place in the Davis Cup singles lineup on the line.

There were no secrets between these two. Laver and Rosewall had faced off more than 150 times, going back to Laver’s pro debut ten years earlier. Rocket held a narrow advantage, but Rosewall had won the last two decisions, including the championship round of the 1972 WCT Finals, one of the greatest matches of all time and a television broadcast that launched thousands of amateur tennis careers. It was Rosewall’s backhand against Laver’s serve-and-volley, as it had always been.

In the decisive third set, both men battled for every point, breaking serve a total of seven times. Laver won by the narrowest of margins, 8-6. Rosewall, aware of the implications of his loss and always a man of few words, could only say, “I should have pressed harder.”

The victory earned Laver a place in the final against Newk. If Fraser had any lingering doubts about his choice, the left-handed veteran put them to rest. The Aussie Indoors final was best-of-five, and the two men went the distance, Laver grabbing the first set and Newcombe the next two. Rocket was the most dangerous man in the game when playing from behind, and he showed it again on this day.

After pushing the match to a fifth set, Laver lost his serve in the fifth game of the decider. Newcombe held for a 4-2 advantage before Rocket made his final move. Laver broke for 4-all, and two games later, he put an exclamation mark on his triumph with a blistering backhand on match point. After a frustrating season full of stops and starts, there was no longer anything holding him back.

“I reckon I was the underdog,” he said, “and this makes the victory that much more enjoyable.”

Laver the underdog: Even the Czechs didn’t give themselves much of a chance.

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