Bobby Riggs (right) getting a heart checkup ahead of his match with Billie Jean King
The Bobby Riggs–Billie Jean King spectacular wasn’t the only tennis on offer in Houston. The Battle of the Sexes was slated for Thursday. On Monday, September 17th, the Virginia Slims of Houston tournament kicked off. Billie Jean was there.
I will never cease to marvel at this. The Riggs match, for all its silliness, was enormously consequential–and King knew it. She was out to avenge her gender for Margaret Court’s loss in May, all the insulting things Bobby had said, and–oh yeah–every other slight in the history of male-female relations. She had spent part of the year injured and much of the last week in bed with a virus. Her last appearance at a major, against Julie Heldman at the US Open, had ended by retirement in a heat-induced haze.
The Slims event was little more than an anonymous tour stop. Billie Jean had every reason not to show. Yet on opening day, she not only played one match: She played two.
In the first round, she dispatched Cynthia Doerner of Australia, 6-0, 6-4. Things got a bit shaky in the second set, but the whole match took less than an hour. King came back later for a second-round tilt against 20-year-old Kris Kemmer. That one was even easier: 6-0, 6-2.
Kemmer, like most of the women in Houston, had no problem balancing competition with support for a fellow player. Wearing a pin that said “Billie Jean is No. 1,” there was no question who she’d cheer for on Thursday. “I think we’ll all die if she doesn’t win,” she told a reporter. “She just has to win.”
King was ready to do just that. “I am very healthy again,” she said after securing her place in the quarter-finals. Riggs “had better be ready to play tennis. I am very serious about this match.”
With that, Madame Superstar went into “hibernation.” She wouldn’t give any more interviews. She wouldn’t have to play the Slims event again until Friday. She would practice, she would prepare, and she would shut out the non-stop distraction machine that was Bobby Riggs.
Easier said that done. Riggs went on every Texas talk show that would have him, often several in a single day. He got a medical checkup from a noted heart surgeon, Dr. Denton Cooley. The doc visit was almost certainly just for press consumption; Bobby was more concerned about a nagging case of tennis elbow.
He practiced, too, but even that was part of the show. A bubble was set up next to the Astrodome, and Team Riggs charged five bucks to watch the old man wheeze through a workout. Even with the $100,000 spectacle on the horizon, he couldn’t help but hustle, challenging all comers to a $50 or $100 match, arranging chairs on his side of the court to slow himself down and even the odds.
“Last month was for wine, women, and song,” Bobby told a friendly hometown reporter. This month, he said, “It’s all tennis.”
Riggs and King had very different ideas of what it meant to have a single-minded focus on the game. Under the lights, in front of millions of eyes, would it matter? In three days, the world would find out.
Yevgeniya Biryukova at the 1973 Four Roses Classic in Charlotte
On her first trip to the United States, Yevgeniya Biryukova just wanted to play tennis. Soviet authorities, she had found, were stingy with such opportunities. The 20-year-old physical education student from Baku was the reigning champion and top-ranked player in the USSR. Yet when a Soviet team left for America in March, Olga Morozova and Marina Kroshina got the call instead.
Biryukova, a member of the Stormy Petrel club in Baku, finally reached enemy territory in August. She lost a first-rounder at the US Open to Ilana Kloss, then headed to Charlotte for the Four Roses Classic. She picked up her first win on American soil against Marilyn Tesch, then waited for her highest-profile match yet, against none other than Chris Evert.
Evert was a late arrival to the tournament, having taken part in the World Invitational Tennis Classic in Hilton Head. Bed-ridden with a virus, she was in no condition to play her scheduled match on Thursday. But rain interceded, and the match was delayed.
While tournament officials watched and waited on Thursday, Biryukova earned her first batch of stateside fans. The Azerbaijani player could have asked for a default, but that was never in the cards. “She said she came here to play tennis,” the tournament director relayed, “and would be glad to play the match, no ifs or buts about it.”
Alas, Evert wasn’t well enough to play on Friday, either. Biryukova advanced to the quarters, where she dispatched Britain’s Veronica Burton in straight sets. Her first semi-final appearance against top-flight Western competition carried an extra charge. Morozova, the fourth seed in Charlotte, didn’t make it as far, losing a marathon to Martina Navratilova the same day.
On September 15th, the Stormy Petrel was in the final four, a position she would’ve considered unthinkable just a few days earlier. Evert, Morozova, and Virginia Wade were out; Navratilova and Evonne Goolagong were in the other half. Biryukova’s opponent was the equally unknown Japanese woman Kazuko Sawamatsu. The two players had met just a month earlier, at the World University Games in Moscow, where Sawamatsu picked up the victory.
But Biryukova had been paying attention. Sawamatsu’s backhand was weak, and she wasn’t the best mover. While the Soviet player liked to come forward, Sawamatsu made it difficult. Settling in for a baseline duel, Biryukova aimed to “hit to her backhand, but not every time,” as she said through Morozova, who interpreted for her.
A local reporter judged the match to be “a test of patience and endurance rather than firepower,” a contrast to the more stylish Goolagong-Navratilova semi that went the way of the Australian. Biryukova struck first, breaking serve in the seventh game and holding on to win the first set, 6-4. She played the big points better than Sawamatsu did–or, at least, not as badly. The Japanese woman double-faulted to hand her opponent a break on two occasions. Biryukova came back from 40-15 to break for 5-4 in the second, then held on for victory.
The woman from Baku was satisfied with her victory but realistic about her chances against Goolagong. “Let me rest for a while,” she said, “and then I’ll think about it.”
* * *
The Four Roses Classic was, for the most part, a Bobby Riggs-free zone. Billie Jean King had entered the Virginia Slims tournament in St. Louis, and unable to compete, she stayed in Hilton Head under a doctor’s supervision. Five days away from the nationally-televised spectacle, King remained optimistic she could play, and Riggs pronounced that she had cracked under the pressure.
Still, no self-respecting newspaperman in Charlotte could leave the question unasked. Would Goolagong consider taking on Riggs herself? As usual, she left it to her coach, Vic Edwards, to answer.
“These matches are strictly for money, and not for tennis,” he said of the Battles of the Sexes. “The less said about them, the better.”
Chris Evert at the 1973 World Invitational Tennis Classic
What was a tennis player to do after picking up a $25,000 check from the US Open? In 1973, the answer was simple: Find an exhibition, get on a plane, and pick up some more money.
Or, more accurately, simply say yes when the promoters chase after you.
On Saturday, Margaret Court won a tough singles match against Evonne Goolagong for the Forest Hills title. On Sunday, she played the title matches in women’s and mixed doubles, each one going to 5-all in the third. On Monday, she faced off against Goolagong again, now at the new Hilton Head Racquet Club in South Carolina. This one was easy by comparison: The veteran won, 6-4, 6-3.
Finally, on Tuesday, September 11th, Court played Chris Evert–her victim just four days earlier in the US Open semi-final–to conclude the World Invitational Tennis Classic, the bloated moniker of the Hilton Head mini-event. The contest was every bit as close, if not quite as high-quality, as the match in Queens. Margaret failed twice to serve out a straight-set victory, but she ultimately prevailed, 6-4, 6-7, 6-2.
The WITC piggybacked on the US Open to take the notion of equal prize money even further. A total purse of $135,000 included a whopping first prize of $40,000, which would go to the best player–of either gender. The eight-player field, rounded out by Billie Jean King, Arthur Ashe, Rod Laver, John Newcombe, and Stan Smith, competed in singles, doubles, and mixed, fighting for points that would determine the ultimate winner.
While the exhibition was a marketing boon for the new Hilton Head Racquet Club at Shipyard Plantation, the serious financial backing came from television. ABC would broadcast the matches in April and May 1974, with Ford Motors as the lead sponsor. Few newspapers covered the event as it happened–perhaps they were encouraged not to–so viewers could enjoy the matches as if they were live.
Court, on the other hand, left little in doubt. She simply couldn’t stop winning. She teamed with Goolagong for the doubles trophy and with Newcombe for the mixed doubles crown over the duo of King and Ashe. Laver edged out Smith for the men’s title. Margaret was the only undefeated competitor–man or woman–at the event.
With another mega-prize in her pocket, Court finally–finally–took a few days off.
Evert and Goolagong, on the other hand, were soon shuttling to their next tournament. They were separated by fewer than 100 points in the year-long Grand Prix race, and neither one wanted to ease the pace. As they concluded their business in Hilton Head, the Four Roses Classic in nearby Charlotte was already underway. Though both women got first-round byes, Evonne would play her first match on Wednesday.
Billie Jean, just nine days away from her ballyhooed match against Bobby Riggs, was moving even faster. Her name was in the draw at the Missouri Coca-Cola Women’s Pro International in St. Louis, with a scheduled first-rounder on Wednesday. On September 11th, it wasn’t clear if she’d be up for any of it. The heat had run her down in New York, and she felt even worse after fulfilling her duties at the WITC. She feared it was a return of the hypoglycemia that had sidelined her a few years earlier. Her doctor suspected it was a more pedestrian case of the flu.
Either way, the tennis world held its breath. Would King show up in Houston? Was the purported illness just a hustle to psych out Riggs? If Hilton Head was any indication, she’d find a way to play. Apart from everything else, there was $100,000 at stake. The sport had yet to produce the superstar who would stay home with that kind of money on the line.
A 1973 advertisement for John Newcombe’s T-BAR-M Tennis Ranch
Jan Kodeš was on a mission to silence the doubters. Seeded just sixth at the 1973 US Open despite holding the Wimbledon crown, he succeeded: Oddly enough for a man with three major titles already to his credit, he was the discovery of the tournament. Journalists wrote breathless accounts of his “acrobatic wizardry” and marveled at his “sixth sense” for the dimensions of the court.
“Nobody pays attention to Kodeš,” said Pancho Segura, one of the savviest tennis minds around, after the Czech squeaked through the a five-set quarter-final. “But he can win this tournament the way he returns serve.”
He nearly did.
On September 9th, the other man vying for the title also had something to prove. John Newcombe, 1967 titlist at Forest Hills and three-time champ at Wimbledon, was seeded tenth, even lower than Kodeš. Splitting his time between the circuit and his “tennis ranch” in New Braunfels, Texas, he had played only nine tournaments since the beginning of the year. He hadn’t won a title, and three times he failed to win a single match.
Bud Collins thought the mustachioed Australian was spread too thin. “Newk seems to have thought he could be the Jack Nicklaus of tennis,” he wrote, “picking his spots, giving most of his time to business interests.”
Newcombe agreed. After winning just four matches in four tournaments in Europe, then missing Wimbledon due to the boycott, he went back to the ranch and practiced furiously. (He still had time for his paying campers, as well as the occasional honored guest. One doubles partner was a Texas politician named George Bush.) When he rejoined the circuit in August, there were no more early exits.
Throughout the fortnight at Forest Hills, Newk improved with every match. Andrew Pattison had upsetIlie Năstase but was lucky to snatch a set from the Australian. Jimmy Connors looked particularly strong headed into the quarter-finals… where Newcombe straight-setted him. In Saturday’s semi-final, the ageless Ken Rosewall–seeded fifth–was little more than a target for Newcombe’s booming serves.
The record crowd of 15,241 was treated to a battle royale, a contrast in styles between Newk’s power and the nimble shotmaking of Kodeš.
The Australian struck first. Kodeš, who had finished his semi-final victory over Stan Smith less than 20 hours earlier, was understandably sluggish at the start. Newk took a routine opener, 6-4.
Then the fireworks began. The Czech broke serve in the second game of the next set. “For the next hour Kodeš played like a man possessed,” wrote Richard Evans. “When he’s in full flow, there’s nowhere to hide.” Newk had one of the strongest serves in the game, and they were coming back even faster. Kodeš recovered from impossible positions and made it look easy. “Everything Jan touched turned to gold,” said his opponent.
“There is nothing cautious,” Evans wrote, “about this man from Prague.”
Newcombe found himself in a hole, down two sets to one. It wasn’t over; he had pulled out a victory from the same position in the 1971 Wimbledon final against Smith. But Kodeš was playing even better.
The Australian didn’t have much variety in his game. There wasn’t much he could do to change his strategy. However, he did have another gear. He cranked up his second serve, the delivery that Jack Kramer called the best he had ever seen. He tightened up his volleys. Only now did Kodeš learn what Connors and Rosewall had been forced to accept: Newcombe at his best was unplayable.
The Czech wasn’t willing to admit fatigue, though he did allow that “it is hard to play semis and finals on successive days.” Whatever the cause, he no longer had the answer for everything Newk sent his way. He managed only five games in the last two sets, despite continuing to play superlative tennis. The Aussie finished him off with his 15th ace of the day.
Evans judged the match to be “an awe-inspiring performance, probably the best of Newcombe’s career.” Collins got closer to the heart of it, relaying his mid-match disbelief: “Can anybody play as well as Kodeš and lose?”
Newk had lost a bit of his trademark swagger through the frustration of his 1973 campaign. Now he had it back. He announced that he was going to get back to the top of the rankings–big talk for someone who had just been rated seventh on the inaugural ATP list and had not been considered the top dog for six years. No more long spells at the ranch: He was going all-out to establish his supremacy.
Kodeš hadn’t managed to upset both of his predecessors as Wimbledon champions, but he certainly left Forest Hills with more respect around the game. People learned to stop underestimating Newcombe, too. He had never been the top seed at Wimbledon, despite winning the thing three times. By the time the 1974 Championships rolled around, Newk stood atop the ranking table, and even the tradition-bound committee of the All-England Club agreed.
There weren’t many tennis tickets better than the second Saturday of the US Open. The 1973 schedule opened with the women’s final and was followed by the two men’s semi-finals. New Yorkers might have wished for a better American showing, but no fan could complain about the chance to see Margaret Court versus Evonne Goolagong, John Newcombe against Ken Rosewall, and Jan Kodeš versus Stan Smith.
The term “Super Saturday” wasn’t yet in common circulation, at least not for tennis. That year, though, sports pages around the country deemed September 8th “Super Saturday” for its marquee college football event: a nationally televised game between Nebraska and UCLA.
The action at Forest Hills put that one measly football game to shame.
Goolagong began the day on a tear, winning four of the first five games and reaching triple break point for 5-1. But Court shook off her fatigue from the previous day’s match against Chris Evert and saved the break points. Margaret seized on her opponent’s weak second serves to break back. At 6-all at the US Open, players faced a “sudden death” tiebreak: first to five points, no need to win by two. Goolagong deprived the shootout of its drama, double-faulting and missing an easy smash to hand the set to Court.
From there, the match followed a script that was easy to follow but impossible to predict. When Evonne landed her first serve, she came in behind it and usually won the point. When she didn’t, Margaret pounced and won the race to the net. Goolagong was perhaps the game’s best shotmaker, one of the few women who could leave the 5-foot, 11-inch Court helpless in the forecourt. She could also lose focus, as she did at the tail end of the first set. As she put it, she sometimes went walkabout.
One of those lapses brought Margaret within a point of a 5-2 lead in the second set. But both ladies played better from behind, and Goolagong chose that moment to switch back on.
“I really enjoy playing Margaret, she’s such a fine player,” Evonne said. “She brings me up to a higher level.”
The underdog charged back, winning five of six games to secure the second set. But then it was Court’s turn. The veteran won the first three games of the decider and never let up. She lost only four points on her own serve, and she continued to treat Goolagong’s seconds as batting practice. Margaret claimed her 24th major singles title by the score of 7-6(2), 5-7, 6-2.
The rewards were overwhelming. She was handed a new wristwatch and the keys to a Ford Mustang. And, lest we forget, she received a winner’s check for $25,000, the first time at a major that the women’s champion earned the same amount as the men’s titlist.
“I’m not a women’s libber. I’ve never believed we should get prize money equal to the men,” said Court. “But…”
The 31-year-old “Mighty Mama” had earned that check, battling through three-setters with Evert and Goolagong. “I’m exhausted,” she said. “I won’t be able to walk tomorrow.”
She would have to do more than that: She was on the schedule to play both the women’s doubles final (with Virginia Wade) and the mixed final (with Marty Riessen), starting at 1:00 the next day.
On Sunday, while the football teams from Nebraska and UCLA nursed their injuries, Court would drag herself through six more sets of championship tennis. She always claimed she wasn’t motivated by prize money, but at $154,000 and counting in 1973 alone, she sure found her way to win a lot of it.
* * *
Strong as the women’s final was, it didn’t even stand up as the match of the day. After Newcombe straight-setted Rosewall, Kodeš took on Smith in what–for him at least–was the ultimate grudge match.
Kodeš, a smallish 27-year-old from Czechoslovakia, had ridden the chip on his shoulder to a second US Open final. He wasn’t considered one of the big guns of men’s tennis, and not just because he stood only five-feet, nine-inches tall. He had won the French in 1970 and 1971 and Wimbledon this year, yet he was seeded only sixth at Forest Hills.
The Wimbledon title carried as much of an asterisk then as it does now. The player boycott wiped out most of the field, and Kodeš beat three lucky losers en route to the quarters. His last two victims were Roger Taylor and Alex Metreveli, good players but not great ones. Newcombe and Smith, champions in 1971 and 1972, were generally considered to be the men to beat on grass.
Kodeš could hardly ask for a better chance to prove himself. With Newk already in the final, he could beat both men and grab a US Open title in the process.
The match was a barnburner from the first point. Both men returned well, and many points turned into races to the net–often turning into thrilling exchanges of volleys once they got there. Kodeš grabbed the first set, 7-5. He so neutralized the booming Smith serve that he broke twice to earn a 4-0 lead in the second.
But the tall American charged back, evening the score and forcing a tiebreak. At 4-all–sudden death set point–Kodeš thought Smith missed his first serve and left it unplayed. The line judge disagreed. The Czech couldn’t believe it. He kicked a hole in a chair and “clapped” the line judge on the head. The set was lost, and the chip on his shoulder grew to unwieldy proportions.
Smith nearly rode that call to victory. Kodeš couldn’t get back into it, losing the third set, 6-1. But he eventually remembered the stakes and returned the favor, forcing a decider with a 6-1 frame of his own.
By then, night was falling. “We couldn’t see much,” Kodeš said, “but neither of us wanted to quit.” At last, both men peaked again. They hit their shots at full power, and nearly every point was won, not lost. Bud Collins wrote that “they were just slugging away at each other like two fighters in the 15th round.”
At 5-all, Kodeš finally broke through. He reached 15-40 on the Smith serve, watching Stan save both with cannonballs. When Smith got to game point, it was the Czech’s turn. He kept the serve in play and landed three groundstroke winners to reach 6-5. Four points later, it was over.
Kodeš wouldn’t be well rested for the final, but his desire to prove himself was undimmed. The 1973 Wimbledon champion was one match away from making it two majors in a row–and picking up a $25,000 check to equal Margaret’s.
Chrissie Evert was only 18 years old, and she already had sportswriters reaching for their history books. Her matches with Margaret Court had become the most gripping rivalry in women’s tennis. In the final at the French, Court beat her in three bruising sets. At Wimbledon, Evert won a see-saw semi-final. Now they would meet again for a place in the US Open final. The New York Times compared the duel to “Wills–Jacobs” or “King–Richey”–in other words, the stuff of epics.
On September 7th, the ladies did not disappoint. The match showcased both players at their best. It also made a case for the equality–perhaps even the superiority–of women’s tennis. While many of the surviving men griped about the conditions, Court and Evert got down to business and grappled with the heat, the wind, and the divot-marred grass.
Margaret took an early 5-2 lead, then let it go when she abandoned her net attack to “sneak a rest.” A few lucky breaks went her way, and she escaped with the set, 7-5. The second turned into a baseline battle. After a series of long rallies and chalk-raising groundstrokes, Evert evened things up, 6-2.
The Forest Hills crowd hadn’t seen much in the way of outstanding baseline play in 1973. A constant complaint throughout the event was the quality of the turf. Jan Kodeš, slated for a semi-final against Stan Smith the next day, had said, “You got to get to the ball before it bounces.” Other men registered their displeasure with New York’s air pollution. Combine all that with the heat and humidity, and no one was in the mood to slug it out from the backcourt.
Ultimately, Court’s big hitting won the day. She broke for a 3-1 lead early in the third. Chrissie earned two chances at 15-40 in her next return game, but the veteran erased them with a service ace and a line-kissing winner. Evert didn’t give up–three of the final four games went to deuce–but she never found a way back in. Margaret advanced to her 29th career major final, 7-5, 2-6, 6-2.
With Bobby Riggs set to take on Billie Jean King in just two weeks, it was tough to forget Court’s worst result of the year: her 6-2, 6-1 loss to Riggs in May. Four months on, it was tough to imagine such an overpowering yet versatile player losing to the duck-walking senior citizen. Margaret felt that way, too. “He fooled me that time,” she said. “I’d be ready for him now.”
For the Australian, though, the Battle of the Sexes was just a sideshow. Now, only Evonne Goolagong stood in the way of a fifth Forest Hills title, a 24th major overall, and a record-setting $150,000 in single-season prize money. She was more than just half of a great rivalry. Fans and pundits alike couldn’t help but think she might just be the greatest of all time.
Billie Jean King suffering in the Forest Hills heat
The 1973 US Open reached the round of 16 without losing a single one of its eight women’s seeds. The big four of Margaret Court, Billie Jean King, Chris Evert, and Evonne Goolagong didn’t drop more than three games in a single set.
Tournament organizers expected more of the same on September 3rd. King was drawn against Julie Heldman, a fellow veteran who rarely gave Madame Superstar much of a challenge. In 18 meetings going back to 1960, Heldman had won just two. At the Virginia Slims of Boston in April, King double-bageled her.
With little hope of a close match, the ladies were assigned to the clubhouse court–Court 22–for their third-round match. Neither woman appreciated it. Billie Jean was accustomed to bigger venues, she felt she performed better in front of big crowds, and what’s more, the two-time champion deserved it. Heldman, despite her futility against King, was probably the strongest underdog in the eight ladies matches. Both competitors realized that an equivalent men’s match would’ve been scheduled on a show court.
Billie Jean performed as expected in the first set, coasting to a 6-3 lead. She dominated the net, a necessity on pock-marked Court 22. Bad bounces were frequent, so the first woman to move forward had an advantage. Even in better conditions, that was usually King. Heldman tried to counter the net-rushing with a “chip and dip” strategy of low balls–slice backhands and dipping topspin forehands–that would eat away at her opponent’s energy reserves. It wasn’t enough.
Five games into the second set, trailing 1-4, Heldman finally changed her tactics. If she couldn’t beat Billie Jean at the net, she could get there first. She served better, hit her spots with the forehand, and fought her way back into contention. King was visibly tiring, no longer competing for every point.
“Billie Jean can beat anybody when she’s running,” Julie said after the match. “But when she’s not, she’s mortal like the rest of us.”
Heldman ran out the set, 6-4, and took a 3-1 lead in the second. King’s movement kept getting worse. Coming into the tournament, all eyes had been on Billie Jean’s knee, the trouble spot that knocked her out of the Jersey Shore Classic three weeks earlier. She had consulted with famed knee man Dr. James Nicholas, the expert who handled the aching joints of Mickey Mantle and Joe Namath. Nicholas suggested a light weight-lifting regimen. While King felt good entering the tournament, the knee threatened to stop her again at any time.
But it wasn’t the knee. It was the heat. Or as the New York Times put it, it was the “three H’s–heat, humidity, and Heldman.” Doubled over in pain, King elected to keep going.
Billie Jean served the next game, but she wasn’t all there. She missed a low volley on the first point and once again winced in pain. Heldman knew better than to start thinking about a victory speech–she wondered if King was pulling a trick. Neither woman was above a bit of gamesmanship, and they weren’t exactly friends. The Old Lady had feigned illness before.
Heldman broke for 4-1. After a minute on the sidelines, Billie Jean didn’t move. Finally, Heldman asked the umpire if time was up. King answered for him: “If you want it that badly, you can have it.” The top seed retired from the match.
In Heldman’s memory, it was a classless move. “She didn’t look sick when she stormed off the court,” she later wrote of Billie Jean. “And why did she quit at 4-1 down in the third? No one does that. You just stand and take your medicine.”
Tournament physician Daniel Manfredi had a different opinion. King was taking penicillin for a cold, which could be dangerous in such extreme conditions. “She was lucky she decided to stop,” said Manfredi. “She could have collapsed.”
Whatever the truth of the matter, Heldman was quickly reminded that her victory had little meaning except in the context of September 20th. In 17 days, Billie Jean would take on Bobby Riggs. Reporters were more interested in that. With a bum knee and a near-collapse, could King handle the Happy Hustler? For all her protestations to the contrary, had Riggs psyched her out?
Bobby, as he always did, spun the upset in his favor. Not only did the challenger look fragile, King’s loss opened new vistas. “I’m glad the way it has worked out,” he said. “It may just give me another champion to beat.”
So, maybe Julie Heldman?
“Hell, no,” Heldman said. “He’d psych me out of it. Anybody can psych me.”
Vijay Amritraj at the net, en route to an upset win over Rod Laver
If you can make it anywhere, you can make it there, right? By September 1973, Vijay Amritraj had proven himself just about everywhere except New York. The 19-year-old from Madras was polite, charming, and absolutely brimming with confidence.
In April, Amritraj had taken on most of the Australian Davis Cup team–and won. In July, he saved three match points at Bretton Woods to upset his hero, the great Rod Laver. He won the title at that event after wriggling out of another two match points to defeat Jimmy Connors.
The young Indian had once scraped together pennies to watch the great Rocket in person. He had scraped together a lot more pennies to fly to Las Vegas and study with long-time pro champion Richard González. Amritraj drew comparisons to both, with a powerful serve, athletic net play, and an uncanny ability to put his half-volleys on the baseline.
After another escape act at Forest Hills–this one in the second round against South African Pat Cramer–Vijay earned a date in the round of 32 against the 35-year-old Laver.
The showdown, on September 1st, was a duel for the ages. At Bretton Woods, Laver had just returned from injury. Now he played like the Rocket of old, having dropped just ten games in six sets. Both men were particularly sharp on the return of serve, delivering a captivating roller-coaster of a match with one service break after another.
Amritraj landed the opening salvo, seizing a first-set tiebreak on a pair of Laver errors. The Australian responded quickly, evening the score with a 6-2 second frame. Late in the third, Vijay started to establish an edge in the key moments. He saved two break points to hold for 5-4. A few minutes later, he smashed a return winner to take the set.
“I just get a little tentative on the big points now,” said Laver. Still, he had always played best from behind. He took another 6-2 set to force a decider, then broke to open the fifth.
The crowd, which had supported the underdog early on, divided into even camps. Now that Laver was in a fight, he reminded fans of the thrilling matches that had given him the championships in 1962 and 1969. He was no longer the same man: Three times he fell on the slippery grass, each time looking every day of his 35 years when he got back up. That just made him more likable. Even Amritraj applauded some of Rocket’s best shots.
A light rain, which had accompanied much of the match, started falling harder. Thunder could be heard in the distance. Neither player wanted to stop; after tournament referee Mike Blanchard conferred with them at 2-all in the fifth, the contest continued. Laver merely opted to change into spikes.
Both men stayed aggressive, hoping that luck would lean their way. “It was roulette on that wet grass,” Rocket said. Somehow, the advantage remained with the returners. Each time Laver broke to take the lead, Vijay struck back. The pair combined for only three service holds in the final set.
After three hours of brilliant volleys, the stalemate was broken with a terrible one. At 4-5, 15-all, the Australian kicked a serve into Vijay’s body, earning a weak reply. It was the sort of sitter Laver had put away thousands of times. But for some reason, he couldn’t see it well. Instead of an easy winner, he smacked a line drive to the backstop. What he called “the 101st volley of the day” gave his opponent the edge.
Laver almost salvaged the situation, winning the next two points. But his earlier miscue had left Amritraj an opening, and the Indian took it. From 40-30, Vijay slashed two return winners. He went for broke until the very end, converting his first match point with another unplayable service return. The final score was 7-6(3), 2-6, 6-4, 2-6, 6-4.
“I knew I was lucky to beat him the first time,” Amritraj said. “I just wanted to give him another good match.”
Chris Evert catches her breath on a hot day at Forest Hills
For the best players, an early round at a major was supposed to be easy. A light workout, a pigeon across the net, and a victory. No need to break a sweat.
On August 30th, the second day of the 1973 US Open, everybody broke a sweat.
The mercury touched 98 degrees Fahrenheit. Combined with humidity typical of the New York City summer, the heat had stars racing to get off court. 30-year-old Frenchwoman Françoise Dürr was one of those who didn’t make it. Up a set and down 3-4 in the second, she retired with heat prostration against an unknown American named Sally Greer.
“I was hotter than I have ever been before,” said Dürr. Quite a statement from someone born in Algeria.
Sweating the most was defending champion Ilie Năstase, and not just because of the sun. The unpredictable Romanian shared the top seed with Stan Smith, and fans expected a routine second-round victory when he played 24-year-old Andrew Pattison of Rhodesia. Pattison probably didn’t hope for much more, either. His career highlight to date was a run to the final at the 1972 Canadian Open in Toronto. Playing for the championship, Năstase shut him down, 6-4, 6-3.
The Romanian came out cocky, joking around as he won the first two sets. Suddenly, though, the serve-and-volleying Rhodesian began playing like a world-beater. Năstase could no longer do anything with his serve, and Pattison was responding to Nasty’s deliveries with a new confidence. The underdog evened the match and broke for a 3-2 advantage in the fifth. With Năstase to serve at 3-5, tournament referee Mike Blanchard called the match for darkness. They’d pick up again in the morning.
The resumption took barely ten minutes. The top seed held, and he nearly broke for a tie. Serving for the match, Pattison earned a 30-love lead behind two big serves. He then fell to deuce before finishing the upset with two big serves and a forehand drop volley. It was a huge win for the Rhodesian, and a helpful one for Newcombe, whose draw would have pitted him against Năstase in the fourth round.
The Romanian was gone, but the heat lingered. Of all the contenders who survived, Goolagong seemed the least bothered by the conditions. Her advice: “Think cool.”
Lee Meade, the World Team Tennis owner who triggered the latest kerfuffle
Yep, they were going to do this again.
Two days away from the start of the 1973 US Open, the International Lawn Tennis Federation was threatening a ban. Or the possibility of a ban, or something. The ILTF’s member federations were worried about World Team Tennis and the increasing number of star players the league was hoovering up.
In response, the ILTF would leave no threat unlevied.
It had been weeks since the Team Tennis draft and the announcement that Billie Jean King and John Newcombe would take part in the league’s 1974 summer season. Minnesota Buckskins owner Lee Meade tried to capitalize on the excitement surrounding the US Open by announcing, on August 27th, his signing of Linda Tuero. Compared to King, Newk, and other WTT signees such as Rosie Casals, Tuero was small fry.
Then again, Niki Pilić wasn’t a contender either. And he brought down Wimbledon.
Linda never made it to the press conference. According to her lawyer (and former top ten player) Gene Scott, USLTA president Walter Elcock “told Linda that if she played WTT or or did anything to indicate that she played WTT, the International Lawn Tennis Federation would ban her.”
Though Scott rightly called the threat “ill-conceived and ill-timed,” it didn’t come out of nowhere. A few days earlier, the ILTF had sent a letter to the American federation with a reminder that the international body had the power to ban players who signed contracts with unsanctioned organizations that interfered with ILTF events.
The appetite for self-destruction was astonishing. The decision to ban players was in the ILTF’s hands, and a US Open official admitted that stars might be ruled out of competition “one minute before they step on the court for their first match.” Perhaps not coincidentally, King and Newcombe weren’t on the schedule for the first day of play.
Most galling of all, all the Americans could do was wait. Would the showcase event of the season be compromised by yet another ban- or boycott-riddled field? Long-time tournament director Bill Talbert didn’t know. “I wouldn’t doubt it,” he said.
The New York Daily News summed up the state of the game: It was the “controversial sport of tennis.” Dissension was no longer occasional: It was endemic. For all of the so-called “peace agreements” of the last twelve months, major conflict still loomed. The Forest Hills faithful could only hope it would leave the Open unscathed.
