Billie Jean King was the star of the week, there was no doubt about that. Her comprehensive victory over Bobby Riggs at the Astrodome ensured that. Still, it was an awfully good run for Rosie Casals.
On September 22nd, King’s time in Houston finally came to an end. The adrenaline rush of the Battle of the Sexes sputtered out, and in the semi-finals of the Slims event at the Net Set Racquet Club, Billie Jean lost to Casals, 7-6, 6-1. Her favorite racket went missing just before the match, but that wasn’t really the issue: she was “mentally and physically exhausted.” That, she said, “and the fact that Rosie played better tennis.”
Casals had a knack for stepping up on big stages. She won the first Slims event in Houston, back in 1970, and she took the $30,000 top prize at the record-setting Family Circle Cup earlier in 1973. The five-foot, one-inch netrusher was perhaps the best doubles player of her era, winning well over one hundred career titles, including five Wimbledons with Billie Jean. The perpetual runner-up or semi-finalist in singles, she was the second-leading money winner on the 1973 Slims tour, and with King and Margaret Court absent, she picked up a title in St. Louis the week before the Battle.
From the beginning, Rosie had been one of Riggs’s most acerbic critics. She was a reporter’s dream, sitting in the locker room with beer in hand, dishing out one-liners about friends, enemies, and a certain 55-year-old who–she never failed to point out–walked like a duck. When Billie Jean requested a female voice in the Astrodome commentary booth, Casals was the obvious choice. The television producers told her to say whatever she wanted, short of profanity. She obliged.
Rosie also displayed an eerie forecasting prowess. On the telecast, she predicted a 6-4, 6-3, 6-3 triumph for King.
As she continued her run in Houston, she didn’t let up on the old man. “Bobby choked,” she said. “[Co-commentator Gene] Scott said he was a good athlete; I said he wasn’t. He’s old and out of shape–out of our league. I don’t think he could break into the women’s top ten.”
With Casals in the role of attack dog, Billie Jean could afford to be magnanimous. “I felt sorry for him,” she said. “He had tried hard and given his best. I know how that feels. I know what it means to lose. He’s been a great loser.”
That isn’t to say that Riggs was ready to make a habit of it. He was already back in action on the 22nd, joining a group of 60-somethings–including former top-tenner Bitsy Grant–for a doubles exhibition in Atlanta. He and partner Hank Crawford won in straights, and Bobby collected $100 a set.
The Battle of the Sexes had changed the world, but Riggs and King–not to mention Casals–were already back to the grind.
Less than 24 hours after polishing off Bobby Riggs at the Astrodome, Billie Jean King was back at the Net Set Racquet Club in suburban Houston. She had won two matches at the Virginia Slims tournament on Monday, and on September 21st, she returned to play the quarter-final.
In front of about 400 fans–quite a shift from 30,000 the night before–King took apart 15-year-old Robin Tenney, 6-1, 6-1. She probably spent more time with the press, fielding the inevitable questions about a Battle of the Sexes rematch, than she did on court. Another contrast: Instead of $100,000, this victory was worth about $1,000.
In Saturday’s semi-final, Billie Jean would meet her old friend (and Battle television commentator) Rosie Casals. The two women had come a long way in just three years.
The Houston event was not one of the most lucrative or well-attended stops on the Slims circuit. But it carried a great deal of historical weight. In 1970, the top women pros objected to a insulting prize-money split at the Pacific Southwest in Los Angeles, a longstanding stalwart on the tennis calendar. Gladys Heldman of World Tennis magazine put together her own event in Houston for the same week. Nine women signed symbolic one-dollar contracts, and the Pac Southwest field was gutted. Casals won that first tour event.
The next year, King and Casals went back to Los Angeles. The prize money situation had not improved, and the ladies had a convenient target for their dissatisfaction in Jack Kramer, the tournament director and former superstar player. Kramer believed that fans didn’t want to watch women’s tennis. “Evidence” piled up as the ladies were exiled to outer courts and men’s matches entertained the grandstand crowds. A week–well, a decade–of frustration came to a head after a bad line call in the 1971 final. Midway through a first-set tiebreak, King and Casals walked out, and the match went down as a double default.
That was the last professional women’s match at the Pacific Southwest. While the Los Angeles tournament retained a prime position in the men’s Grand Prix, awarding $11,000 to its 1973 champion, the women’s event turned into a sideshow. There was no longer any prize money at all.
On September 21st, when King joined Casals, Nancy Richey, and Françoise Dürr in the Houston semis, 17-year-old Kathy May led a distinctly lesser field into the Pacific Southwest final four. The Los Angeles Times reported on the men’s matches–Jimmy Connors saved match point to squeak past Stan Smith–but the unofficial organ of the Southern California tennis world didn’t bother to mention to May or her rivals.
Kramer, Connors, Ilie Năstase, and Arthur Ashe were part of a crowd that followed the Battle of the Sexes on locker room televisions. One group of line judges abandoned their posts to join them, and Kramer had to man a line himself. When Connors and Năstase were called to play a doubles match, they didn’t budge; Kramer had to push them out the door.
As it turned out, people really wanted to watch women’s tennis.
Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs at the end of the Battle of the Sexes
After all the bluster, all the promotion, all the anticipation, Bobby Riggs laid an egg. Just as he had humiliated Margaret Court, Billie Jean King made him look like the slow-footed, powerless 55-year-old he truly was.
Until the moment the first ball was struck, most onlookers expected a Riggs victory. The man had beaten Court 6-2, 6-1, and he rarely took a bet he couldn’t win. King’s inner circle was confident, too–husband Larry predicted a straight-set win–but the majority of the 30,000-strong Astrodome crowd was ready to watch as tennis’s most famous women’s libber was put in her place.
The mood didn’t last. Billie Jean took a 40-15 lead in the first game, and back at the Los Angeles Tennis Club, 1959 Wimbledon champion Alex Olmedo proclaimed, “Bobby’s on the defensive. Billie Jean’s going to win!” Both players were nervous in the early going. Riggs broke for a 3-2 advantage, but King broke right back.
Cliff Drysdale, a veteran player watching Riggs for the first time, began to worry he would lose his bet. “He’s got no power! How can he be so mediocre?”
Drysdale’s wife, Jean, was more circumspect. She, like many in the crowd, suspected it was all part of the hustle. Back in his heyday, Riggs would lose a few games–or a set, or even two–so that a collaborator in the crowd could lay more bets at favorable odds. He had complained all week that there was no King money in Houston. Perhaps he was trying to juice his payday.
If that was the plan, it backfired miserably. Billie Jean converted the first set, 6-4, on a Riggs double fault, no less. Just an hour earlier, Bobby had arrived on court in a gold-plated rickshaw. That, wrote Bud Collins, was “his last moment of glory.”
For spectators able to see beyond the carnival, it was a quality match. Once Billie Jean settled in, she fired winner after winner. She took advantage of the fast indoor surface to get to the net, where she found that Riggs couldn’t pass her well enough to halt the attack. Madame Superstar won three straight games to close the second set, 6-3.
By then, it was clear that Bobby’s deficit was no sham. “Riggs was out of shape,” wrote former player Gene Scott. “He was a balloon. Mentally and physically.” King had run him ragged. The Happy Hustler gave ammunition to future conspiracy theorists by turning in a tactical performance as shoddy as his physical one. “He played stupid tennis,” said Marty Riessen, another pro watching in the LA Tennis Club locker room. “He never put the ball down her forehand side.”
Billie Jean kept streaking to take the first two games of the third set. After another stumble, she regained the lead, forcing Riggs to hold serve to stay in the match at 3-5. He almost did. With both players hanging on to their last nerve, they seesawed through five deuces before Bobby double-faulted and netted a backhand to gift his opponent the last two points of the match.
In the Guardian, David Gray called it a “crushing tactical, technical and psychological victory” for King. Jean Drysdale thought that the champion could “do more with the tennis ball than any other woman I’ve seen.” Arthur Ashe said, “She’s too good–she hits the ball like a man.”
Ashe’s clumsy compliment was exactly what Billie Jean was playing for. “I’ve always wanted to equalize things for us,” she said after the match. “I don’t care if this was an exhibition. A lot of non-tennis people saw it and they now know what women can do.”
Riggs, for all his bluster, knew when he was beaten. He managed one final burst of energy to hop the net for the handshake. He didn’t make excuses, though he did want a rematch. He had been so confident of victory he promised to jump off a bridge if he lost. Now he thought about which bridge it would be.
“I guess I’m the biggest bum of all time now,” he said. “She played too well…. Girls her age are tough on 55-year-old guys. I have to eat a lot of crow. I said a lot of things and I have to take them all back.”
For tennis, there was nothing to take back. Madame Superstar’s nerves of steel–and a killer backhand volley–had won another battle for the growing women’s game. Promoters saw limitless potential in the sport, even if the “Battle of the Sexes” concept was largely played out. A half-decade of controversy was forgotten–at least for the moment–in the glow of one bizarre, spectacular evening.
“This has made a lot of dreams come true for me and for tennis,” said Billie Jean King. “This is a delight.”
Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs at a press conference the day before the Battle
It is hard to convey the degree to which the sports world was seized by the Battle of the Sexes. On September 19th, 1973, the day before the match, newspapers around the United States put together full-page spreads to preview the long-awaited tilt. Punters scrambled to lay last minute wagers: Bobby Riggs was a 5-2 favorite, and it was increasingly difficult to find a Billie Jean King backer to bet against.
Celebrities flocked to Houston. George Foreman would hand over the winner’s check. Bombshell Mamie Van Doren met Riggs on a talk show and became an ardent cheerleader. 69-year-old painter Salvador Dali turned up, for some reason.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said a Baltimore saloonkeeper. “Everybody’s talking about it. I mean people who don’t even like tennis–people who could care less about Ron Laver or whatever his name is. A serious tennis match could never get the public as excited as this thing has.”
Laver himself–Rod, not Ron–wasn’t crazy about it. He feared it was turning his sport into a burlesque.
He wasn’t wrong. But… for a gimmick, it was sure a glorious one. While the 51,000-capacity Houston Astrodome wasn’t going to sell out, more than half of the tickets were already accounted for. The Battle would set a new attendance record for a tennis match, and the television broadcast was expected to reach as many as 90 million viewers.
Rocket Rod, alas, could never.
So much of the spectacle’s success was owing to the goofy charisma of the diminutive, motor-mouthed Riggs. Even the mission-focused Billie Jean couldn’t always help herself: “I like him and I hate him. He is so ridiculous. Sometimes I laugh, but mostly I get furious.”
Bobby promoted the match–and promoted it, and promoted it some more–with a steady stream of male chauvinist patter: Women are at their best in the kitchen and the bedroom. (Billie Jean said she didn’t mind the bedroom part.) He claimed membership in WORMS: the World Organization for the Retention of Male Supremacy.
The irony was evident, even to Riggs. Women’s tennis, he said, “has come a long way, baby, and playing me isn’t hurting either…. Tennis has been the benefactor all over the world. It just happens to be good for Bobby Riggs, too, but that is only incidental.”
What made the match so compelling was that the outcome was truly uncertain. All the social relevance and celebrity appeal in the world couldn’t manufacture a must-watch out of an obvious blowout. Hundreds of the top men tennis players could beat Billie Jean, and a handful of them had done so over the years, in practice. Riggs, with his funky dink-ball game and the wildcard of his advanced age, could bewilder King–as he had Margaret Court–or could be overpowered by her.
The Court result, combined with a general faith in the savviness of the 1939 Wimbledon champion, made it tough to bet against Bobby. But several details tilted the forecast in the other direction. The Sportface surface was a low-bouncing one that would favor a dashing volleyer over a geriatric lob machine, especially over the course of a best-of-five-set match. Riggs had coasted through his preparation, chugging vitamins but letting his overall fitness sag from its Mother’s Day peak. Billie Jean had Margaret’s loss to learn from, and she’d know exactly what to expect.
Expert predictions were, well, predictable. Few pundits broke ranks with their own gender. The New York Times ran side-by-side pieces presenting each player’s case, by Neil Amdur and Grace Lichtenstein. Pancho Segura, one of the finest tennis minds in the game’s history, sided with his buddy Bobby, producing the X’s and O’s to explain why the veteran would pull through. No less a figure than Althea Gibson picked Billie Jean, who would “run Bobby’s little legs off.”
King said over and over again that it wasn’t (just) about the money. She was ready to put half of the human race on her back and carry them to victory.
Could Bobby muster the motivation to counter Billie Jean’s sense of responsibility? Long-time pal Lornie Kuhle couldn’t imagine the Happy Hustler losing what was, at its core, the greatest tennis hustle of all time. “That’s why Bobby’s going to win,” he said. “There’s really too much money on the line for him to lose.”
Hold the presses–we have a final result. Riggs beat King, 6-3, 6-4. Bobby barely broke a sweat.
Okay, the victim wasn’t Billie Jean. It was her husband, Larry King. On September 18th, just two days away from the main event, Bobby Riggs hustled Mr. King for $300. Larry wasn’t much of a tennis player, though he did enter a few husband-and-wife doubles events with Billie Jean in the mid-60s. Bobby spotted him three games in the first set, four games in the second. You can do the math: The man of the hour won twelve games in a row.
In fairness, Larry was probably exhausted. The public knew him as Billie Jean’s “husband and business partner”–not necessarily in that order. He ran interference for Madame Superstar, handling travel arrangements and ferreting out business opportunities for his wife. The job was never more demanding that it was this week. Everyone wanted a piece of Billie Jean, and the woman herself was hiding out.
The Kings had spent years turning over every leaf, identifying sources of funding and promotion for women’s tennis. Now, the phone never stopped ringing. Jerry Perenchio, the producer staging the match, had taken to calling Thursday night’s spectacle a $2 million operation. Nominally, it was winner-take-all, for $100,000. In actuality, each player was guaranteed another $100,000 for broadcast rights. Sponsorships went up from there.
Way up.
“If this were a Broadway show,” wrote Grace Lichtenstein in the New York Times, “the title would be ‘Money!'”
Television advertising spots had sold out almost instantly. Billie Jean would earn $25,000 for appearing in one of them, a hair-roller commercial for Sunbeam. Riggs was getting $75,000 from Hai Karate, the official cologne of the Happy Hustler. Nabisco paid him $20,000 to flog its Sugar Daddy candy bar. The Kings got a cut of sales from the ubiquitous pro-Billie Jean pins and t-shirts.
“Don’t feel sorry for the loser,” said Perenchio.
He meant Bobby or Billie Jean, of course. But Larry King, one of Riggs’s many victims in the days before the Battle, would also do just fine.
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.
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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.
