Reverend Bob Hetherington had a busy week. Top seeded at the 1973 National Public Parks tournament in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the 32-year-old left-hander found himself running around both on and off the court. After advancing to the second round on Monday, he flew home to Buffalo to officiate a funeral. He raced back to Pittsburgh on Tuesday, only to discover that his second-rounder was delayed by rain.
What would he do, local reporters asked, if he made it to Sunday’s final? Some athletes of a religious bent would never play on Sunday. “The Rev”–as he was known in Buffalo tennis circles–wasn’t so devout as that. He’d find a substitute for the morning service and chalk it up as a vacation day.
Hetherington had reached the final of the Public Parks event in 1971, so it wasn’t just idle speculation. He had been a well-regarded junior, earning invitations to play the US National Championships at Forest Hills in 1960 and 1961. The Reverend kept up his game through the years, winning local events in both Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Tennis wasn’t even his best sport: He was nationally ranked in squash rackets, with multiple victories to his credit over all-time great Hashim Khan.
The Public Parks event was well-suited to a man of Hetherington’s skill level and full-time employment. For 47 years, the tournament had invited qualifiers from regional playoffs to compete for national titles. It attracted many strong players over the years, especially Midwesterners who couldn’t quite cut the mustard among elite competition. Even when many of the world’s best tennis players remained amateurs, there was demand for lower-stakes events that showcased the abilities of outstanding recreational players.
Hetherington had maintained that level for more than a decade, and he possessed the easy confidence of a veteran. In the third round, a Washington, D.C. law student named Pierce Kelly pushed him to 10-all in the deciding set before he finally pulled away.
“Never in doubt,” laughed the Reverend.
“You don’t defeat a clergyman in tennis,” wrote Jeff Samuels in the Pittsburgh Press. “He’s got too many forces on his side.”
He would need all the help he could get. As he advanced through the bracket, Hetherington lined up a replacement pastor for Sunday’s service. Then, at the last minute, he learned that his sub couldn’t make it, either. After winning Saturday’s semi-final, he once again dashed home.
On August 19th, the Reverend began his day by delivering a sermon to his Episcopalian flock in Buffalo. Another run to the airport, another short hop to Pittsburgh, and he arrived only an hour late for the final. This was the Public Parks tournament, not Wimbledon, and no one was about to default a man of the cloth on Sunday.
If Hetherington was exhausted by his outrageous commute, there was no sign of it. He made quick work of his opponent, a 19-year-old University of San Diego student named Russell Watts. The Reverend won the championship, 6-3, 6-2. He stayed on court to win the doubles title with buddy Charlie Garfinkel by nearly the same score, 6-2 6-3.
Victory complete, Garfinkel joked, “I guess it’s back to oblivion for me.”
The Rev would step away from the national scene, as well, but he was hardly taking a break. The next weekend, he led the field at the Kronman Memorial tournament in Buffalo. The final was scheduled for 1 P.M. on Sunday–perfect for a player who had a few things to take care of in the morning.
In the six years since big-time tennis went “Open,” the line between professionals and amateurs had blurred. No longer were pros relegated to one-night stands in high school gymnasiums; no longer was amateurism a byword for athletic integrity.
Civic groups were, to varying degrees, caught in the middle. The American Tennis Association, an organization for Black players that dated back to 1916, had come of age in the amateur era. It offered playing opportunities for middle-class Blacks who were excluded from the country clubs that dominated American tennis. The ATA also provided a training ground for stars. Althea Gibson first proved her mettle at ATA events. A decade later, Arthur Ashe did the same.
One man hoped that the 1973 ATA Championships would offer a similar springboard. On August 18th, Art Carrington, a 26-year-old from New Jersey, won his first title at the national event. Carrington worked with Sid Llewellyn, the flashy Jamaican who had once coached Gibson, and he had given up his job as a schoolteacher in May to focus solely on tennis.
The ATA tournament, held at the MIT courts in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a confidence-builder for Carrington, especially after he squandered eleven match points in the previous year’s final. But it was unclear how much the result meant. Amateurs made up most of the field. The runner-up, Doug Sykes, was a 30-year-old tax attorney from San Francisco.
Llewellyn was optimistic about his student’s chances among the pros. “Oh, he’ll make it, all right,” said the coach. “If they don’t break his spirit, he’ll make it.” Gibson and Ashe had opened the door for Black players, but no one had yet followed them. Breaking into the sport wasn’t cheap, and the establishment still had ways of throwing obstacles in the path of aspiring Black players. Carrington preferred not to talk about that. He focused on just one thing: Playing a little better when a big opportunity finally came along.
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The women’s competition revealed even more contrasts in the ATA’s ranks. The runner-up was Jean Burnett, a 33-year-old housewife from New Jersey who had taken up the game because her husband wanted a hitting partner.
The champion, though, was a teaching pro and occasional circuit player named Mimi Kanarek. Kanarek, who had grown up in Nicaragua with Polish parents, wasn’t even Black. The ATA had always welcomed all comers, especially those who didn’t fit in at tennis’s traditional upper-crust venues.
Kanarek made her first appearance at an ATA event back in 1960, when she won a title in Hampton, Virginia. At the time, she was a secretary and translator in Brooklyn, a latecomer to tennis. She steadily climbed the ranks in New York-area tennis, rising as high as the number two ranking in the USLTA’s Eastern region. She won a regional title in 1967 and began running a tennis club in Manhattan.
In 1965, Kanarek’s career took the oddest twist of all: She played a match as part of an art installation conceived by the painter Robert Rauschenberg:
The game pitted the tennis pro Mimi Kanarek against Frank Stella, already one of America’s most radical and celebrated painters. Surrounded by some 1,200 viewers on bleachers, the two strode into the drill hall of the 69th Regiment Armory in New York and faced off across the net. Each time one of them hit the ball, a miniature radio transmitter inside the racket broadcast a loud “bong” and sent a signal extinguishing one of the hall’s 48 overhead lights.
By 1973, she was the assistant pro at a club in Hastings-on-Hudson. Ironically, the one-time outsider now counted New York City mayor John Lindsay among her clients. Now 40 years old, she found that feeding balls to students didn’t help her game: She had never had the “killer instinct,” and she got out of the habit of trying to put balls away.
Kanarek, like Carrington, found herself in the awkward middle ground between amateur and pro. She could beat most amateurs but few professionals. With her ATA trophy in hand, she headed back to New York, where she entered the qualifying draw for the US Open. One second-round loss later, it was back to the club. She had a full slate of lessons ahead of her.
This is part of a series of reference posts that lay out what historical data is available at TennisAbstract.com. I recently did a similar post about pre-Open era men’s singles data. I’ll try to keep this post updated as the site expands.
Amateur-era doubles data–even doubles results from early in the Open era–is thin on the ground. I’m trying, slowly, to change that.
The TennisAbstract.com site now contains over 1,300 men’s doubles results from 1957 to 1967, the last eleven years of the amateur era. That includes:
Grand slam finals
All Davis Cup doubles rubbers
Doubles matches from professional tournaments and barnstorming stops. This varies enormously from year to year, in part because the pro tours sometimes played doubles every night, and sometimes they rarely did. At the extremes, I have 83 pro doubles matches from 1958 and only one from 1961. Reporting of these matches was extremely inconsistent at the time.
Doubles finals from all amateur tournaments where at least one member of the Tennis 128 competed–assuming I could find it. This amounts to roughly 60 finals per year, spanning most of the circuit’s most notable events.
Note my focus on finals. Eventually, I may expand on that, especially for grand slams. But collecting doubles results is extremely slow going, and contemporary coverage was much spottier than for singles. There’s nothing quite so disheartening as trying to add a match to the database when the losing side is listed only as “Smith/Smith.” Or worse: “Smith/partner.”
On any player page, you can find doubles results–assuming the player has some–by scrolling down, or by clicking here:
This “notable” table is limited to 20 matches. For most players, that’s all I have at this point. If I have more, the “notable” table lists a combination of slam finals and the most recent matches.
If there is an “All results” link above the table–as there is for Laver–that means I have more than 20 matches, and you can click through to get the full list. Here, for instance, is Gordon Forbes:
By the time he retired, the man had a lot to write about.
Eventually, these pages will be filterable, like the singles results. For now, it’s just a reverse-chronological list.
Next up, I hope to add men’s doubles from the 1968 season, as well as a few more seasons from the beginning of the Open era. Then I’ll go back to 1956 and add more amateur-era seasons.
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Newspaper ad for the 1973 Jersey Shore Tennis Classic
Billie Jean King just couldn’t stay away. After losing the Nashville final to Margaret Court, she told Margaret that she would sit out the next two weeks. A couple days later, there she was, prepping for another tournament, another first-round match.
King was the face of the Virginia Slims tour, now more than ever. She was both the reigning Wimbledon champ and the next woman to challenge 55-year-old Bobby Riggs. What was she going to do, stay home and do interviews? She could leave that to Bobby, and after all, the press would come to her.
Fatigued or not, Billie Jean breezed through the start of a new week, disposing of French veteran Françoise Dürr in her opening match. Dürr could be dangerous on clay–the pair had gone three sets on dirt in Nashville–but indoors at the Allaire Racquet Club in Wall Township, New Jersey, King had the edge. She lost just five games.
But on August 16th, warming up for her second-rounder against Joy Schwikert, King slipped as she chased down a ball. The verdict: a strained ligament. She was out of the tournament.
“It’s a shame for the tournament and the spectators that Billie Jean and Kerry [Melville] are out,” said Court. Melville had taken a spill, as well. Margaret didn’t seem to mind too much on her own account: She had won 11 of 14 Slims trophies in 1973, and King’s exit made it a near-certainty she’d pick up a 12th.
Kerry Harris, who reached the quarter-finals by outlasting sixth-seeded Val Ziegenfuss, took a different view. “It’s always great seeing new people getting opportunities,” she said, “and that’s what happening here.”
Most fans didn’t care about the Jersey Shore Classic. But King’s injury didn’t bode well for the September 20th Battle of the Sexes match, an event that loomed even larger than the upcoming US Open. Millions of dollars were now riding–indirectly, anyway–on Billie Jean’s knee.
As if King didn’t already know how much was at stake, another story ran the morning after her injury. Ticket prices were set for the Riggs match. The best seats at the Houston Astrodome would cost a cool $100–the equivalent of $700 today. Penny-pinchers could get in for six bucks, but from the upper tier of a 40,000-seat stadium, they might wonder why they hadn’t stayed home and watched the match on TV.
Billie Jean left the worrying to the promoters. She wasn’t one to rest and recuperate one minute more than necessary. There was a tournament next week in Newport, and Madame Superstar planned to be there.
This is the first in a series of reference posts that aim to describe what historical data is available at TennisAbstract.com. My goal is to keep these updated as the site continues to expand.
TennisAbstract.com now contains approximately 37,000 men’s singles results from the years 1957-67, the decade-plus that preceded the Open Era. The site has a reasonably complete set of pro results from 1968 to present, though I occasionally plug gaps and make corrections there as well.
Remarkably, 37,000 matches is nowhere near a complete representation of eleven years of amateur-era tennis.
Here’s what you can now find on the site for the years 1957-67:
Complete grand slam singles results
Complete Davis Cup singles results
Every professional match I’ve been able to find, including matches from pro tours, which often featured just one or two singles matches per stop
Every singles match from any tournament where a member of the Tennis 128 competed (not just matches involving Tennis 128ers).
The last category is quirky: It means that I now have results for some minor tournaments, like the Romanian National Championships when Ilie Năstase entered as a young man, or some regional collegiate events where Arthur Ashe or Stan Smith competed. It also means I lack some significant events–for instance, some editions of the U.S. Indoors or Bournemouth–if no 128ers happened to enter that year.
Despite the odd way I’ve drawn the line, the result is a pretty good representation of each season, one that includes most of the notable events. The decision also means that as I work backwards, I’ll complete–insofar as it is possible–the careers of the most historically significant players.
My goal is to make one pass back to 1920 or so before going through each year again, at which point I’ll shoot for a much more thorough level of coverage. Even this “limited” approach means adding more than 3,000 matches per season. That’s enough for the moment, at least if I hope ever to finish.
You can browse all this data the same way you view results for current players. For instance, here are the yearly summaries for Roy Emerson:
Yeah, that peak rank of 12 doesn’t really tell the story. Amateur-era expert rankings are also on my (breathtakingly long) to-do list.
The 1973 Davis Cup was down to four nations. In early August, the United States beat Chile to advance through the Americas zone. Romania held off the Soviet Union, and Czechoslovakia cruised past a suspension-addled Italian side to take the two European places in the final four. Back in May, Australia had secured its spot in the semis by defeating India.
The lads from Down Under hadn’t won the tournament since 1967. Their five years in the wilderness were the longest gap the country had suffered since the 1930s. In part, they were a victim of their own success. Aussies won 11 of 13 trophies between 1955 and 1967 on the back of such stars as Lew Hoad, Ken Rosewall, Ashley Cooper, Mal Anderson, Neale Fraser, Roy Emerson, Rod Laver, John Newcombe, and Tony Roche. Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, many of those heroes turned professional, rendering them ineligible.
While team captain Harry Hopman had a knack for finding replacements, his job got harder every year. The final twist of the knife came in 1968. The Open era began, and nearly every veteran player of note signed a contract with a professional tournament promoter. The Davis Cup, however, didn’t allow “contract” pros. While “independent” pros like Romania’s Ilie Năstase and the USA’s Arthur Ashe and Stan Smith could enter, the Australian team was gutted.
All that changed–finally–before the 1973 campaign. Anybody, regardless of their contract status, could play.
The new rule boded well for the Aussies, though it didn’t solve all of their problems. The Eastern Zone draw required that they travel to Japan in April and, as it turned out, India in May. Laver, Rosewall, and others were permitted to compete, but that didn’t make it convenient. They were committed to World Championship Tennis in the US and Europe, so Captain Fraser managed without them. A makeshift squad of Newcombe–playing a more limited tournament schedule to make a Cup campaign possible–and the 38-year-old Anderson got the job done.
Against the Czechs in the semis, and particularly against the United States in a potential final, Fraser would need a stronger side.
Rosewall was in. And on August 13th, Laver gave the captain a call. “Rod wanted to know if he’d be good enough to make the team,” Fraser said. Rocket wasn’t sure if he would be available for the November tie in Melbourne against Czechoslovakia, but he was definitely ready to suit up for the final in December.
The dream team was complete. Laver, Newcombe, and Rosewall owned 24 singles majors between them. All three were outstanding doubles players, too. Emerson, holder of 12 singles slams and another all-time great on the doubles court, didn’t even make the squad.
With Laver on board, the Australians went from underdog to shoo-in. The American side, which had held the Cup since 1968, suddenly looked shabby in comparison. Assuming they got past Năstase’s lopsided Romanian squad, they’d need Stan Smith to deliver a three-match performance of a lifetime in the final.
Captain Fraser surely liked his odds. No longer concerned about recruiting the best talent in the name of national pride, he had a new problem to solve. There were only two singles slots on a Davis Cup lineup card. In a few months time, he’d have to tell one of the best players on earth–Rosewall, Newk, or the Rocket himself–that they’d be sitting on the bench.
Finals day at the 1973 Virginia Slims of Nashville: Some fans spent more time waiting in the rain than watching tennis.
For the top two stars on what many pundits considered a top-heavy circuit, Billie Jean King and Margaret Court did a remarkable job of keeping out of each others’ way. In the first seven months of 1973, they met only three times, none at majors.
It hadn’t always been that way. In 1962, King–then 18-year-old Billie Jean Moffitt–spoiled Margaret Smith’s first Wimbledon as a top seed with a shock second-round upset. They had played at least once every year since then, with the exception of 1967, when Court took her first break from the tour. They met five times for grand slam titles. One of them was the hard-fought 1970 Wimbledon final, when Court triumphed in a 14-12, 11-9 decision.
Both living legends won matches in the forecourt, attacking to come forward and swatting away anything that came back. But their personalities couldn’t have stood in greater contrast. Court was bland: friendly but standoffish, even verging on boring. There was no sign of the outspoken fundamentalist she’d become in retirement. Reporter Grace Lichtenstein noted that Margaret, unlike most of her opponents, never talked to herself while she was playing. One insider responded with the ultimate dig: “What could she possibly think of to say?”
King never lacked for words. She had opinions on everything, and she rarely held them back. She openly sought prize money records, disdaining the usual patter from players (such as Court) who claimed they played for the love of the game. Billie Jean knew that her every achievement could stand as a symbol, while Margaret shrugged that sort of thing off. “People love her,” Nashville columnist Jeff Hanna wrote about King. “Or they hate her. There is no middle ground.”
After Wimbledon–and the lingering sting of her lopsided loss to Bobby Riggs in May–Court took a three-week break. While King announced her own Battle of the Sexes and won a tournament in Denver, Margaret spent time with her husband and 17-month-old son. She had established such a high standard that the Riggs defeat and a semi-final exit at Wimbledon somehow amounted to a slump, never mind the fact that she had won the Australian, the French, and 10 of 13 events on the Slims circuit.
Court rejoined the tour in Nashville. The Australian was a bit rusty, needing to save two match points in her opening-round tilt against the brainy Julie Anthony. She was soon back in championship form, losing a total of seven games in the quarters and semis against Kathy Kuykendall and Rosie Casals.
King advanced through the other side of the draw. Both women anxiously waited for the rain to clear on finals day, August 12th. Billie Jean had sponsor commitments; she could only stick around so long, and she would end up forfeiting a doubles semi-final. Court, for her part, found that her motivation continued to lag. “At one stage,” she said, “I sort of thought I was going to pass on my match.”
Two thousand supporters braved the rain and urged the Aussie to stick it out. Nashville got behind the 23-time major singles champion, backing the inoffensive Court over the divisive King. Margaret opted for a different kind of pass: Throughout the first set, she repeatedly won points when her opponent rushed the net. She broke twice for a 6-3 advantage.
Both players knew it was far from over. Three of their last four encounters had gone the distance. In the second set, both women struggled for traction, losing serve a total of seven times. Serving at 5-4, Billie Jean narrowly escaped making it eight, saving four break points to take the set.
Court struggled with a sore stomach muscle, and she found herself coping with King’s usual gamesmanship in the third. They traded more breaks, but Margaret ultimately pulled ahead. Billie Jean, perhaps a bit worried about the clock, couldn’t keep up the pressure. Court took the final set, 6-2.
It was the 34th career meeting between the two superstars. Court had won 21 of them. Neither woman had any way of knowing, but they would never play another one.
With her opponent racing for the exit, Margaret handled the post-match press herself. The assembled reporters probably would’ve preferred to talk to the runner-up. Gripping as today’s action had been, everyone still had one eye on the Riggs match in September.
Margaret probably wouldn’t have said that she loved–or hated–Billie Jean. But even she couldn’t retreat to a middle ground when someone lobbed her the obvious question about King’s chances against the Happy Hustler. “I don’t think this match is any kind of indication.” she said, “I still think Billie Jean will beat him.”
Hazel Wightman receives the trophy on behalf of the 1931 United States Wightman Cup team
Let’s take a break today from 1973 and dial it back another half-century, to August 11th, 1923.
One hundred years ago today, Forest Hills overflowed with tennis firsts. The United States and Great Britain opened the new Wightman Cup competition. Helen Wills and Kitty McKane–two women who were considered the greatest hopes to dislodge Suzanne Lenglen at the top of the game–faced off for the first time. And they did it all at a brand-new stadium, playing the first-ever matches at the 13,000-seat concrete horseshoe at the West Side Tennis Club.
The Wightman Cup was the brainchild of Hazel Hotchkiss Wightman, a four-time national singles champion and tireless promoter of the game. She grew up in California and enjoyed her first tennis success there. In 1910, she won a match at the Washington State Championships without losing a single point. After her marriage to Bostonian George Wightman in 1912, she set up shop in the East. She won her fourth national title in 1919, when she was already a mother of three.
Wightman donated a silver cup in 1920 as a trophy for a proposed international competition for women. She was thinking of something along the lines of Davis Cup, which had debuted in 1900 and since expanded to include eight nations. Other countries showed interest in a women’s equivalent. But few women players traveled internationally to compete, so scheduling and expense proved insurmountable.
Finally, a strong contingent of British players sailed to play the U.S. circuit in 1923. They would enter the national championships, so the scaled-down Wightman Cup would be staged between two teams–the British visitors and the American hosts–immediately before that tournament. The sides settled on a modified version of the Davis Cup format. Instead of four singles matches and one doubles over three days, they would play five singles and two doubles across two days.
Hazel Wightman’s involvement in the inaugural event didn’t end with the name on the trophy. While she had mostly retired from singles play, she was still one of the top doubles competitors in the world. She captained the squad and would play number one doubles with Eleanor Goss. Leading the singles charge would be Wills, who Wightman had coached years earlier in Berkeley.
It’s tough to know which was a bigger draw: The new stadium, or the 17-year-old Wills, who had finished second at the 1922 national championships. The event was scheduled to run on Friday and Saturday, August 10th and 11th. The opening was postponed when President Calvin Coolidge declared a national day of mourning for his predecessor, Warren Harding, who had died in office. Instead, the new facility would open its doors on the 11th, and the second day of Wightman Cup matches would coincide with the first day of the national championships on Monday the 13th.
New York’s tennis faithful was undeterred by the schedule change. 5,000 of them came out to see Wills take on McKane, reigning national champion Molla Mallory face Mabel Clayton, and the Wightman/Goss duo battle McKane and Phyllis Covell. Latecomers didn’t miss much: The day began with speeches and dedications befitting what was now, after Wimbledon, the second-largest tennis facility in the world.
The opening matches didn’t disappoint. Wills-McKane was a contrast in styles, between Helen’s power forehand and the Brit’s assured net game. Wills hit as hard as anyone, even the famously slugging Mallory. Her deep forehands were too much for McKane, and she took the first set, 6-2.
McKane, however, was hardly one to shy away from a fight. She was the one player who actually sought out chances to challenge the great Lenglen, and at the World Hard Court Championships in Brussels the previous year, she had taken Suzanne to 8-8 in the first set before fading away. Against Wills, she charged back, unleashing a barrage of overheads to take a 5-2 lead in the second. Helen, however, was already developing the demeanor that would earn her the “Ice Queen” nickname. She steadily made her way back. She fought through four deuces at 2-5 to stay in the set, and ultimately finished the job in straights, 6-2, 7-5.
Mallory had an easier time of it against the overmatched Clayton. The score was similar to that of the first rubber–6-1, 8-6–but by the time the British challenger made her move in the second set, she was physically fading. The Norwegian-American champion kept up the pressure–and the power that had been known to knock the racket out of opponents’ hands–to give her adopted homeland a 2-0 series lead.
The doubles match surpassed everything that had come before. The 36-year-old Wightman–less than 18 months after giving birth to her fourth child–was the star of the show. With Goss scampering around the background, Wightman manned the net, “smashing everything within her reach,” as the New York Times summarized. The veteran’s volleying prowess remained unmatched, though McKane flashed some acrobatics of her own.
The Americans took the hard-fought opening set, 10-8. The Brits, who made up for a slight talent deficit with sharp teamwork, recovered to grab the second, 7-5. After the customary 10-minute break, the visitors ran out to a 3-0 lead. But Wightman didn’t intend to surrender her cup so easily. The home side won six of the next seven games and the match, 6-4.
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The Americans completed the sweep two days later. They dropped only one more set, when Geraldine Beamish snuck away with a 6-0 second frame against Goss. Wills and Mallory picked up their second victories with identical scores of 6-2, 6-3. They finished the day as a team with a similarly routine defeat of Beamish and Clayton.
The Wightman Cup remained a staple of the women’s tennis calendar for decades. However, it never followed in the steps of the Davis Cup and expanded beyond two teams. The United States and Great Britain alternated hosting duties every year until 1989, except for the six years of World War II.
There was no international women’s competition of the sort Hazel Wightman first envisioned until 1963, when he ILTF finally launched the Federation Cup. The Brits reached the semi-finals of the first edition, but the true powerhouses would be the United States and Australia. The first Federation Cup final turned into a battle between Margaret Smith and Billie Jean Moffitt, who would each claim a singles match before locking horns in a doubles showdown eventually won by Moffitt and Darlene Hard.
As women’s tennis spread across the globe, the Brits lost their prominence. The multi-country event has changed its name twice, and Team GB is still looking for its first Billie Jean King Cup title. By the 1930s, the Wightman Cup was lopsided in favor of the Americans, and Open tennis reduced its appeal even more. Top U.S. players often skipped it, and by the mid-1980s, the event became a showcase for American prospects such as Zina Garrison and Jennifer Capriati.
The Wightman Cup finished its 67-year run in 1989. Like so many vestiges of the amateur era, it didn’t really have a place on the modern calendar, and it is rarely missed.
The Cup outlived its donor by 15 years. Hazel Wightman remained a fixture on the Boston tennis scene until the end. She continued playing top-level doubles into her 60’s, collecting a runner-up trophy at the National Indoors in 1946. She captained the Wightman Cup team until 1948. In “retirement,” she spent much of her time running tournaments and sending out invitations: She ran a popular women’s singles event during the national doubles championships, and she started the first national tournament for collegiate women.
Many of her invitees ended up staying at the Wightman house, a chaotic jumble of dirty laundry and racket covers when tournaments were in progress. Hazel coached a handful of national champions and mentored countless others.
The horseshoe at the West Side Tennis Club is gone; top-level tennis no longer has an event with the Wightman name on it. The US Open got a bigger, more modern stadium in 1978. But the sport will never have another figure quite like Hazel Wightman.
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Chris Evert (left), Jimmy Connors, and Jeanne Evert at the 1973 Western Championships
The Evert family didn’t have a long-term plan to take over the tennis world, but it was beginning to feel that way.
18-year-old Chrissie showed no signs of slowing down. In two tournaments after Wimbledon, she had won all nine matches she played. Only Marita Redonda managed to win more than three games in a set against her. 11-year-old John Evert was making noise, too, finishing runner-up at the 12-and-under nationals.
In between, 15-year-old Jeanne Evert was also making progress. With the cream of American tennis away in Europe, she won titles at the Tulsa Invitation in May and the Southern Championships, in Raleigh, a month later. She came in second to Betsy Nagelsen at the national tournament for 16-and-unders.
This week, at the Western Championships in Cincinnati, it was Jeanne’s turn in the spotlight. She had just announced that she would turn professional on her 16th birthday in October. She was already proving that she could handle adult competition.
After an easy first-round defeat of British teen Glynis Coles, Jeanne settled in for a slugfest with a familiar foe, Laurie Tenney. Tenney was only 17 years old herself, and the two girls had faced off at junior events. Both were adept with the lob–something Jeanne was particularly susceptible to, standing just five-feet, one-inch tall. Neither was willing to test the other. After two hours and 46 minutes, their match was called for darkness, Evert leading 5-4 in the deciding set. The next day, Jeanne finished the job, 6-2, 4-6, 7-5. She added another victory in straight sets over Sharon Walsh.
This was heady territory for the 15-year-old. Jeanne had a semi-final berth alongside both her older sister and Evonne Goolagong. The men’s draw was equally star-studded, led by Ilie Năstase and Chrissie’s boyfriend, Jimmy Connors.
On August 10th, Jeanne took on the biggest test of her young career. She faced Goolagong for a place in the Western final. The younger Evert liked her new role as an underdog, but she was realistic about her chances for an upset. When she played Evonne in April, she won only three games. “She just killed me,” said Jeanne.
Chrissie wasn’t much of a cheerleader either. “I really don’t think Jeanne expects to have a very good chance against Evonne,” she said. “Evonne’s so much stronger.”
So it proved. Jeanne fared better this time, breaking back midway through the first set to keep it close. “But she didn’t let up any,” Evert said of her opponent. “She doesn’t let it bother her; she just keeps playing. She wasn’t really in trouble.” Final score: 6-3, 6-2 to the Australian.
The pint-sized semi-finalist knew that success would take time. She told one reporter what she needed to do to beat Goolagong next time: “Grow.”
Every time tennis’s rival groups reached an agreement, another interloper entered the field. Top players were free agents, and there was so much money up for grabs through television broadcasts and commercial sponsorships that the cycle seemed like it might continue forever.
The ILTF-backed Grand Prix had come to terms with World Championship Tennis in late 1972, granting the US-based WCT circuit four uncontested months at the start of each calendar year. That left the Grand Prix more than half the year to fill with the traditional federation-sponsored events, including the four majors.
The peace lasted less than a year. World Team Tennis was the latest newcomer, and it laid a claim to a prime segment of the season between May and July. Wimbledon wasn’t directly under attack–WTT franchisees said they would break for the Championships–but the French, the Italian, and a slew of other traditional events had new reasons to worry about attracting talent. The WTTers were parvenus, but they had enough money to cause problems. In its inaugural player draft, the league divvied up the rights to every single player of note.
On August 8th, Commercial Union–the title sponsor of the Grand Prix–made its move. A spokesman for the insurance group announced the plan for 1974: an expanded slate of 15 tournaments with prize pots of at least $100,000, including the majors. Players would be eligible for a bonus pool–and here’s the kicker–only if they entered a certain number of designated events.
Put another way, stars who passed on World Team Tennis would have a new end-of-season payday to aim for.
The explicit goal was to get more big-name players at more Grand Prix events:
In the past some tournament organisers have not known sufficiently well in advance which players would compete and this is most important since they wish to obtain the best terms of sponsorship and television.
Pro tennis was tied in a knot that it still hasn’t entirely figured out how to undo. The marquee names were immensely valuable, worth more than most events could offer in prize money. Their popularity, though, depended on conquering the familiar circuit. Take Davis Cup and Wimbledon away from Stan Smith and you were left with a B-lister. The tournaments succeeded on the backs of players–preferably, all of them. But men who had already earned their reputations–Smith, Rod Laver, Ilie Năstase, John Newcombe, Ken Rosewall, and others–could cash in their celebrity without entering 30 tournaments a year.
Both sides needed the other, but the tournaments needed the players more.
Team Tennis threatened to disrupt what fragile balance remained. One-off, made-for-television exhibitions were the scourge of traditional tournament promoters. WTT’s proposed 44-match schedule was that much worse.
Federation officials dreamed of getting the stars back under control. Only six years earlier, tournaments didn’t even offer prize money, and top players (usually) went where the bureaucrats told them to go. Now, the athletes were getting rich, and like their colleagues across all major sports, they sought even greater control of their destiny. Free agency was inching toward reality in Major League Baseball. The same day as Commercial Union’s announcement, a judge in the United States ruled in favor of the World Hockey Association, which sought to sign players whose National Hockey League contracts expired. A proposed merger of the National Basketball Association and the American Basketball Association was held up in the courts by hoopsters concerned about their bargaining position.
The future belonged to the players. First, though, there were more skirmishes to fight. Team Tennis, it was becoming increasingly clear, would provide the next battleground.
