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.
* * *
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.
Stan Smith (left, facing) and Erik Van Dillen (right, facing) at the conclusion of their marathon Davis Cup doubles match against Chileans Jaime Fillol and Pat Cornejo
United States Davis Cuppers had a perennial complaint: They played half their ties abroad, where they faced uniformly hostile crowds. Then they came home and heard the same loud, brassy cheers for the opposition.
A small cluster of Chilean fans, it seemed, could make more noise than a sold-out stadium full of laid-back Americans. That was the home team’s experience on the first day of the 1973 Americas Zone final in Little Rock, Arkansas. Tom Gorman and Stan Smith each recorded four-set singles victories. But Smith was underwhelmed by the local support.
“I began to get mad,” Stan said of his feelings when the Chilean contingent got going again during the doubles match on August 5th. “Last year in Santiago, there were 6,000 persons chanting like that [“Chile! Chile! Chile!”] and nowhere did we hear a peep in reply.”
On the second day of the tie, the home fans finally woke up. Only these weren’t just garden-variety Americans packing the grandstand. These were Razorbacks.
Finally, after dropping the first set and losing serve in the second to fall to 25-26 (yes, really–we’ll get back to that shortly), Smith and his partner Erik van Dillen began to hear a roar. It rose to become almost deafening:
Woo, pig! Sooie!
Woo, pig! Sooie!
Woo, pig! Sooie!
Four thousand supporters were “Calling the Hogs,” the rallying cry of the University of Arkansas Razorbacks.
“It was like there were ten cheerleaders leading them in unison,” said Smith. “It was the most tremendous thing I’ve ever heard.”
When the crowd finished their thundering chant–Razorback! Razorback! Razorback!–the Americans felt they were in the match once more. They broke back for 26-all, and the marathon set continued.
* * *
A year earlier in Santiago, the same four men–Smith, van Dillen, Pat Cornejo, and Jaime Fillol–had gone five sets at the same stage of the competition. In 1973, they fought an even tighter battle.
The Chileans took the first set, 9-7. The two Americans were among the best doubles players in the world, but until recently, schedules had prevented them from teaming up since the previous year’s Davis Cup final in Romania. The rust showed. Van Dillen recognized that they weren’t intimidating the visitors. They weren’t showing their opponents enough variety.
The second set saw the two teams settle into their respective trenches. They held serve for fifty consecutive games.
Yes, fifty.
The tiebreak was making rapid inroads in top-level tennis. Most tournaments had adopted it: Television more or less required that match times be more predictable. Even Wimbledon joined the stampede in 1973, leaving only the deciding set to be played the old-fashioned way. Davis Cup was the last holdout for tennis purists.
In the 51st game, Smith finally faltered, netting two volleys and a backhand smash to hand the Chileans that 26-25 advantage. The vocal might of Arkansas saved the day, and the home side broke Fillol to stay alive.
17 games later, it was van Dillen’s turn to slip. The visitors took a 35-34 advantage, and once again, the Americans recovered. Smith missed an easy smash to hand the Chileans another break for 38-37. This time, Fillol finished the job at love.
39-37: The most games ever played in a single Davis Cup set. It represented nearly four hours of tennis. The Americans had squandered 12 set points.
But Smith and van Dillen weren’t dwelling on their new entry in the record book. They faced a 0-2 deficit in the pivotal doubles rubber, and they didn’t intend to quit now.
The home team regrouped and altered their strategy. The six-foot, four-inch Smith moved more frequently across the center line, giving the Chileans something to think about and forcing more errors. The Americans finally broke to secure an 8-6 third set, then raced to a 5-1 advantage in the fourth before darkness halted the match.
The four men had played for nearly six hours, and the score reflected a near-draw. The momentum, at least, rested with Smith and van Dillen.
The following day, Team USA came back with an even sounder tactical plan and required just ten more games. They secured the match and the tie, 7-9, 37-39, 8-6, 6-1, 6-3. The United States advanced to the Inter-Zone semi-finals. In two weeks’ time, they would host Romania, the 1972 runner-up.
* * *
Tiebreaks would have changed this particular tie beyond recognition. Was it time for the Davis Cup to join the modern era? One reporter made the rounds of the American locker room to find out what the victors thought.
Captain Dennis Ralston said no: “The Davis Cup is a test of ability, endurance, and conditioning.” Gorman felt the same, having opened his first singles match by winning a 17-15 set from Fillol. “Stamina is a big part of the Davis Cup,” he said. “I like being in good shape.”
Smith and van Dillen had less to say about it, perhaps because they were still out of breath. Still, van Dillen voiced his support for tradition. “This way, they have to beat us,” he said.
Cornejo and Fillol had turned in one of the sterling doubles performances of the year. With the tiebreak rule in place, the story might have ended differently. But against the combined forces of Smith’s power, van Dillen’s net coverage, and the 4,000-strong voice of Arkansas, they couldn’t quite grab three traditional, advantage sets.
John Newcombe at the 1973 Louisville Pro Tennis Classic
The strangest thing about contemporary reactions to the advent of World Team Tennis is that no one seemed to realize just how weird it was.
Let’s review. For decades, the contours of the tennis season had been more or less stable. Specific events came and went, but the basic idea was consistent: a global collection of single-elimination tournaments with regional circuits in each major tennis-playing nation. The pre-1968 professional tours didn’t quite fit that mold, but even they stuck with the notion of head-to-head, rivalry-based singles play. The only teams in tennis were doubles pairs and national groupings for Davis Cup, Fed Cup, and Wightman Cup.
Then, in 1973, a bunch of North American promoters, many of whom knew more about ice hockey than tennis, proposed a 16-team league that would play a 44-match schedule between May and July each year. They raised money, rented venues, sold their vision to players, and charged ahead.
Yes, May to July, that notorious wasteland on the tennis calendar.
I mean, what part of this wasn’t bizarre?
The league crept closer to reality on August 3rd when it held its official draft. The 16 teams took turns choosing a total of 312 players. Miami, with the first overall selection, went with local heroine Chris Evert. Filling out the top six, in order, were Kerry Melville, Rod Laver, Jimmy Connors, Ken Rosewall, and Rosie Casals.
Again, think about this for a moment. It was basically a bunch of rich guys and hucksters playing fantasy tennis, willing to redesign the entire sport to make it happen.
Still, the principals took the league seriously. Some of them had very good reasons to do so. The biggest winners on draft day were Houston and Philadelphia, who picked up John Newcombe and Billie Jean King, respectively. Newk and King were among a handful of players who had already committed to contracts with the league. In exchange, they were given some say in where they ended up. Billie Jean signed for a reported $100,000 per year for five years, and she was jazzed at the prospect of giving long-suffering Philadelphians a winning team to get behind. Newcombe, who would earn around $75,000, welcomed the Team Tennis format as a way to stay closer to his Texas ranch.
Newk, though, might not have understood exactly what he was getting into. Neil Amdur wagged in the New York Times that the stars were “lured by the chance to make more money for less work.” Maybe. But: 44 matches in three months? Including constant travel from one corner of the United States to the other? With Wimbledon stuck in the middle? Newcombe wasn’t going to spend much time at the ranch, and nobody was going to make it to the end of that season refreshed and ready to take on the rest of the 1974 tournament slate.
Owners were jumping into the unknown, too, maybe even more than the players were. No one knew exactly which stars would suit up, beyond the small group of early signees. Evert was noncommittal. Stan Smith fell to the third round and Ilie Năstase dropped to the fourth, as they weren’t expected to participate. Some teams seemed to run out of ideas: San Diego selected retired stars Maria Bueno and Karen Susman. Chicago spent their ninth-round pick on Bobby Riggs, and Toronto rounded out their haul with a local sportswriter named George Gross.
Only one franchise seems to have considered the value of expertise. Cleveland tapped Richard González, the long-time pro champion, as a draft day advisor. Gorgo selected Björn Borg with the 13th overall choice–a savvy call, as long as the Swede would play. In the sixth round, the 45-year-old González named himself.
Even though the 1973 draft ran out of steam after a few hundred picks, Gorgo foresaw a future with a nearly inexhaustible talent pool, one in which Team Tennis would play a valuable role. “It opens up the whole game,” he said. “Within ten years, there will be a thousand good players who’ll need some place to play.”
When the league was announced back in June, promoter Jerry Saperstein compared the venture to a game of craps. Yet the range of possible outcomes for World Team Tennis was more staggering than the stakes in the wildest casino game. The league could quickly go bust in a flurry of lawsuits, or it could prove a going concern, forcing the rest of the tennis world to make room. Win or lose, the sport would never be the same.
The Astrodome was booked, the one-liners were scripted. All that was left was to play the match… and count the money.
On August 2nd, 1973, promoter Jerry Perenchio struck a deal with the American Broadcasting Company–ABC–to show the Battle of the Sexes in a two-hour prime-time slot. While no one was ready to admit the exact price, reports settled on a number around $700,000. The other major networks had dropped out at $400,000 and $500,000, respectively.
Early signs suggested that ABC didn’t overbid. By press time for the next morning’s newspapers, ABC chief Roone Arledge was able to say that he had sold all 15 minutes of available commercial ad time.
Of course, this being tennis in 1973, a lawsuit was pending. CBS thought it had first dibs on the broadcast. The network was ready to go to court to prove it.
Bobby Riggs continued to bask in the limelight. While Billie Jean King was in Denver, extending her win streak to 19 matches with a 6-2 6-2 defeat of Françoise Dürr, Riggs sat in a New York studio with Howard Cosell, the blustery broadcaster who would call the match. Bobby offered to play in a dress, if that would make Billie Jean more comfortable.
The press conference announcing the media deal also dribbled out another detail of the match: It would be best of five sets. Some sources claimed that Riggs let out an “audible gasp” at the idea of staying on court for so long.
But others heard a “self-contained horselaugh.” Bobby’s game wasn’t physically demanding, and the indoor venue would guarantee a climate-controlled, wind-free, lob-friendly environment, perfect for the aging sharpshooter. He was happy to let the misunderstanding ride: The hustler was a master of accepting terms that made him look like an underdog but ultimately served his own purposes.
Behind the banter, Riggs had plenty of respect–not to mention gratitude–for Madame Superstar. By turning down his initial offers earlier in the year, Billie Jean was set to make upwards of $100,000 instead of $10,000. In Bobby’s words, King was “one smart cookie.”
The aggravatingly unplayable courts of Central Park, New York
In late June 1973, a group of 75 irate citizens demonstrated in Manhattan’s Central Park. They weren’t protesting inflation, energy shortages, or crime–though during the rally, a young woman was mugged nearby.
No, the fuming New Yorkers had something else in mind. They wanted their tennis courts back.
New York City boasted 522 public tennis courts throughout the five boroughs. Anyone who wanted to play could sign up for court time all summer long with nothing more than a $15 annual pass, long one of the best deals in Gotham. Central Park’s 30 courts were the most popular of all. Hundreds of regulars knew to show up long before the 8 A.M. weekend opening if they wanted to play before noon. The rule was first-come, first-served, though rumor had it that you could jump the queue by bribing an attendant.
When the season opened in April 1973, 13 of the Central Park courts were out of commission. A resurfacing job, begun the previous August, dragged on and on. The cause differed depending on who you asked: Unexpected complications, micro-managing city officials, foot-dragging contractors, or uncooperative weather. The City had responded to increased interest by putting up bubbles for the first time in the winter of 1972-73. When the weather turned nice, though, the logjam on the Upper West Side remained.
All this, at the peak of the “Tennis Boom,” the moment when the sport reached a new pinnacle of public awareness and everyone suddenly wanted to play. The surge was so dramatic that by the end of the year, tennis ball manufacturers could barely keep pace with demand.
The Boom is sometimes dated to the Billie Jean King–Bobby Riggs match in September, and the publicity surrounding the Battle of the Sexes certainly helped. But King-Riggs was an effect of the Boom as much as it was a cause. The Open Era unleashed a small army of promoters on the game. Newspapers covered players and tournaments like never before. The excitement reached a peak in May 1972, when Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall–two undersized Aussies who could have been mistaken for accountants–battled for five sets on national television in the World Championship Tennis Finals.
The match was thrilling, and what’s more, Laver and Rosewall made the game look like something you, too, could enjoy.
Tennis also seemed to fit the zeitgeist. Mike Lupica, then a 21-year-old senior at Boston College contemplating a career in sports journalism, wrote:
It is a sport whose pace matches the pace of our life style–fast, faster, and blur. Even the best of three-set matches take only 90 minutes. Yet, what a 90 minutes! In the course of one hour and a half, with the grim single-mindedness that is written on the faces of the participants, tennis provides enough physical exertion to last a week, and also provides ample opportunity to work off the minute-by-minute frustrations which pierce our lives.
Alas, many would-be Boomers in midtown Manhattan remained flummoxed by delays. By early June, weekend hackers were coming to blows over court time. A few weeks later came the demonstration. There was even talk of a players’ association.
Finally, on August 1st, the 13 courts reopened. Parks Administrator Richard Clurman tried to focus on the positive: The new Har-Tru surface dried faster and would create more playing opportunities.
Reviews were generally positive. But these were New Yorkers, after all. At 7:45 A.M., two regulars started quarreling over who had first dibs on one of the new courts. They kept at it for a solid 15 minutes before one finally gave way. A block of fresh courts could fix a lot of problems, but it couldn’t solve them all.
