Heavy Topspin – Page 16 – The Tennis Abstract blog

Are Conditions Slower? Faster? Weirder?

Many players didn’t like the conditions at Roland Garros this year. The clay, apparently, was slower and heavily watered, at least on some courts. The balls were heavier than usual, especially when they had been in play for a little while and the clay began to stick to them.

Maybe the courts really did play differently. We could compare ace rate, rally length, or a few other metrics to see whether the French played slower this year.

I’m interested in a broader question. Were the conditions weirder? To put it another way, were they outside the normal range of variation on tour? We could be talking about anything that impacts play, including surface, balls, weather, you name it.

This is surprisingly easy to test. The weirder the conditions, the more unpredictable the results should be. If you don’t get the connection, think about really strange conditions, like playing in mud, or in the dark, or with rackets that have broken strings. In those situations, the factors that determine the winner of a match are so different than usual that they will probably seem random. At the very least, there will be more upsets. Holding a top ranking in “normal” tennis doesn’t mean as much in “dark” tennis or “broken string” tennis. While unusually heavy balls don’t rank up there with my hypotheticals, the idea is the same: The more you deviate from typical conditions, the less predictable the results.

We measure predictability by taking the Brier score of my Elo-based pre-match forecasts. Elo isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good, and the algorithm allows us to compare seasons and tournaments against each other. Brier score tells us the calibration of a group of predictions: Were they correct? Did they have the right level of confidence? The lower the score, the better the forecast. Or put another way, for our purposes today: The lower the score, the more predictable the outcomes.

Conclusion: This year’s French wasn’t that weird. Here are the Brier scores for men’s and women’s completed main draw matches, along with several other measures for context:

Tourney(s)     Men  Women  
2023 RG      0.177  0.193  
2022 RG      0.174  0.189  
2021 RG      0.177  0.194  
2020 RG      0.200  0.230  
2000-23 RG   0.169  0.184  
00-23 Slams  0.171  0.182  
Min RG       0.133  0.152  
Max RG       0.214  0.230

(“Min RG” and “Max RG” show the lowest and highest tournament Brier scores for each gender at the French since 2000.)

Again, lower = more predictable. For both men and women, the 2023 French was no more upset-ridden than the 2021 edition, and it ran considerably closer to script than the zany Covid tournament in autumn 2020. The results this year were a bit more unpredictable than the typical major since 2000. But the metrics tell us that the outcomes were closer to the average than to the extremes.

However unusual the conditions at Roland Garros felt to the players, the weirdness didn’t cause the results to be any more random than usual. While adjustments were surely necessary, most players were able to make them, and to similar degrees. The best players–based on their demonstrated clay-court prowess–tended to win, about as often as they always do at the French.

June 11, 1973: Senior Sportswoman

Every year since 1936, Princeton University had awarded the William Winston Roper Trophy to the standout athlete of the school’s senior class. In 1973, the honor went to Carl Barisich, a defensive tackle drafted by the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.

Barisich’s award was a little different than the forty that had come before it. 1973 was the first year that Princeton’s graduating class comprised both men and women–including, of course, female athletes. Rather than pit the genders against each other, Princeton reserved the Roper Trophy for the best male athlete. A second distinction, the Senior Sportswoman Award, would be given to the outstanding female.

The women of Princeton’s first coed class had fully integrated themselves into the school’s athletic life, excelling in squash, swimming, and crew. But there was really no competition for the first Senior Sportswoman, named by the university on June 11th. Without question, the honor belonged to tennis captain Marjory Gengler.

Gengler won every set she played as an undergraduate, and the team as a whole was nearly as successful. In May 1973, Princeton Alumni Weekly put her on the cover, with the headline, “Princeton’s Best Athlete.” No more qualifiers were needed. The Eastern intercollegiate circuit wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of competitive tennis, but Gengler’s exploits extended further. The USLTA rated her the top singles and doubles player in the region, and she won a mixed doubles match at Wimbledon in 1972.

Some women in Princeton’s first coed class felt constant pressure to act as a representative for their gender. Gengler didn’t want that, and she almost said no to Princeton for that very reason. Tennis made it easier. “The men’s team welcomed us, didn’t make us feel like women’s libbers,” she said. “Now we have forty women in what used to be a traditional men’s club and the men are afraid we’re going to turn it into a sorority.”

After graduation, Gengler could have opted to join the women’s tour. She played a handful of tournaments in the summer of 1973, coming within one victory of qualifying for Wimbledon. Ultimately, she became an honorary member of the men’s tour instead. She married Stan Smith in 1974 and traveled the circuit with her new husband.

Back at Princeton, Gengler’s positive experience proved to be representative after all. At graduation, the salutatorian declaimed–in Latin, as was the tradition–“Ut tempora mutantur … vobis tamen persuadetis ut radix malorum non sit co-educatio.” Translated to the common tongue: As times change, you become convinced that co-education is not the root of evil.

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This post is part of my series about the 1973 season, Battles, Boycotts, and Breakouts. Keep up with the project by checking the TennisAbstract.com front page, which shows an up-to-date Table of Contents after I post each installment.

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June 10, 1973: Sense and Sensibility

*Evonne Goolagong at the 1973 Italian Open*

All signs suggested this would not be your typical Italian Open women’s final.

First of all, it would be played on the Foro Italico’s famed centre court. The Italians were unashamed by their preference for men’s tennis. Women’s matches tended to be scheduled at odd hours on outer courts. This time was different, and the house was packed.

The two ladies remaining in the draw were the reason why. Chris Evert, the 18-year-old American, was making her first appearance in Rome. She was just seven days removed from a near-miss in the Roland Garros final. Opposite Evert was Evonne Goolagong, just two years older, and already a crowd favorite. Even those male fans who disdained women’s tennis could enjoy Goolagong. The adjective of choice for the Australian was “lithe.”

Goolagong, however, was not at her best on clay. She had beaten Evert in the Wimbledon semi-finals the year before, then lost five in a row since. Evonne rarely maintained her focus through an entire match, and steady, persistent Chrissie was exactly the kind of opponent to exploit those lapses.

On June 10th, the final began as expected. Goolagong made too many unforced errors, and Evert took a 4-2 lead. Then the Australian’s forehand began to find its targets. The Guardian‘s David Gray described it as a “battle between sense and sensibility,” the “calmly practical” Evert against the “natural” Goolagong, who “needs to be sure that her own special magic is working.”

That magic saved Evonne at 3-5 in the first set tiebreak, when she recovered with a down-the-line forehand winner. The Aussie took the opener, 8-6 in the breaker.

From that point, it was all Goolagong. Evert won just 11 points in the second set and lost the frame at love. “I felt that I could run for miles,” Evonne said. “I have never played better on a clay court.”

“I hope she hasn’t,” Evert replied.

Goolagong’s head-to-head record against Chrissie still stood at a meager 2-5, but she couldn’t have asked for a better confidence boost to wrap up her stint on the Continent. Now she would head to Wimbledon, the site of her greatest triumph just two years before.

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June 7, 1973: Boycott

Boy, that escalated quickly.

Two days after the International Lawn Tennis Federation (ILTF) upheld the ban on Yugoslavia’s Niki Pilić, a group of nearly 100 top professionals made it clear that if Pilić couldn’t play Wimbledon, neither would they.

The voice of the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) was Cliff Drysdale, a veteran South African player who served as the body’s president. Drysdale represented almost every notable player in the game: Rod Laver, Arthur Ashe, Ken Rosewall, Stan Smith, and more. Just a few pros stood outside the ATP’s ranks, like Jimmy Connors. Both Jimbo and his manager, Bill Riordan, had decidedly independent streaks. Some Eastern Europeans answered only to their national federations, and a handful of youngsters–such as Björn Borg–had yet to sign up. That was it.

Drysdale said that the suspension was a mistake, and that the ILTF couldn’t prove otherwise. The Yugoslavs claimed that Pilić had “refused” to play a recent Davis Cup tie. The player said he had never committed to suiting up for Yugoslavia. In the union’s view, there was no evidence that Pilić ever promised anything, and that was that. The South African claimed to be optimistic that upcoming meetings between the two organizations would result in a solution. But the general readiness to forgo the biggest event on the tennis calendar suggested otherwise.

The next few weeks would be the first real test of the ATP’s strength. The players’ union had been formed only nine months earlier, during the 1972 US Open. Two powerful factions–the ILTF and Lamar Hunt’s World Championship Tennis (WCT)–had just reached a peace pact of their own, divvying up the calendar and ending the prohibitions on some types of players at certain events. The players needed to be at the negotiating table, too. They were, as Ashe put it, “tired of being stepped on by two elephants.”

Ashe took an officer role alongside Drysdale. But the force behind the union was former player and promoter Jack Kramer. Kramer had won Wimbledon in 1947 by perfecting the serve-and-volley game, then gone on to dominate the professional ranks. He quickly moved into management, recruiting amateur stars and running the pro tours. Traditionalists demonized him for soiling the game with dollar signs, but Big Jake simply wanted the players to get their share of the action. There was lots of money in “amateur” tennis.

Kramer liked the tell a story about getting called into the office of one of the USLTA’s chief administrators. The man had heard that Jack–still an amateur in those days–was making a healthy living collecting “expenses” from tournaments beyond the amount necessary to keep him fed and sheltered on the road. It was common practice, but everyone was expected to go along with the charade of playing wholly for the fun of it. Instead, Kramer told the man: Yes, absolutely, he was earning more than he spent. He had a wife and sons to feed. In my situation, he asked, wouldn’t you do the same?

The federation bigwig sent Kramer on his way. The matter was dropped.

From the mid-1950s onward, Jack fought for Open tennis, and he made at least a handful of his fellow players rich. He saw far into the future, predicting a sort of Grand Prix tournament schedule a decade before it came to pass. His pros played tiebreaks long before the majors did. Most of all, he realized that the health of the sport depended on the players–a truism now, but a radical notion at the time. Long before 1973, he knew that the athletes needed their own organization. He told Billie Jean King that the women ought to have one, too.

Kramer’s story is important because his motivations were so often misconstrued. Tennis had given him a comfortable life, so detractors saw him as a money-grubber. His involvement in the Wimbledon boycott caused some–especially in Britain–to accuse him to trying to destroy the game entirely. History has cast him as a villain for different reasons: His support for unequal men’s and women’s prize money inadvertently triggered the formation of an independent women’s tour. But for all of his faults, Kramer pushed for a vision that was awfully close to what professional tennis ultimately became.

Ultimately, Big Jake would play only a supporting role in the drama of the 1973 Wimbledon Championships. While he had a front row seat, the decision–and the sacrifice–of a boycott was up to the players themselves. The ATP’s stated mission was to “unite, promote and protect” the interests of its members. Pilić was one of them, and it sure felt like he was being trod upon by an elephant. The ILTF didn’t recognize the resolve–or the power–of their new adversary. That would soon change.

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June 5, 1973: The Brigands Final

*Ilie Năstase (left) and Niki Pilić ahead of the 1973 Roland Garros final*

“The greatest thing about the French,” said John Newcombe, “is that it’s so bloody hard to win.”

The greatest thing about Ilie Năstase was that he made everything look so easy.

The 26-year-old Romanian was, by all accounts, the greatest clay-court player on tour. He had cruised through six rounds in Paris without dropping a single set. Only one man–Roger Taylor, in the quarter-finals–earned a set point against him. Năstase erased it with a sharply-angled backhand that few other men would’ve dared attempt.

The surprise of the tournament was the other finalist: Yugoslavia’s Niki Pilić. Pilić had begun the fortnight in the news for other reasons, after his national federation suspended him for missing a Davis Cup tie. The ILTF allowed him to play the French and delayed a decision on his appeal to June 1st. “Somebody would be embarrassed,” wrote the New York Times, “if by then Pilić was in the final.” Oops.

Pilić, a 33-year-old lefty who hadn’t reached the quarter-finals of a major since 1967, took advantage of a soft draw, then turned in the match of his life to defeat Adriano Panatta in the semi-finals. “He must have been annoyed at me for serving so well,” said the southpaw. “The way I played today, I could beat anyone.” Even Năstase?

A week of rain pushed the schedule back two days, and the final was at last contested on Tuesday, June 5th. The Romanian came out tense, and he dropped the first three games. The embattled Pilić appeared capable of an enormous upset.

“I can always tell after the first two or three games how I will play,” Năstase told Laurie Pignon of the Daily Mail. “The feel of the ball on the racket; the way my body moves, and if my eyes take in everything. When I play badly I get cross with myself for I know I am not giving the people what they have paid to see.”

At the second change of ends, Ilie must have known something that wasn’t yet apparent to the rest of the stadium. He unleashed backhand after backhand to win six games in a row and 11 of the next 12. When Pilic shifted tactics and attacked his forehand in the third set, Năstase hit a string of winners off that wing as well. Final score: 6-3, 6-3, 6-0.

Pilić might have repeated the post-match summary of Năstase’s semi-final victim, Tom Gorman: “Not a good enough volley. Not a good enough second serve. Too good an opponent.”

One French newspaper called the championship match “A Brigands Final,” referring to Pilić’s limbo and Năstase’s on-court antics. The Romanian often veered between charming character and combative cad, but on this day, he kept the theatrics in check. He struck an off-key note only after the match, when he told the crowd that his US Open title the previous year had meant more. With the French title in the bag, he was ready to take on Wimbledon, where he had come within two games of victory the year before. His idol, Manolo Santana, had ridden clay-court expertise to a title at the All-England Club, and Năstase was ready to do the same.

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As if an 80-minute drubbing wasn’t bad enough, Pilić’s day got worse after the match. The ILTF delivered its judgment. It wouldn’t uphold the entire nine-month suspension sought by the Yugoslavian federation, but it assessed a one-month ban. That would keep the Croatian out of both the Italian Open–already underway in Rome–and Wimbledon.

Astute observers recognized that this was only the beginning. David Gray of the London Daily Telegraph reported various retaliatory proposals mooted by members of the Association of Tennis Professionals, the new players’ union. The men could boycott the Davis Cup, or perhaps they would no longer cooperate with the ILTF’s tournament schedule, essentially unleashing an outright war between the old guard and newer pro circuits like Lamar Hunt’s World Championship Tennis.

Gray felt that the ILTF had overplayed its hand. “They still apparently feel that they can control the destinies of the players without proper consultation,” he wrote. “They are likely to find that they are living in the past.”

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June 4, 1973: Cross-Court Crossovers

*Basketball star Artis Gilmore (left) with miler Jim Ryun*

In 1973, tennis was all the rage. But wouldn’t the game be even more fun with stars from other sports? That was the thinking behind the third annual Dewar Sports Celebrity tournament at Kutsher’s Country Club in Monticello, New York.

While the 12-player field was all men, parallels to the recent Battle of the Sexes spectacle were obvious. 62-year-old baseball Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg–a Bobby Riggs pal, no less–was the defending champion. The contrasts were not just between the old and the young. Three of the invitees were basketball players, including seven-foot, two-inch Artis Gilmore, while track and field athletes like Jim Ryun might have passed unnoticed on the street.

Players were picked for their celebrity, not their tennis prowess. Ryun said that he began running because he “couldn’t do anything else,” and he swung and missed on at least one serve. Gilmore’s groundstrokes were softer even than Riggs’s, and Miami Dolphins running back Jim Kiick* griped that the rackets weren’t big enough. Heavyweight boxer Bob Foster was on hand as an alternate, and he was perfectly happy to remain on the sidelines.

* Kiick’s daughter Allie has fared better. She has won seven ITF singles titles and peaked at #126 in the WTA rankings.

The whole tournament took place in one day: June 4th. Hoopster Rick Barry took the individual honors, flashing a big serve and an intensity that suggested he couldn’t simply turn off his competitive streak. After players cycled through a doubles round robin, switching partners throughout the day, the group was whittled down to four. Greenberg and basketball star Gail Goodrich would play for the title against Barry and the man who had just broken the NFL’s single-season rushing record: O.J. Simpson.

In addition to his speed, Simpson had what the New York Times called a “tricky forehand.” But Greenberg and Goodrich were the class of the group, perhaps the only two men present who regularly played tennis. They took the final in a single pro set, 8-2.

Greenberg, his playing days long behind him, was the most accustomed to this kind of half-serious exhibition. He closed the day with a one-liner worthy of a Catskills comedian.

“It’s not so much how you play this game,” he quipped. “What counts is whether you win or lose.”

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June 3, 1973: Half Grand

*Margaret Court (left) and Chris Evert in the 1973 French Open final*

When Margaret Court was in form, playing a full schedule, the Grand Slam watch began on the first day of the season. She entered the 1973 campaign with a record 21 major titles, including the complete set in 1970. Number 22 came when she beat Evonne Goolagong for the Australian championship in January. She got past Goolagong again in the French semi-finals for a chance to play for her 23rd.

The final hurdle was the most hotly anticipated match of the women’s tennis season. Court and Chris Evert had dominated their respective tours. Evert was riding a 23-match win streak; Margaret had won 59 of 62 since the beginning of the year. Despite Court’s experience, there were reasons to favor the 18-year-old Chrissie in her first grand slam final. She had won three of four meetings, with a game better suited to clay. And Evert hadn’t just suffered an embarrassing defeat–with the world watching–to a 55-year-old man.

On June 3rd, the top two women in the game played a match for the ages. It was clear from the start that this wasn’t the same Court who had flubbed an exhibition just three weeks before. “I wish [she] had been in this form when she played Bobby Riggs,” said Chrissie afterward. “She would have hit him off the court.”

A week’s worth of rain had pushed the final back a day; it also delayed the start time. Tournament organizers, showing their usual gender preference, scheduled two men’s quarter-finals first. Evert was visibly jittery and lost four of the first five games. “It took me two or three games to find out where I was,” she said. “I had never seen so many people there before.” But the teenager warmed to the 12,000-strong crowd, dragged Court into longer rallies, and evened the score at 5-all. Margaret failed to convert two set points, then recovered to take a 5-2 lead in the tiebreak. Here Evert showed that she wasn’t overawed by the setting: She reeled off five points in a row to take the first set.

The second frame developed in the opposite fashion. Chrissie rode her baseline game to a 5-3 advantage, but failed to serve out the match. The set was decided by another tiebreak, this one perhaps the best tennis of the season. Both women aimed for lines and hit their targets. “In cold blood,” wrote David Gray for the Guardian, “no one would have taken such risks.” Court eked out the breaker, 8-6.

As the match passed the two-hour mark, Margaret finally took command. Neither woman had much left in the tank. Even Chrissie began to come forward in an effort to shorten points. That was all the opening that the veteran needed. The cramps that had taken her out of the Family Circle Cup threatened once again, but this time she could manage. “If my legs can hold out,” she told herself, “I can win.” They did, and she claimed the deciding set, 6-4.

“I must confess I didn’t know Margaret could play so well on clay,” Evert said. “It’s no disgrace to be beaten by Margaret.”

Chrissie was still slam-less, but more than ever, it was clear that she’d change that soon. Could Court hold her off for two more majors? She was now halfway to a second career Grand Slam.

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June 2, 1973: Mary Carillo’s Debut

The Eastern Women’s hardcourt championships in Woodbury, New York was a far cry from the French Open. The growth of pro tennis had seen many once-prominent regional events fall in status. A tournament that might have once attracted the best players in the area–perhaps a national top-tenner or two–was now limited to women who lacked the time, inclination, or talent for the pro circuit.

This effectively turned many smaller events into showcases for rising juniors. Mary Carillo, a 16-year-old left-hander from nearby Douglaston, chose the Eastern to make her adult debut. Among 16-and-unders, she was ranked fifth in the east. She had little trouble with the step up: Unseeded in her first open bracket, she beat third-seeded Adria Price in the quarters, then straight-setted the ambidextrous second seed, Sue Allen, in the semis.

Moving through the draw at the same pace was another junior, 18-year-old Ruta Gerulaitis. Armed with a forehand of “unladylike power,” Gerulaitis was more accustomed to adult competition than Carillo, though she still played junior events as well. Ruta’s mother, Aldona, appreciated her daughter’s relaxed demeanor on court. Mrs. Gerulaitis sometimes had to leave her son’s matches when 19-year-old Vitas lost his temper.

On June 2nd, Carillo and Gerulaitis met for the Eastern title. It was a bruising battle, played mostly from the baseline. Ruta seized the first set, but the younger woman outlasted her. “She was steadier,” Gerulaitis said of her opponent. “She never tired.” Carillo took the match, 4-6, 6-4, 6-4.

Both finalists did double duty that week. Carillo played the 16-and-under draw, while Gerulaitis entered the 18s. Mary had little time to celebrate, as she capped her victory in the adult final with a preliminary match in the junior event later the same day. She won that one, too.

But neither woman could sustain their momentum for another day. Gerulaitis lost the 18-and-under final to Barbara Goldman, and Carillo faltered in the 16s, losing 6-1, 6-1 to Debbie Campbell. Perhaps Campbell was particularly motivated: It wasn’t every day you could take aim at the adult champion in a junior match the next day.

Mary’s mother, Terry, was content to focus on the positive. “I’m going to have outrageous phone bills,” she said as her daughter lifted the trophy. “I’m going to call everybody, people I haven’t seen in ten years. I’m going to say, ‘How have you been? Oh, by the way, have you read your newspaper lately?'”

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Across the Atlantic, the French Open sputtered its way toward a conclusion. Rain wiped out parts of several days of play, so on Saturday the 2nd–one day away from the tournament’s scheduled conclusion–the men were still wrapping up the fourth round. Björn Borg, who had won on Tuesday, didn’t return to the court until Saturday, when he lost to Adriano Panatta. The men’s final would be pushed back to Tuesday.

The women were only one day behind, thanks in part to the extreme efficiency of Chris Evert. Evert had yet to lose a set, and she finished off her semi-final opponent, Françoise Dürr, in 37 minutes. Dürr managed just one game. Evert would finally face Margaret Court, who survived a tougher test against Evonne Goolagong, coming through her match, 6-2, 7-6.

As players were belatedly eliminated from the Roland Garros draw, they hurried straight to Rome. The first Italian results came in on this day as well, before the French quarter-finals had even begun. Organizers at the Italian Open had a tournament to run, and they weren’t about to wait just because it was raining in Paris.

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May 29, 1973: The Super-Swede

*Björn Borg shaking hands with Dick Stockton after their 1973 French Open match*

The 1974 World of Tennis annual noted in its capsule biography of Björn Borg that the Swede had never been beaten by a younger player. That was hardly a surprise. He didn’t turn 17 until June 1973, so he didn’t face many younger players. And he wasn’t in the habit of losing to anybody.

Still, the adult game had its learning curve. Borg won the Orange Bowl junior event in both 1971 and 1972, and he picked up the Wimbledon boys’ title in 1972. He made his Davis Cup debut as a 15-year-old and upset New Zealand’s veteran Onny Parun. He was less consistent on tour, reaching the Monte Carlo final one week, losing a first-rounder in straight sets the next. He made his share of youthful mistakes, but the signature two-handed backhand and the unnaturally calm demeanor were already in place.

The 1973 French Open was his coming-out party. Borg began the event with a 6-2, 6-3 defeat of 9th-seeded American Cliff Richey. In the second round, he outlasted the veteran Frenchman Pierre Barthes, 3-6, 6-1, 8-6. “I didn’t expect to even win today,” said the young man. “He should have beat me.”

When Borg took the court for his third-round match against Dick Stockton on May 29th, he already had a fan club. The “long, fair hair flopping round his neck” won over scores of young women, and his acrobatic game appealed to the rest. Parisian fans were treated to a hard-fought battle in the first best-of-five-set round. Stockton was steadier, but Borg snuck away with the big points.

The 16-year-old advanced with a four-set victory, 6-7, 7-5, 6-2, 7-6. Stockton had four set points in the final tiebreak. Borg needed to run down a smash to save the second one. He awed the crowd one more time on his own match point at 10-9, which he secured with a lob winner.

No young player had a brighter future than the Swede. Adriano Panatta, the flashy Italian waiting for him in the fourth round, had beaten him twice already in 1973. Borg would be the underdog in that encounter, but he was playing the long game. “Now it all depends on me,” he said. “I think I can go all the way.”

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The day was not so rewarding for Virginia Wade. Though the third seed wasn’t known for her clay-court prowess, she had reached the quarter-finals the year before. There was no reason she couldn’t do it again.

She lost anyway, to little-known Frenchwoman Odile de Roubin, 1-6, 6-2, 6-3. “I hate playing bad players and she was so bad,” Wade said. “Then the stadium was empty and there was no atmosphere and I played so stupidly.” No one was prepared to argue the point.

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May 27, 1973: Behind the Scenes

*From the May 27, 1973* New York Times Magazine

The rapid growth of women’s tennis was about more than sport. Everybody knew that. The burgeoning Virginia Slims tour was dubbed “women’s lob.” Equal prize money, once unthinkable, was now a proposition that had to be taken seriously. Whatever Bobby Riggs might have to say about it, these ladies were damn good athletes, and their prominence had ripple effects across the culture.

It wasn’t just die-hard fans who wanted to know more. Press coverage of tennis had always tended toward the matter-of-fact: A recap of a notable match or two–usually between men–followed by a long list of results in microscopic print. Only in the 1960s did newspapers begin to venture the occasional feature story about a rising star or local hero of the courts. Diligent readers would learn that Margaret Court was a mother and that Chris Evert wore pigtails, but not much else.

An article in the May 27, 1973 New York Times Magazine was one of the first efforts to turn women’s tennis stars into multi-dimensional characters. Baseball had Jim Bouton’s 1970 tell-all, Ball Four, and Sports Illustrated employed a team of adventurous journalists filing features about football, basketball, and even–occasionally–men’s tennis. Grace Lichtenstein’s piece for the Times, “Perfume in the locker room,” did the same for the Slims.

Lichtenstein took the reader into the locker room after the final of the Max-Pax Classic in Philadelphia, where Rosie Casals puffed a cigarette and Court sipped a beer. She described life on the road, where players stayed with local families and some–like newcomer Martina Navratilova–struggled with the temptations of fast food.

It was easy to see athletes as a single movement. But as the article was quick to point out, “The players themselves were thoroughly individualistic.” They “never seemed to forget their dual roles as women and athletes,” even if each one handled the balance differently. The young Evert claimed, “No point is worth falling down over,” and she never took the court without makeup. Evonne Goolagong, on the other hand, earned the respect of her male colleagues with a different sort of attitude. One of them said, “she’s the only one [of the women] who wears a jock.” It was a compliment.

In this first major effort, Lichtenstein had to grapple with the relationship between the men’s and women’s games. But as she expanded the article to a season-chronicling book, A long way, baby: Behind the scenes in women’s tennis, the men–apart from husbands, boyfriends, and hangers-on–increasingly disappeared from the picture. Women’s tennis could stand alone. It was time for sportswriters to catch up, and Lichtenstein showed the way.

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