Heavy Topspin – Page 17 – The Tennis Abstract blog

June 20, 1973: United, Mostly

*British star Roger Taylor, who would come under immense pressure to compete at Wimbledon despite his membership in the ATP*

A disappointment for the top men and a disaster for Wimbledon, it smelled like opportunity to Billie Jean King. Five days away from the start of the Championships, a British High Court ruled against Niki Pilić, rejecting his request for an injunction against the All-England Club that would allow him to play. There was vanishingly little hope that the ATP would abandon its boycott of the tournament. Dozens of players–including defending champion Stan Smith and 1971 titlist John Newcombe–had already withdrawn.

Wimbledon released its seeding lists. Out of 16 men, only Czechoslovakian Jan Kodeš was not an ATP member. The event got a bit of a reprieve when second seed Ilie Năstase also said he would play, apparently because the Romanian federation ordered him to do so. As David Gray wrote for the Guardian in a front-page story, it was shaping up to be an “Iron Curtain Wimbledon.”

Many women were sympathetic; a few were even prepared to join the ATP’s boycott. Billie Jean, though, was hunting bigger game. “We are in a great bargaining position,” she said, thinking about the appeal of Margaret Court, Chris Evert, Evonne Goolagong, and herself at a sold-out showpiece tournament bereft of its leading men.

Wimbledon planned to pay out the equivalent of $70,500 in prize money to the men and $50,500 to the women. By the standard of tennis distributions in 1973, the imbalance wasn’t egregious. But King targeted full equality, even when her fellow players thought it impossible.

“As for the girls wanting more money,” said tour regular Patti Hogan, “aside from the fact that it can’t be done, there’s no way we could justify this to the public.”

Others didn’t even care. Goolagong said, “I’d be happy to play at Wimbledon even if there was no money.” Evert, who had yet to adopt Billie Jean’s way of thinking, had similar priorities. “I’ve come over here to play tennis,” said the 18-year-old, “and that’s all I’m interested in.”

Once again, King was forced to play the long game. Without a united front that could take on Wimbledon organizers, she sought to create one. On June 20th, she held a meeting at London’s Gloucester Hotel for more than the 60 of her fellow players. By the end of the evening, she had convinced her peers that they needed a players’ union of their own. The Women’s Tennis Association was born. There would be no women’s boycott at the All-England Club, but the new organization would make its presence felt before the summer was through.

In the meantime, Niki Pilić flew home to Yugoslavia. He knew that the battle wasn’t really about him anymore. But this was still Wimbledon, where Pilić had reached the semi-final in 1967. If a compromise did emerge, he was ready to fly back at a moment’s notice.

* * *

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.

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

June 16, 1973: An American Sweep

Less than two weeks from Wimbledon, and the warm-ups were in full swing. The field divided into two combined men’s and women’s events: one in Nottingham, the other in Beckenham.

The 1973 Nottingham ladies’ draw boded well for the big event. Billie Jean King lived up to her top seed, sweeping the tournament without the loss of a set. In the final on June 16th, she defeated in-form home hope Virginia Wade, who had drubbed Chris Evert the day before.

King had watched Margaret Court dominate the circuit while she sat out with a stomach injury. Now she was riding a three-tournament, eleven-match win streak. She was well-rested, too. “I am feeling fitter at this stage,” she said, “than for quite a few Wimbledons past.”

The men’s action in Nottingham provided the surprises. Brit Roger Taylor, one of the best players present, lost in the first round. Mark Cox, another top Englishman, fell in the quarters. Jimmy Connors suffered the same fate as his love interest Chrissie, departed in the semis. Jimbo’s conqueror was another American, the oft-forgotten Erik van Dillen.

When van Dillen’s name came up, it was usually to do with his doubles prowess. Just 22 years old, he was already the veteran of two Davis Cup campaigns. He and partner Stan Smith lost a close match to the Romanians in the 1971 final. The next year, the American pair went 5-0. They saved their strongest performance of all for the hostile crowd in Bucharest, where they demolished Ilie Năstase and Ion Țiriac, 6-2, 6-0, 6-3. Many observers thought van Dillen was the best player on the court that day.

No one questioned van Dillen’s talent. He had been winning tournaments since he played 12-and-unders. The problem was consistency. One day he could outclass Smith and Năstase, or drop a 6-1, 6-0 wrecking ball on Arthur Ashe, as he did in February 1973. Then he would fail to put two good sets together for a month.

In Nottingham, van Dillen upset both Cliff Drysdale and Dick Stockton to reach the semi-finals. At that stage he encountered a “surprisingly quiet” Connors. Jimbo took the second set but the underdog retook the ascendancy with a comfortable three-set win. Van Dillen’s final opponent was another player with a two-handed backhand, the South African Frew McMillan. The American struggled with McMillan’s double-hander in the first set, but when it started going astray, van Dillen capitalized with his best game. The score: 3-6, 6-1, 6-1.

Naturally, he won the doubles, too.

Then he headed to Queen’s Club. He was entered in qualifying.

* * *

Down in Beckenham, two men tested the limits of a single tiebreak set. Wimbledon and other British tournaments adopted the first-to-seven tiebreak for the first time in 1973. Of course, they had to do things a little differently. Instead of holding the shootout at six games apiece, they would wait until eight-all. And the deciding set would be played the old-fashioned way, even if it took all week.

Soviet standout Alex Metreveli took the Beckenham title 6-3, 9-8(9). That’s a second set consisting of 16 games plus another 20 points. The challenger who pushed Metreveli to such extremes was gaining a reputation for turning routine victories into dogfights. The runner-up in question: Björn Borg. A week after his 17th birthday, playing just his third career grass tournament, the Swede made it clear he was more than just a dirtballer.

In the semis, Borg had dismissed the Australian Owen Davidson, a veteran with two grass-court titles in the last month. Davidson was suitably impressed. He said, “I cannot remember ever playing a better 17-year-old.”

* * *

Borg, Metreveli, and van Dillen would be three dark horses to watch at Wimbledon–if there were a men’s tournament worth the name. Players and federations had made no progress toward resolving the status of Niki Pilić, the Yugoslavian player banned by his national body, sanctioned by the ILTF, and now heartily backed by the players’ union. Nearly 100 players were ready to boycott.

On June 16th, Pilic and Arthur Ashe headed out to the All-England Club, hoping to get some practice in. They didn’t make it past the door. “I turned them off,” said the club secretary, “because this is a private club and they are not members.”

* * *

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

June 13, 1973: A Heldman Special

By 1973, Julie Heldman had put together a fine career. The 27-year-old had never challenged for a place at the very top of the women’s tennis hierarchy, but she had amassed a couple dozen tournament victories, semi-final showings at Roland Garros and Forest Hills, and victories over most of the leading players in the game. Hampered by knee problems that year, she was reduced to a bit part on the Virginia Slims tour. She still recorded upsets of Kerry Melville and Nancy Richey.

Heldman was already laying the groundwork for a second career. After an early exit at Hilton Head, she shared the commentary booth with Bud Collins and called the Richey-Rosie Casals final for NBC. She had been immersed in tennis since birth. Her father, Julius, was a strong player with several match wins at Forest Hills. Her mother, Gladys, took up the game late and with a passion. She ran the magazine World Tennis–teenage Julie and her sister Carrie were frequent bylines–and put together the groundbreaking Virginia Slims women’s tour in 1971.

None of that helped Julie on June 13th, 1973. She was in the third round of the Green Shield Kent Championships in Beckenham, a traditional grass-court warmup for Wimbledon. Her opponent, South African Linky Boshoff, was only 16 years old. Heldman was having a tough time putting away the first set. As if a sore knee wasn’t enough, now she had the yips, barely able to toss the ball to serve.

On set point, Julie snuck in what the Daily Telegraph called a “Heldman ‘special’,” an underarm serve with heavy spin. Boshoff, flustered, couldn’t get it back.

The umpire, Pat Smyth, asked Boshoff, “Are you happy with that service?”

Heldman piped up, “It’s too bad if she’s not. Am I supposed to warn her when I’m about to hit a drop shot?”

Smyth acknowledged that the serve was within the rules. Afterward, he explained, “I just wanted to add a little courtesy to the match.”

Julie hit two more underarm serves that day, and she trotted out the tactic occasionally throughout a successful grass-court season. She even deployed it once on match point. Life could be hard as a career woman on a tour full of teenagers. Occasionally, Heldman was able to get her revenge.

* * *

Speaking of cagey veterans: Everyone was still talking about Bobby Riggs–even Chris Evert was asked about a possible match after her French Open final. Of course Bobby was going to try to cash in.

On June 13th, a businessman and avid amateur player named Alvin Bunis announced the 1973 “Grand Masters” tour, to begin in July. Riggs would be joined by several other former greats–including Jaroslav Drobný, Frank Parker, Pancho Segura, and Vic Seixas–in a series of weekend tournaments worth $250,000.

59-year-old Gardnar Mulloy, a 1948 Wimbledon semi-finalist who had been winning age-group titles for decades, would be the oldest of the group. One pressman asked Mulloy why he signed up for the tour.

“Money.”

* * *

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

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.

* * *

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

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.

* * *

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

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.

* * *

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

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.

* * *

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.”

* * *

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

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.”

* * *

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email:

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.

* * *

You can also subscribe to the blog to receive each new post by email: