Heavy Topspin

Whether it was the money, the climate, or the awkward spot on the tennis calendar, the $150,000 Alan King Classic at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas was a goldmine for underdogs. Top seeds Stan Smith and Rod Laver lost their opening matches. Numbers three and four, Ken Rosewall and John Newcombe, fell in the second round. Only two top-ten seeds reached the quarter-finals, and one of them–Cliff Drysdale–went no further.

The desert heat–often touching 95 degrees–favored the biggest hitters in the game. Laver lost to six-foot, four-inch Dick Crealy, and Newcombe went out to another Australian, Colin Dibley, who once cracked a 148 mile-per-hour serve. Roscoe Tanner, owner of the liveliest arm among the Americans, ousted both Rosewall and Drysdale.

The tournament, along with its record-setting $30,000 prize, seemed to belong to Arthur Ashe. The last seed standing, he was coming off a near-miss to Smith at the previous week’s WCT Finals. Having learned the game in Virginia, he had no problems with a blistering sun. His serve could be every bit as unhittable as Tanner’s.

Just when the resident gamblers thought they had figured out the pattern of the Alan King Classic, Brian Gottfried screwed it all up. A curly-haired 21-year-old counterpuncher from Trinity University in Texas, he moved quietly through the draw, beating Clark Graebner, Charlie Pasarell, and Dibley to reach the semis. He straight-setted another veteran, Cliff Richey, for a place in the final.

What Gottfried lacked in power and pizzazz, he made up for in other ways. His second serve was only slightly weaker than his first. He executed well at the net, even if he didn’t come in behind many serves. Until recently, he had been the third-ranked player on the Trinity squad; he was already gaining a reputation as one of the circuit’s hardest workers.

Ashe liked to joke that after Gottfried skipped practice for his wedding, he doubled his workout the next day to make up for it.

On May 20th, it wasn’t just hot, it was windy. The finalists coped with gusts up to 25 miles per hour. Ashe was never known for playing with a wide margin of error, and it cost him. The favorite double-faulted twice on break point in the second set.

Across the net, Gottfried was unfazed. He broke serve twice in the first set and three times in the second. “I just decided to keep banging the ball hard against his serve… and it worked out,” said the new champion, who won the match, 6-1, 6-3.

It was, by far, the biggest title of Gottfried’s young career. He had won the Johannesburg WCT event, another upset-ridden week, but that championship didn’t quite count: He won the final by walkover when Jaime Fillol was ill. Gottfried won the Vegas doubles, too, for a one-week take of $35,000, more than doubling his career earnings. He had turned pro just nine months earlier.

Arthur, as usual, was eloquent in defeat. “He was hitting out there like there was no wind,” he said. “I wasn’t.”

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Also this week:

• You didn’t think they would hold a tournament in Las Vegas without an appearance by the king of the hustlers, did you? Bobby Riggs took part in a one-day “Hall of Fame” doubles tournament played in conjunction with the Alan King Classic. With partner Gardnar Mulloy, Riggs beat Don Budge and Dick Savitt in the opening round, but lost the one-set final to Richard González and Frank Parker, 6-2. “What did you expect?” Bobby chirped. “Those guys had 12 years on us, 103 to 115.”
• Evonne Goolagong picked up her fifth title of the year at the Mercedes Benz Open in Lee-on-the-Solent, England. It was a minor event against primarily British competition. The rewards were even less distinguished: The day before Gottfried collected his $35,000, Goolagong received her winner’s check for $312.

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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.

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

In one version of the story, the idea of Bobby Riggs challenging a leading woman player dated back five years or so, to a casual conversation with Billie Jean King. Riggs, the 1939 Wimbledon champion, and King, the best American woman, thought it would be a lark that they might be able to arrange someday.

By the time Bobby got serious about it, Billie Jean was no longer game. What was in it for her, aside from the $5,000 that Riggs was willing to post? If she won, all she’d establish is that she could beat a pint-sized 55-year-old. If the queen of the Virginia Slims circuit lost, the result would reflect badly on the fledgling women’s tour. Riggs could be a gentleman at close quarters, but when he set out to promote the Battle of the Sexes, he claimed that women’s tennis “stinks. A Riggs victory, he said, would prove that the ladies didn’t deserve anywhere near equal prize money.

Margaret Court accepted the challenge instead, agreeing to a best-of-three match at the remote outpost of Ramona, California. It was slated for Mother’s Day: May 13th, 1973. The clash immediately captured the public’s imagination, and not just within the tennis world. Real estate developers in Ramona kicked in another $5,000 to double the winner-take-all prize pot, and CBS television agreed to broadcast it live.

“This match is unbelievable,” said Riggs. “The eyes and ears of the world are on me. I am the greatest money player in history. I am the finest defensive player in the game. Margaret is the biggest hitter of the girls. What a match! Nobody has a clue how it will go. The mystery of the age. What a deal!”

Riggs was right about one thing: It really did seem up for grabs. Men tended to pick Bobby and women–especially fellow players–lined up behind Court. There were few precedents for a match like this. Don Budge claimed that he made quick work of Maureen Connolly when Little Mo was in her prime. Pauline Betz recalled beating a 55-year-old Bill Tilden. Fred Perry predicted that Court wouldn’t win a single game.

Billie Jean was uncertain. “If Margaret loses,” she said before the match, “we’re in trouble. I’ll have to challenge him myself.”

It was all over in 57 minutes. The kindest analysts said that Court had an off day. Riggs became a “soft wall” and junkballed his way to a 6-2, 6-1 victory. Margaret landed fewer than half of her first serves, and she struggled to generate pace against Bobby’s devilish mix of off-speed stuff. Her forehand was particularly vulnerable. Just a few days before, Budge had told Riggs to attack that wing, as Court’s style of “shoveling” that shot was unorthodox and incorrect.

The result made the front page of the New York Times, a one-paragraph item headlined, “Man Wins Tennis Match.”

For weeks, well-wishers had warned Margaret to ignore Riggs’s chatter and stay wary of his “hustle tricks.” Billie Jean suggested “psychedelic ear plugs.” In the end, none of that mattered. Bobby played his usual game of deadly dinks, and Court collapsed under the pressure. She has been criticized for unwise preparation–she practiced with hard-hitting Tony Trabert before the match–but she spent the entire week before that with coach Dennis Van der Meer, who fed her a Riggs-like mix of junk.

Bobby was gracious in victory. After accepting the winner’s check from John Wayne, he said, “If the match were played on another day under different circumstances, Margaret might easily win by the same score.”

Translation: “Please let me do this again! Please!”

Court said she was up for a rematch. The man-versus-woman concept had proven to be more compelling than anyone had hoped, and Riggs gained a type of celebrity that barely existed when he won the 1939 Wimbledon title.

King caught the match in Hawaii, on her way back from winning a title in Tokyo. When she saw how the spectacle played out, she could only groan. She didn’t trust Court to even the score with Bobby. The next day, she publicly challenged Riggs to a match for $10,000 at her club, the Shipyard Plantation at Hilton Head.

“A match with Mrs. King,” wrote Neil Amdur of the Times, “could rekindle some interest in this format.”

The circus was just getting started.

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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.

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

On the rare occasions that Rod Laver lost his cool, he channeled his anger into the ferocious serve-and-volley game that made him the best who ever lived. Imagine the crowd’s surprise, then, when after making 33 errors in a single set against Stan Smith, Laver smacked a ball into the ceiling of Dallas’s Moody Coliseum.

Despite failing to win a major title since his 1969 Grand Slam, Laver was still considered the strongest player in the world by many pundits and fellow players. But the 1973 World Championship Tennis circuit had dented that reputation. Smith beat Laver for just the third time in ten career tries when they faced off in Atlanta in March. Stan did it again a week later. Two weeks after that, the American made it three in a row.

The Rocket won four titles on the 1973 WCT circuit, but none since mid-March. In the meantime, he struggled with a nagging back injury and watched his rival rack up six titles of his own. Smith headed to Dallas as the top seed and prize money leader of the eight-man field. The draw lined up the two men for a semi-final showdown; after perfunctory defeats of Roy Emerson (by Laver) and John Alexander (by Smith), a best-of-five clash was set.

The WCT Finals didn’t have quite the stature of the majors, but the event was getting there. Ken Rosewall had won classic duels from Laver in each of the last two years. More importantly, both were televised. Perhaps more than any other match, the 1972 title bout, with its fifth-set tiebreak, had established tennis as a made-for-TV sport. The veteran Aussies were more concerned with prestige than ratings, but there was a happy medium: The event was probably the fourth- or fifth-most important on the men’s calendar.

Before Laver could play for the elusive title, he’d have to get past Smith. On May 11th, the American started slowly, double-faulting on set point to give the first set to Rocket, 6-4. In the second, though, he once again showed that he could break the Laver serve. Smith made his move in the seventh game and won the set, 6-4. The third frame was the one that drove the Australian over the edge. After Laver vented his frustration, Smith took the tiebreak, 7-2. The two men traded breaks in the fourth, then the American attacked again in the 12th game to break again and take the match, 7-5.

Two days later, Smith finished the job–on national television–by defeating Arthur Ashe, who had knocked out Rosewall in the semis. Stan’s haul for the four-month circuit reached $154,100.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever have another 17 weeks like this,” he said.

The championship, combined with the defeat of Laver, put to rest any doubts that may have lingered after Smith won the 1972 Wimbledon title. Laver, Rosewall, and others were kept out of the 1972 Championships because of their status as contract professionals. (Smith only joined the WCT tour in 1973.) The Wimbledon field was plenty strong, but no competition was truly complete without the Australian superstars.

“Before today I thought Rod was the best and then Kenny had won the other two WCTs so he had to be right up there, too,” Smith said after securing the title. “Today is the first time I feel comfortable saying I’m maybe the best in the world.”

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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.

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

On May 9th, 1973, tennis was four days away from what one Los Angeles-area columnist called the sport’s “biggest day ever.” Fans across the United States could watch the World Championship Tennis final match from Dallas–featuring, perhaps, Stan Smith and Ken Rosewall–on NBC. A few hours later, they could tune into CBS and watch 55-year-old Bobby Riggs challenge Margaret Court in the much-hyped “Battle of the Sexes.”

Riggs called it “the match of the century.” He had ballyhooed the date so relentlessly that he might have believed it.

Everyone knew that the Riggs match didn’t really matter, that a contest between a male has-been and a female superstar wouldn’t settle anything. One Wisconsin newspaper urged its readers to watch the WCT final–that would be real tennis. But no matter how big Smith served, or how beautifully 30-somethings Rosewall and Rod Laver continued to play, the Battle of the Sexes was the event on everyone’s lips.

So, with the big day in sight, what was Bobby doing? At home in Newport Beach, he could’ve walked to a half-dozen tennis courts. But he preferred to drive 120 miles into the desert to the La Costa Racquet Club, where his long-time buddy Pancho Segura was the resident pro. The five-foot, eight-inch Riggs–Court was an inch taller–did a bit of running and played a few sets of tennis, preferably for money. When Bud Collins called for an interview, Bobby offered him a match with “two chairs”–Bud could put two chairs anywhere on Riggs’s side of the court to slow him down.

Most of all, the long-ago Wimbledon champ spent his time working the phones. After retiring as a full-time pro two decades earlier, he had tried his hand at promotion. Results were mixed, but never for a lack of effort. Riggs had a minute for anyone who asked.

If you wanted to bet against him, look no further: Bobby had “plenty of side action” on the match, though he questioned the odds out of Las Vegas that made him a 7-5 favorite. He claimed it was a tossup. “She plays like a man, I play like a woman,” he said. “She’s younger and stronger, bigger and faster. She’s got a better serve, a better volley and a better overhead. She’s got me beat in every department except, maybe, thinking, strategy, experience.”

It was true: Riggs’s brain was the only thing that could keep up with his mouth. “He has one of the quickest, most fertile minds I’ve ever seen,” said Bill Talbert, a former US National doubles champion. “His mind is always darting from one thing to another.”

“Half the time,” added Segura, “I don’t know what he is saying.”

Court, for her part, was lying low in San Francisco. She practiced with coach Dennis Van der Meer and got daily treatments on her legs, which had cramped up the week before at Hilton Head.

One reporter, seeking a fresh angle on the most-covered tennis story of the year, called up Richard González, the 45-year-old legend who had had his share of encounters with Riggs. González was busy preparing for a tournament at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, the Alan King Classic. The event was just a week away. Its purse of $150,000 was yet another prize money record for 1973.

Gorgo’s take on the exhibition that was hogging all the publicity? “I couldn’t care less.”

But like everyone else, González had an opinion. “I sort of think Margaret can win it,” he said. “But I still couldn’t care less.”

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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.

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