McPhee wanted his readers to feel the rhythm and logic of the match, but he also wanted to present richly textured biographical portraits that ranged across space and time. There was the match, with its physical architecture of serves and volleys, and there was human behavior, personal and quirky, decisions of the moment rooted in years of parental guidance and coaching, repetitive practice, and real-life experiences both good and bad. There were also cultural and political contrasts—an avowedly liberal black man from Richmond, a disinherited son of the South, ranged against the privileged son of a conservative Cleveland dentist, a proud representative of the white Republican establishment.
Life magazine’s Donald Jackson described Levels of the Game as “probably the best tennis book ever written,” and Robert Lipsyte of The New York Times speculated that McPhee might have reached “the high point of American sports journalism.” Many readers found the taut narrative to be reminiscent of Ernest Hemingway’s prose—sparse but gripping. Some were undoubtedly hooked before finishing the first paragraph, which describes the physics of Ashe’s serve:
Arthur Ashe, his feet apart, his knees slightly bent, lifts a tennis ball into the air. The toss is high and forward. If the ball were allowed to drop, it would, in Ashe’s words, “make a parabola and drop to the grass three feet in front of the baseline.” He has practiced tossing a tennis ball just so thousands of times. But he is going to hit this one. His feet draw together. His body straightens and tilts far beyond the point of balance. He is falling. The force of gravity and a muscular momentum from legs to arm compound as he whips his racquet up and over the ball.
With this opening description of mechanical artistry, McPhee set the stage for a searching exploration of the physical and psychological aspects of competitive tennis. Ashe was fortunate to be one of the two individuals caught in McPhee’s penetrating gaze, which magnified his emerging stardom, ensuring he would never again live as an ordinary private citizen.10
Successful, attractive, and famous, twenty-five-year-old Arthur Ashe had all the attributes of celebrity but one: money. Despite all the hoopla, he still lived on his modest Army salary supplemented only by the small allotments of travel money sanctioned by the USLTA. How long this situation was likely to last was the subject of considerable speculation during the fall of 1968. For a time, much of the press interest in Ashe revolved around his prospects for landing a lucrative professional contract. Following the U.S. Open, the double shock of the winner’s empty payday and Tom Okker’s windfall fueled the expectation that financial considerations would eventually force all of the highly ranked amateurs to turn professional.
In Ashe’s case, the decision was complicated by his military status—and by a bizarre development in mid-October. Motivated by the obvious unfairness of awarding the winner’s prize money of $14,000 to the defeated runner-up, an anonymous fan compensated Ashe with a donation of one hundred shares of General Motors stock worth an estimated $8,900. Since the gift was unsolicited, the USLTA’s amateur rules committee chairman Lawrence Krieger announced Ashe could accept the stock without jeopardizing his amateur status. “It’s like ‘The Millionaire’ TV show,” a grateful Ashe exclaimed, though he acknowledged his attorney and former UCLA teammate Larry Nagler was already conducting preliminary negotiations with two professional organizations, WCT and the NTL, for much larger sums.11
In the early months of Open Tennis at least one major obstacle to professionalization remained. Professionals were still barred from Davis Cup play, forcing the leading amateurs to choose between patriotic loyalty and personal financial gain. And it wasn’t clear when—if ever—this traditional prohibition would be lifted. Australia had won the last four Davis Cups, but the recent professionalization of the top Aussie players had decimated the defending champions. Their declining chance of repeating as champions in 1968 was a welcome development for the rest of the field. Yet there was also the fear that the Davis Cup was losing its legitimacy as a prestigious world championship. If the best players in the world were forced to sit on the sidelines, public interest in the competition would surely fade away.
For a time, the ILTF’s registered player category—a middle ground between amateurs and contract pros—provided a partial solution to the Davis Cup eligibility problem. As registered players, Ashe and others retained their amateur status as far as Davis Cup competition was concerned, yet they could also choose from week to week whether they wanted to accept an appearance guarantee or compete for prize money. This hybrid existence appealed to Ashe, but in the weeks following the 1968 U.S. Open, the future of Open Tennis was thrown into question when both WCT and the NTL threatened to boycott all seven of the Open tournaments planned for the 1969 American tour. Unless the USLTA abandoned its endorsement of the registered player category, the real pros would stay home.
The so-called registered players were nothing more than “shamateurs,” insisted Jack Kramer, the longtime spokesman for professional tennis. “How can a country allow a man to collect prize money and then call him an amateur when they want him to play for them in the Davis Cup? It’s ridiculous. The pros don’t mind being beaten, but they object to registered players taking prize money. . . . They reckon a man who wants to play for money should become a pro.”12
At this point, Arthur denied he had definite plans to turn pro, protecting his eligibility to play on the American Davis Cup team, which was expected to beat the Australians for the first time in five years. He was also preoccupied with balancing the fall tour with his responsibilities at West Point. On the days when he was actually at the Military Academy, he put in a full day of work at the data processing center. But thanks to a very liberal personalized leave policy, he spent much of his time traveling to tournaments and playing competitive tennis. In mid-September, he finished first at the Desert Inn Invitational in Las Vegas, and the following week he played well at the Pacific Southwest tournament in Los Angeles, running his winning streak to 30 matches before losing to Rosewall in the semifinals. He suffered a pinched nerve in his neck during a September 24 exhibition match with Bob Lutz and was forced to withdraw from the Pacific Coast tournament in Berkeley. But, after a restful month at West Point limiting himself to light workouts, he was ready for the resumption of Davis Cup play.13
The last hurdle before facing the defending champion Australians was a tie against a pesky team from India. The U.S.-India matchup took place in Charlie Pasarell’s hometown of San Juan, and the American Davis Cuppers turned the event into a Caribbean vacation. Under the supervision of Dell and Ralston, they played hard, on and off the court, growing closer as teammates and as friends. John McPhee was also on hand with his Bell and Howell projector, vying for as many free minutes with Ashe and Graebner as he could. Over the course of the week the Princeton writer became something of a team mascot and good luck charm.
Fortunately, the powerful American team didn’t need much luck. Even though several of the matches were played in sweltering 90-degree heat that seemed to favor the Indians, the Americans prevailed 4–1, with Ashe winning two singles matches in convincing fashion. His three-set victory over Premjit Lall inspired one hyperbolic reporter to write: “Except for the second set, Ashe played with the fidelity of an IBM 1040. Lall programmed the shots and the slim Army lieutenant responded with the pinpoint accuracy of a computer.” Not known for his consistency, Ashe appreciated the metaphor.14
From Puerto Rico, the American Davis team flew to London for the British Indoor championships, which Dell and Ralston viewed as a tune-up for the upcoming matches in Australia. Billed as a confidence booster, the trip was a bitter disappointment from the start. Trailing 6–1, 5–1 in a first-round match against Keith Wooldridge, Graebner pulled a back muscle and was forced to withdraw, and by the end of the third round Pasarell, Smith, and Ashe had all lost to virtual unknowns. In his second-round loss to Gerald Battrick, an unheralded twenty-one-year-old Welshman, a noticeably listless Ashe managed to win only seven games in three sets.
The te
am remained in London for a week of practice and a second indoor tournament, but the situation went from bad to worse when Graebner’s back strain persisted and Ashe developed severe tendinitis in his right elbow. Doctors prescribed extended rest for both players, and it wasn’t clear that either would be ready for the Challenge Round in late December. With the team on edge and feeling the weight of the coming challenge, Dell decided a relaxing tour of France was in order. Traveling to Paris and out into the French countryside proved to be just what the doctor ordered. For Ashe, who had never been to France, the weeklong trip was eye-opening, especially after Dell arranged for the team to spend Thanksgiving with Sargent Shriver, the recently appointed American ambassador there. Shriver’s mother-in-law, Rose Kennedy, was staying at the embassy residence for the holidays, and Ashe managed to engage her in an extended conversation about everything from her family’s roots in Ireland to the imperiled state of the world. The experience was unforgettable. “As far as I was concerned,” he later wrote, “my formal schooling was complete.”15
The enchanting French sojourn did not produce a miracle cure for Ashe’s ailing elbow, but it did produce a storm of controversy surrounding a verbal indiscretion. At a press conference featuring the visiting American Davis Cuppers, several reporters pressed Ashe to reveal how he felt about his rumored snub by South African white supremacists. When one reporter asked him about his apparent exclusion from the South African Open, he tried to steer the conversation to a broader discussion of racial discrimination by private tennis clubs in the American South. But when the reporter demanded to know what he would do about “the South Africa problem,” Ashe suddenly blurted out in jest: “Oh, I’d drop a Hydrogen Bomb on Johannesburg!” Though clearly intended as a joke, this brash declaration provoked sensational headlines, especially in South Africa. To Owen Williams, a liberal white South African who later facilitated Ashe’s quest to play in the land of apartheid, the facetious hydrogen bomb threat was the “exasperated quip that would reverberate around the world.”
The hydrogen bomb statement left many Army and State Department officials shaking their heads in disbelief and sullied Ashe’s image among white South Africans. Dell, always protective of his team’s image, was not happy about his friend’s misstep and the ensuing controversy. Yet, as the U.S. Davis Cup captain, he was more concerned about Ashe’s physical condition. For a while the situation was touch-and-go, and in early December nagging injuries forced both Ashe and Graebner to withdraw from a scheduled benefit tournament in Chicago. A week later, however, there was enough improvement to justify putting both of them on the plane to Brisbane. After two weeks away from the court, they were, to Dell’s relief, finally ready to play.16
Arthur’s performance at the Queensland tournament in Brisbane—a tournament he had won during his first trip to Australia in 1965—confirmed his readiness. Showing few signs of tendinitis, he paced himself through the early rounds before going all out against Ray Ruffels in the semifinals. Winning handily, he drew high praise from Harry Hopman, who proclaimed “the young Army lieutenant” to be “the best player in the world, amateur or professional.” Ashe had lost enough times to Laver to know this wasn’t true, and it was clear the wily Aussie coach was setting him up for a fall. But the words were nice to hear anyway. Two days earlier, the USLTA’s ranking committee had elevated him to the number one ranking among American players, so his mood was soaring. Feeling more confident than he had felt in weeks, he went on to win the Queensland tournament by outlasting Stan Smith in a grueling but exhilarating five-set final.17
The Americans left Brisbane brimming with confidence, especially Arthur, buoyed not only by his Queensland victory and number one ranking but also by the news that, thanks to the generosity of several “Richmond tennis enthusiasts,” his father was flying to Australia for the Challenge Round. He was thrilled for his father, who had rarely traveled outside Virginia, and appreciative of his hometown’s unexpected philanthropy. It had meant so much to have his father at the U.S. Open, and now Arthur Sr. would be able to see his son represent his country on the world stage.18
The Americans were heavy favorites to take back the Cup from an inexperienced Australian team missing its greatest national players—Laver, Newcombe, Rosewall, and Roche. But with the memory of past years’ upsets still fresh, Dell and his squad were not taking anything for granted. Though unproven, the Aussie squad’s young players were proud and fit and itching to prove themselves. The uncharacteristically small crowds in Adelaide confirmed that just about everyone was anticipating an American triumph. Yet the wild enthusiasm of the Australian fans who did show up was a bit unnerving for the Americans as play began on December 26.
Playing in a cold, gusting wind against Bill Bowrey, Graebner lost the first set 8–10, but came back to win three of the next four. Later in the day, Ashe also had a slow start against the left-hander Ruffels, losing the first set 6–8; however, he won the next three easily, giving the Americans a commanding 2–0 lead in the best-of-five series. That evening, he had dinner with his father, his teammates, and USLTA president Bob Kelleher, who had been parlaying with his Australian counterparts trying to convince them that the Davis Cup should be open to all players, professional and amateur. The mood was joyous, especially for Ashe, a self-styled Davis Cup “junkie.”
“On Friday morning,” he recalled, “I couldn’t stand to watch the doubles match. I was too nervous. Graebner and I rode around Adelaide in our team car, turning the radio on and off following the fortunes of Stan Smith and Bob Lutz as they tried to finish it off. The reality of winning was beginning to sink in. I thought of sitting in the dollar seats as a twelve-year-old in Richmond, watching the Aussies play. I was so close to getting my name on the old bowl. Now, in an automobile, on the other side of the world, too anxious to be in the tennis stadium with seven thousand tennis-mad Australians and a handful of Americans, I heard the winning point over the radio. The dream had come true.”
After Smith and Lutz clinched the Cup with a victory in the doubles, the final day of singles competition was anticlimactic. Playing out the string, the two teams split the second singles matchups, with Graebner beating Ruffels and Ashe losing to Bowrey in four sets. The unexpected loss to Bowrey snapped Ashe’s 12-match Davis Cup win streak, and in an unusual show of emotion on the sidelines after the match he burst into tears. But his disappointment didn’t last long. Surrounded by his teammates, and with his father looking on, the American ace was full of smiles at the presentation ceremony. After five years of struggle, the giant silver bowl was back in American hands.19
Ashe and his teammates remained in Australia for two weeks, opening the 1969 tour with an appearance at the Victoria Open in Melbourne. He had played in the Victoria tournament twice before, losing both times in the later rounds, and he fell short again in 1969, losing to Stan Smith in a tough four-set final. This was Ashe’s third loss in four tries against the often overpowering twenty-two-year-old, and he was disappointed by his erratic play and inability to take advantage of Smith’s numerous double faults. At several points during the match, Ashe’s mind appeared to be elsewhere, which was hardly surprising since he had just received word that the United States Jaycees had selected him as one of the ten Outstanding Young Men of America.
The Jaycees award surprised and pleased him, and he was grateful to Lou Einwick, the Richmond tournament director who had nominated him for the award. Yet he recognized the irony of being honored by an organization that only eight years earlier had imposed a color bar banning him from their tournaments. The biggest problem, however, was that the Jaycees expected him to accept the award in person at a ceremonial banquet to be held in Syracuse, New York, in late January. The timing of the Jaycees banquet fell right in the middle of a scheduled two-week tour of New Zealand, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Fortunately, Dell and the State Department worked out an arrangement for him to interrupt the tour with a whirlwind visit to upstate New York.
At the banquet, Arthur did his be
st to justify all the hard work that it had taken to get him there. Determined to offer the Jaycees some thought-provoking words of substance in his acceptance speech, he startled many in the crowd with an internationalist perspective on American strengths and weaknesses. Referring to his recent conversations abroad, he presented a troubling refrain: “They say sure, Apollo 8 was great, the Davis Cup was great, our collection of medals in the Olympics was great, our color TV is great, our Peace Corps is great. But what of John Kennedy, and Malcolm X, and Medgar Evers, and 4 little girls in a Birmingham church, and Robert Kennedy, and Dr. King, and what of Harlem 10 miles from Westchester County, abject poverty 5 minutes from the White House and polluted air and rivers, and people starving in Mississippi and Appalachia.” What the Jaycee leaders thought of Arthur’s provocative speech went unrecorded, but clearly this was an “outstanding” young man with more than tennis on his mind.20
The first stop on the tour was Christchurch, New Zealand, where Ashe made headlines by announcing his intention to turn pro as soon as he was discharged from the Army in February. He was not ready, however, to become a contract pro under the auspices of either WCT or the NTL. The rival promoters Lamar Hunt and George MacCall had both offered him “big money,” but he did not want to give up his independence. “I like being my own boss, to go where I want and do what I want,” he told reporters. Whether the tennis establishment would continue to allow this degree of freedom, he conceded, was an open question.21
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