After a brief stop in Kampala, Uganda, the tour headed to West Africa for a visit to Lagos, the capital of Nigeria. The most populous and diplomatically the most important nation in sub-Saharan Africa, the former British colony had just emerged from a brutal civil war that had led to more than a million deaths, mostly Ibo tribesmen supporting the secession of Biafra. When Ashe and Smith arrived, ten months after the cessation of hostilities, the nation was still under the control of Major General Yakubu Gowon, a military dictator regarded as a hero by some and a war criminal by others. Prior to holding an exhibition match and youth tennis clinic, the Americans spent more than an hour with Gowon. Despite a few awkward moments, Ashe came away with a generally positive impression of the Nigerian ruler, who “laughed very easily, talked freely and spoke of the need to return Nigeria to civilian rule as soon as possible.” “Nigeria feels a great kinship with Afro-Americans,” Gowon insisted. “We are the two most important groups of color in the world today.” Pleasantly surprised to encounter a military leader who “talked like a statesman,” Ashe was dismayed a few months later when Gowon “was deposed in a bloodless coup.”44
Ashe later complained that the State Department should have known better than to put novice envoys in such a vulnerable and potentially embarrassing situation. But he wisely kept these feelings to himself during his stay in Nigeria. The tour ended in Ghana, the former British colony that had initiated the decolonization of sub-Saharan Africa by gaining its independence in 1957. Formerly known as the Gold Coast and British Togoland, Ghana provided a hopeful ending to Ashe’s on-site African education. After touring the capital city of Accra and meeting with Ghana’s legendary president Kwame Nkrumah, Ashe and Smith played a two-set exhibition match and conducted a clinic for a group of aspiring tennis players. By the time the two Americans left Ghana and Africa on November 6, bound for the French indoor championships, they had a treasure trove of African memories but few illusions about the harrowing challenges of postcolonial politics.45
In mid-November, Ashe spent a glorious week in Paris that ended with a convincing straight-set victory over Riessen in the final. Speaking to reporters after the championship match, he credited his sharp play to his recent tour of Africa. “Every time we saw a kid do something wrong at one of the clinics we gave,” he explained, “we’d say ‘do this or do that,’ then I started to realize that I should have been telling myself to do the same things.”46
This back-to-basics approach did not work quite so well a few days later when Ashe lost to Drysdale in the first round of the Wembley indoor tournament. But he was back on track the following week, teaming with Smith to win the doubles championship at the Swedish Open in Stockholm while finishing second to his African touring partner in the singles. Stockholm was the last tournament of the ILTF’s inaugural Grand Prix series, and Ashe’s runner-up showing was good enough to give him a second-place finish behind Richey in the final point standings. The second-place bonus prize money of $17,000, the largest payout of his career, pushed his annual on-court earnings over the $100,000 mark.47
Tennis’s big-money era had arrived, yet no one at the time could be sure how long it would last. A $210,000 Tennis Champions Classic to be held in New York City and featuring Ashe, Laver, Rosewall, Roche, Newcombe, and Gonzales was scheduled for January 1971. But the alluring prospect of unprecedented earnings could not hide the fact that the very future of Open tennis was in question as its third year came to a close. Long before Ashe returned to the United States in mid-December, the tennis wars had entered a new phase, moving through a deep crisis to an uneasy truce.48
On November 6, while Ashe and Smith were en route from Africa to France, USLTA officials moved to bar contract pros from playing in all 1971 USLTA-sanctioned “prize money” tournaments, including the U.S. Open. Pending ratification by the USLTA’s administrative committee at an upcoming meeting in Cleveland, the proposed ban would also exclude Ashe and other contract pros from national rankings. Citing the recent WCT contracts signed by Ashe, Pasarell, and Lutz, USLTA executive director Bob Malaga declared, “We have no choice but to go our own way.” This declaration underscored the predicament in which the divided world of competitive tennis found itself. As journalist Neil Amdur pointed out, “Unlike other organized professional sports, tennis has no single leader or commissioner to deal with such internal strife. The international complexities of the sport and the reluctance of all parties to trust completely the decision of one mediator has created the confusion at a time when tennis is enjoying record participant popularity and renewed spectator appeal.”49
At the Cleveland meeting on November 12, Malaga pushed for an immediate ban, but in the end cooler heads prevailed and the decision was postponed. Three weeks later, behind-the-scenes negotiations between the ILTF and WCT produced a joint statement promising that all concerned—the national and international tennis federations and the representatives of the contract pros—would “work together toward the development and spectator appeal of the game throughout the world.” In addition, a parallel statement announced contract pros would be eligible to play in the 1971 French, Wimbledon, and U.S. Open tournaments. For the time being at least, the tennis world had stepped back from the brink.50
While all of this was going on, the first year of the 1970s—a decade that Bud Collins would later characterize as “a new era for tennis” and “the decade of its most rapid growth”—came to a dramatic close with the first Grand Prix Masters tournament. Held in Tokyo, the $50,000 round-robin competition opened somewhat awkwardly on December 7, the twenty-ninth anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Richey, the top point getter in the season’s Grand Prix series, had withdrawn after contracting hepatitis, but the other Grand Prix stars provided the overflow Japanese crowds with seven days of top-flight tennis. Hampered by a minor ankle injury, Ashe finished in fourth place with a 3–2 record. But even with this disappointing finish he took home $5,000 in prize money. The surest sign of the tennis world’s newfound wealth, however, was the $9,000 second-place money that pushed Laver’s earnings over the $200,000 mark for the year. No previous player had ever approached, much less surpassed, that level in earnings, and Ashe and his peers could only marvel at the Rocket’s good fortune while wondering what bounties lay ahead.51
THIRTEEN
DOUBLING DOWN
DURING THE FIRST THREE months of 1971, the big money continued to ripple across the tennis world. Using a winner-take-all match format, the $210,000 Champions Classic, a round-robin competition held in seven different cities, brought together nine of the world’s best contract pros. Each weekly match was worth $10,000 to the winner, with the loser going home empty-handed, a format that allowed the ultimate winner of the series to win as much as $170,000. Prize money of this magnitude was unprecedented, and the Champions Classic organizers added to the drama by imposing a special tiebreaker rule and stipulating that all matches would be played on a new acrylic fiber surface called Sportface. Every aspect of the series was designed to maximize its commercial impact, and the opening match, fittingly enough, was held in New York’s Madison Square Garden.1
Ashe played his first Champions Classic match—which also happened to be his first match as a contract pro—in the Garden on January 28. His opponent was Laver, who had already picked up $40,000 by winning four Classic matches. Arthur, by contrast, was coming off a month of rest, having last taken the court in Tokyo in December. In a pre-match interview, he was philosophical about his career record of 0–5 against the Rocket, citing rest and relaxation as a possible key to breaking the losing streak. “I am fairly eager, if that counts for anything,” he offered whimsically. “I’m mentally rested. Between now and Thursday, I’ll go easy on the pie and cake. We’ll see what happens.” When asked about his involvement in the high-stakes series, he was surprising candid about his motivation. “American players are more money conscious,” he explained. “I guess it’s our culture. Americans look for money every waking hour.”2
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bsp; When it came to the actual match, however, neither relaxation nor candor was much help. With the crowd solidly behind him, Ashe—wearing canary yellow tennis clothes that sent a message to the stuffy leaders of the USLTA—played reasonably well. But once again he could not match Laver’s powerful ground game, losing in straight sets, two by tiebreaker. “I just can’t seem to win tiebreakers,” he complained after the match, speculating that the new system favored more patient players. “It presupposes conservatism,” he insisted, acknowledging that his somewhat reckless style of play put him at a disadvantage.3
Not everyone appreciated Ashe’s nontraditional approach to tennis, but to many of the sportswriters covering the tour he was good copy and a welcome respite from the sameness that dominated the men’s game. To Robert Lipsyte, Ashe was a godsend. “At its highest tournament level,” Lipsyte wrote in the wake of the Ashe-Laver match, “tennis is a combative game, the racquet an extension of the total man. One of the most interesting players is Arthur Ashe, whose brilliant, quirky game has been disappointing. He will gamble on a shot, he will swipe at the ball, he will fall into periods of inattention, he will explode into games of wild artistry.” Laver, by contrast, was “a working saddle pony to Ashe’s skittery thoroughbred.”4
Ashe’s flashiness was partly a matter of style unrelated to shot selection. During the two years since his discharge from the Army, his physical appearance had undergone a dramatic transformation. His once close-cropped haircut had been replaced with a modified Afro style—one less flamboyant than the bulbous cut popularized by the radical activist Angela Davis but identifiably ethnic nonetheless. At the same time, his mode of dress—especially his casual street clothes and aviator sunglasses—had taken on a hip, funk quality. Like the young African American dancers on the popular television show Soul Train, he often wore open-collared shirts that exposed a string of beads hanging around his neck; and following his first trip to Africa, he favored brightly colored African-style dashikis. From his on-court tennis clothes to his suits and sport coats, he was, as Nick Bollettieri once observed, always “meticulous in his dress.” Years later, Seth Abraham of Home Box Office (HBO) television aptly attributed this fastidiousness to Arthur’s chosen role as “a man of symbolism.”5
Now in his late twenties, Arthur had clearly entered a new, more confident phase of his life. While his basic demeanor was as cool and calm as ever, he had become more forthright in his determination to employ images—both visual and verbal—to express his personal feelings, especially on matters of racial pride. Although he eschewed the excesses of cultural nationalism, he wanted the world to know that he was unmistakably and unashamedly black. As he wrote in 1992, “I think of myself as being in some respects a ‘race man,’ an expression that black Americans use to describe someone committed to his people and vigilant about racial injustice.” Where his particular version of the “race man” role would lead was not altogether clear in the early 1970s. But he seemed to be finding his footing on the pathway to a secure and fulfilling racial identity.6
One memorable episode in the spring of 1971 illustrates the challenge that Ashe faced. During a visit to Atlanta, he attended a party at the home of Walt Hazzard, his old UCLA friend in his third year as a starting guard for the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA. Dell accompanied Ashe to the party, but everyone else in the room was black, including SCLC leaders Andrew Young and Jesse Jackson. As Ashe remembered the scene, “a warm discussion of race, politics, and protest” led to an awkward moment when he defended his gradualist principles. Without warning, Jackson “stuck” him “with a needling comment,” as Ashe put it. “The problem with you Arthur,” Jackson offered, “is that you’re not arrogant enough.” The response was classic Ashe—cool but firm. “You’re right, Jesse,” he acknowledged. “I’m not arrogant. But I don’t think that my lack of arrogance lessens my effectiveness one bit.”7
Arrogant or not, Ashe had become a controversial figure in some circles. As he became more identifiably black and moved toward positions that might be construed as militant, his public image took on a sharper edge. This became apparent in early 1971 when the South African Lawn Tennis Union invited Evonne Goolagong to participate in the upcoming South African championships but reaffirmed Ashe’s exclusion. On February 24, Theo Gerdener, South Africa’s minister of interior, announced that as a supporter of black liberation movements in Southern Africa Ashe was “persona non grata.” After rejecting Arthur’s visa application for the third time, Gerdener confirmed that two “acceptable” nonwhites, Goolagong and Kazuko Sawamatsu of Japan, had been granted permission to play in the South African Open.8
An up-and-coming nineteen-year-old Australian star of Aboriginal background, Goolagong was reportedly welcome because, unlike Arthur, she had refrained from publicly criticizing South African apartheid. Raised in a small sheepherding community west of Sydney, the light-skinned and attractive Goolagong possessed a winning smile and a carefree, graceful manner that made her the new darling of the women’s tour. From the white South African perspective, her apolitical persona made her a perfect counterpoint to a black American determined to “make political capital” out of his visit. A nonwhite according to the law of apartheid, she could be used as a symbol of a new, more tolerant South Africa without posing a threat to the racial status quo. This strategy of indirection drew a sharp response from Ashe, who warned the South Africans that they couldn’t hold back the tide of liberators forever and that “there will be more after me.” Though initially careful to absolve Goolagong of any blame, he would later question her judgment.9
Their names were paired again two weeks later when they both played in the singles finals of the Australian Open. With Ashe as the defending men’s champion and Goolagong playing in her first major final, their contrasting roles in the continuing South African Open controversy added an interesting twist to the tournament. When both lost—Ashe to Rosewall, and Goolagong to Margaret Court—their pairing seemed almost fated.10
Their common fortunes did not last long, however. Goolagong went on to win the 1971 French Open and Wimbledon singles championships, earning the nickname “Sunshine Supergirl” and enjoying one of the most extraordinary runs by a teenaged tennis star. Ashe, by contrast, had a disappointing year. Playing in only nine finals in thirty-two tournaments in 1971, he won three minor titles, and his winning percentage in singles matches fell to 71 percent, a drop of 11 percent from the previous year. He made it to the singles quarterfinals of the French Open, and to the semifinals of both the Italian and U.S. Opens. But his twin goals of recapturing the number one U.S. ranking and winning a third major title went unfulfilled.11
If there was a saving grace in Ashe’s third year as a pro, it was that he was playing the best doubles of his career. For him, as for many of the tour’s top singles competitors, playing doubles was part practice, part relaxation, and a good way to pick up some extra prize money. Known as a good, though not necessarily great, doubles player, he was a sought-after partner on the tour. But he had never thought of himself as a doubles specialist.
Ashe’s newfound success in doubles had begun at the 1970 French Open, when he and Charlie Pasarell made it all the way to the doubles final before losing in straight sets to the colorful Romanians Nastase and Tiriac. In 1971 he paired with Marty Riessen, who had become one of his closest friends on the tour. An accomplished doubles player who often teamed with Tom Okker, Riessen had nearly won the 1969 Wimbledon doubles title with the Dutchman, losing a tight championship match to the defending champions, Newcombe and Roche.12
At the March 1971 Australian Open, the Okker-Riessen team once again finished second to Newcombe and Roche. But two months later at the French Open, Riessen found himself in need of a new partner when Okker remained in the Netherlands to help his wife care for their new baby. Fortunately, Ashe was available. After breezing through the early rounds, the two Americans faced Brian Fairlie of New Zealand and Frew McMillan of South Africa in a semifinal match complicated by McMillan’s re
cent comments on the South African visa controversy. Earlier in the week, McMillan, whom Ashe liked and admired, had spoken out against his country’s myopic policies, urging the South African government to grant his friend a visa. Commenting on the South African leaders’ fear of letting Ashe into the land of apartheid, he declared: “I can see the Government’s reason for not letting Ashe into the country, but I think eventually they are going to have to pocket their pride and let him in.”13
McMillan’s courageous dissent gave the press something to talk about when he and Fairlie faced Ashe and Riessen. The match saw the Americans win the first two sets with ease only to lose the next two. Ashe and Riessen eventually regained control, winning the fifth set 8–6, and when Ashe and McMillan shook hands after the last point, pressing black flesh to white, many in the crowd knew they had witnessed more than a tennis match.
The championship match was anticlimactic by comparison, but an overflow crowd—unusual for doubles—turned out to see Ashe and Riessen take on fellow Americans Stan Smith and Tom Gorman. The result was a five-set victory for Ashe and Riessen, “a 3-hour-15-minute battle of serve and volley” rarely seen on a slow, red clay court. A “struggle of brute strength,” according to one reporter, the match was a harbinger of the future in a sport that would soon see the proliferation of oversized metal rackets and muscle-building training regimens.14
Smith, who had teamed with Ashe to win the U.S. Indoor doubles title in 1970, was the prototype of the new power tennis star. At six-foot-three, he towered over most of his opponents, many of whom came to fear his “cannonball service.” Some sportswriters even began to refer to him as “the leaning tower of Pasadena” after he burst upon the tennis scene in 1968, winning both the intercollegiate singles title and the first U.S. Open doubles championship with Lutz. In many ways, however, 1971 was his breakthrough year. By the time the tour reached Wimbledon, he was already the top-ranked American player, even though he had missed more than two months of play after entering the Army in January.15
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