The Tennis Player from Bermuda

by Fiona Hodgkin

  After I had played tennis with Mrs Martin for a year or so, I asked Mother about Mrs Martin’s tennis career.

  “Go ask your father, he knows about it.”

  I found Father in our sitting room, where we spent most of our time together as a family in our house – ‘Midpoint,’ it had been named for 200 years or so. There was no air conditioning in private homes in Bermuda at that time, and the sitting room was the coolest part of our house. The incredibly thick masonry walls and our water tank, which collected rainwater from our whitewashed limestone roof, kept it cool. The water tank was just underneath the sitting room and acted as a passive and quite effective cooling system. As in most old Bermuda homes, the plaster ceiling simply followed the inside pitch of the roof, creating the famous Bermuda tray ceiling.

  From the windows on the north side of the sitting room we had a spectacular view of Hamilton Harbour below us, which no doubt is why Midpoint had been built in precisely that spot.

  Mother and Father kept the back issues of their medical journals stacked on the floor of the sitting room. When Father decided he needed to see an article from an issue of The Lancet from a year or so year earlier, he would try to slide it gently out of the stack, but usually the entire stack would come crashing to the floor. In her favorite chair, Mother spent evenings writing notes in her patients’ medical charts, which she kept in neat piles on the floor.

  Father said, “Rachel? She was an honor for Bermuda in tennis, before the war. When she played overseas, she would sew a small Bermuda flag on her dress, just above her left breast. That pleased us all.”

  He thought for a moment. “Rachel was invited to play at Wimbledon in ‘39, the last championships before the war. She was only about 19 then. Rachel went all the way to the final. She lost in a long match with Alice Marble. It was a chilly, rainy day. Early July, but you know London weather. Rachel pulled on a sweater during the match, but she couldn’t have been comfortable. She wasn’t used to the cold.”

  “How do you know it was cold?”

  “I was there. I had just begun my medical internship at Guy’s Hospital in London, and Rachel found me a ticket for the players’ box. I got the afternoon off from hospital and took the Tube to Southfields. Rachel had no family in London except me” – Father and Mrs Martin were cousins – “and I thought I should be there for her. I sat beside Teach Tennant, Marble’s coach. Teach is probably the greatest tennis coach ever, except for Rachel.”

  “What happened in the match?”

  “It lasted from two in the afternoon until it was almost dark. They suspended play, twice, I think, for rain. Difficult conditions. I can’t recall the score, but the last two sets went to extra games. Rachel played so well. She held off several championship points in the third set before she lost. She came close to winning. If the third set had gone on a few more minutes, the umpire would have had to suspend the match for darkness.

  “It started to rain again, hard, just after Marble won. Rachel was just standing there, beside the umpire’s chair, in the rain. I went down to the court, but a Coldstream Guardsman stopped me. I told him I was a physician, and he let me through. I walked over to her in the rain. She was crying. The groundskeepers had taken down the net and were pulling the tarp over the court. I told Rachel we needed to get out of the rain, and I led her over to the players’ entrance to Centre Court, just under the Royal Box. Teach was just coming back out. She was looking for Rachel. Teach took Rachel to the ladies’ dressing room.

  “The London newspapers were full of it the next morning. Everyone in Bermuda was proud of Rachel. After the war, Rachel and Derek” – Mrs Martin’s husband – “moved to London for some years because of his position with Butterfield’s” – Butterfield’s was our bank in Hamilton – “but by then she had her family and she never went back to international competition.”

  The next morning, Mrs Martin and I played at Coral Beach, and afterwards I asked, “Did you learn to play tennis here?”

  “No. These courts weren’t laid down until after the war.” We were on one of the upper courts. “I learned on the lower courts, down by South Road.”

  “Who taught you?”

  “My parents.”

  “But you must have had someone who showed you to play well.”

  “Miss Hodgkin, you just lost our match 6-2, 6-1. Why are we discussing the ancient history of tennis in Bermuda? Why not think through why you lost?”

  “I apologize.”

  She snorted. “Don’t apologize. Win.”

  “It’s just that I know you played at Wimbledon, and I wanted to know more about that. How it happened. How you learned. That’s all.”

  I was ready to cry. I was still a child, really. She never meant to hurt me, but she could be mean.

  She cocked her head to one side. She was thinking. “The only person who can tell you anything about playing tennis is yourself. All the fancy people who say they can teach you how to be a tennis champion are wrong, and most of the things they tell you are wrong. You’ll have to find out by yourself. There’s no other way.”

  She walked away toward her bicycle.

  “I know you had to play the final in the cold. And it was raining.” I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my tennis dress.

  She turned and stared at me. “You’ve been talking to your father. It was cold and rainy on Centre Court that afternoon.” She left.

  When I was 16, my parents and I were invited to a Christmas party at the Martins’ home, and there I saw an old book on a table: Match Play and the Spin of the Ball, by William T. Tilden. It would be an understatement to say that this book had been thoroughly read. It looked as though the dog had been after it. On the flyleaf was scrawled, “To Rachel, with admiration. Bill.” I started reading the book but quickly closed it, because I could see that almost every page carried Mrs Martin’s handwritten notes in the margins.

  I found Tilden’s book in the Bermuda library, took it home and neglected my schoolwork for one evening to read it cover to cover.

  The next day, before we played, I said to Mrs Martin, “I saw a book at your house by William Tilden. I checked it out of the library. He says that a baseline player with a good return of service will usually defeat a serve and volley player.”

  She nodded. “Big Bill thought a strong return would more often than not pass a player at the net.”

  “You knew him?”

  She nodded again. “I met him at the Australian championships at Kooyong. Just before the war.”

  After a moment, she said, “Big Bill went to Berlin, to the Rot-Weiss Club, to coach the German Davis Cup team. In 1937. Before I knew him. He regretted going to Berlin. At least, I hope so.”

  “What’s the ‘Rot-Weiss Club’?”

  She didn’t answer; she was in a reverie.

  “Was he right about baseline players? That they defeat serve and volley players?”

  She snapped back to the present. “Miss Hodgkin, are we going to devote the entire afternoon to chatting about Bill’s various theories?” She tossed her old wooden racket onto the court.

  “Rough or smooth?” She meant that I should call whether the knots in the gut would land ‘rough’ – meaning that the side with the gut sticking out of the knots would point up – or ‘smooth.’

  At a changeover, while she was drying her hands, I asked, “Should I switch and start staying on the baseline?”

  “No.”

  “You think I’m too small.”

  “No. There are women baseline players with your stature who play effectively. You would have to play with intelligence from the baseline, but you do play intelligently.” This was one of Mrs Martin’s rare compliments.

  “So why shouldn’t I think about switching to the baseline?”

  She thought for a moment. “The baseline and the net each has advantages, but the principal advantage of playing from the baseline is time. Compared to the net, you have an additional half-second, maybe less, at the baseline to plan your shot.”<
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  She seemed to regard an additional half-second as the tennis equivalent of a long weekend in the country. “Let’s resume play.”

  For once I had to have an answer, and I put my hand on her arm. “Please tell me what you mean.”

  “At the net, you can’t plan. There’s no time. You rely on instinct and confidence. A player at the net with good instincts and confidence may have been easy for Big Bill to pass, but not so easy for the rest of us. But confidence is essential at the net.”

  I felt I was the least confident person on the planet. I was a small, awkward teenage girl. “Am I confident? Do you think I’m confident?”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Your mother, and both your grandmothers, are medical doctors. I’m certain that during their medical training, and after, they were made to feel unwelcome because they are women in a male profession. They cared not the slightest. Each of them had confidence in herself.”

  She paused. “You may have some of their confidence. Let’s resume play.”

  I won the Bermuda girls’ singles championship in both 1958 and 1959, both times against older girls, and both times easily. But Mrs Martin did not come to watch my matches. That might have been misconstrued by some as coaching. Everyone knew she played tennis with me, but she wanted to make it appear that we merely played an occasional social game together, which was nonsense and everyone knew it.

  She may not have admitted even to herself that we had a complicated, intense, private, and competitive relationship with one another. I don’t mean to suggest that it was in any way inappropriate by today’s standards; it wasn’t, but I depended on her, and in some way I’m sure she wouldn’t admit, and may not have even realized, she depended on me.

  But I wasn’t sure, and now decades later I’m still not sure, whether at that time she liked me.

  I owe her so much and today, while she is quite elderly, and I am in my late 60s, we are close friends. I shop for her groceries, and we walk together slowly on quiet lanes in Paget and chat about our families. But when I was a girl it was as though she felt obligated to show me the way I might become a champion – even though she was plainly reluctant to do so. For what possible reason, I couldn’t imagine.

  We never talked about it.

  She rarely talked about anything.

  But we both knew we were watching sand flowing down through an hourglass.

  For years, she won 6-0, 6-0, every time. Then it was often 6-2, 6-2. Later it was 6-4, 6-4, and a few times 6-4, 4-6, 6-4.

  It was only a matter of time. But I had never defeated her.

  JUNE 1960

  FIRST ROUND LADIES’ SINGLES TOURNAMENT

  TENNIS STADIUM

  MONTPELIER ROAD

  BERMUDA

  There were no rules about entering either the Bermuda girls’ tournament or the main tournament. Most young ladies played in the girls’ tournament until they went away for university to England or the States, and then they either stopped playing altogether or moved to the main tournament. There was no set age limit. You entered the tournament in which you wanted to play. In June 1960, I entered myself in the main tournament. Only after I had entered did I learn that the youngest, unseeded player was always paired in the first round with the top seeded player, who in 1960 was the defending champion, Mrs Martin. That meant I would play her in the first round.

  At the time, this seemed a horrible mistake. Looking back, though, I’m not sure it was a mistake. It may have given me the career in tennis I had.

  Mother’s response was simple: “You must withdraw from the tournament.” I said no. Father, the diplomat, asked for a word with me alone.

  He began by calling me ‘sweetheart,’ which was his softening up move. It usually worked. But it didn’t this time. I said I was staying in the tournament.

  “Fiona, Rachel is a tennis player with an international reputation. She is extremely competitive. I’ve known her all her life. She cares for you, a great deal, but you must understand if you challenge her in public competition she will crush you. And she’ll be entirely justified. No one will criticize her in the slightest.”

  “I will play her and win.”

  “Fiona, Rachel is undoubtedly the best tennis player to ever live on this island. You must be realistic.”

  “I will win.”

  “I’m sure you will win over her, some day, and maybe some day soon. But not this year. Wait until you’re 18, next year. Play her then.”

  “I’m playing her next week.” And that was that.

  After my brief first round match, the Hodgkin family and Mrs Martin met in the ladies’ dressing room in the tennis stadium near Hamilton. It was highly unusual for Father to be in the ladies’ dressing room, but the lady players, under the circumstances, all decided to be somewhere else until this particular meeting of parents, child, and defending champion had ended.

  I was not merely crying; it would be more accurate to call it uncontrolled wailing.

  Mrs Martin, after she won the match, 6-1, 6-0, had been furious and brutal. She called me a coward in front of my parents – who had not come to my defense. It is possible that, contrary to her bedrock principles, Mrs Martin had given me the only game I won in order to encourage me. If so, it hadn’t worked.

  In the dressing room, Mrs Martin was still angry and even more specific in her accounting of my shortcomings.

  “You capitulated in the second set. You failed to even try. Why bother walking out onto the court?”

  “I couldn’t win,” I said through my tears.

  “How the devil do you know?” she snapped. “The match isn’t over until the last point is played. You gave up.”

  “I just want you to play tennis with me, still. I have to play with you.”

  “I can’t play with a coward.”

  “I’m not a coward.”

  “You have the skill. You’re intelligent on the court. But you don’t have the character to win. You’re weak.”

  And then her coup de grâce: “You’ll never be a champion.”

  I wailed.

  Mother interrupted. “I think we should talk about whether Fiona should continue playing tennis at all. Perhaps another sport would be better for her.”

  Mrs Martin was a little calmer now. She had never called me by my Christian name, at least not since I was a baby. But now she turned to me and said, “I think that is something only Fiona can decide.”

  She said good day to my parents and walked out.

  I didn’t play tennis for a month. I worked for Mother and Grandfather filing their patients’ charts. I talked to no one. I was humiliated, and everyone on Bermuda knew it. I was miserable. In the late afternoons, I would cycle to some deserted beach and sit on the sand watching the Atlantic. I thought about leaving Bermuda; we had plenty of relatives in both the States and England with whom I could live.

  Finally, one Saturday afternoon, I put on a tennis dress, took my racket, and cycled to the Martins’ home, but they were not there. I went to Coral Beach and found the Martins playing mixed doubles with another couple. I waited until they came off the court, and then approached Mrs Martin and asked if I might have a word.

  “Of course,” she said and sat down in a wooden chair.

  I sat in a chair next to her.

  I said, “Perhaps you’re tired after your match.”

  “It was a social doubles match. It wasn’t tiring.”

  “Would you be willing to play a match with me?”

  “Certainly. Let me go to the dressing room and wash my face. I’ll meet you on one of the upper courts.”

  It lasted almost three hours. By the second set, all the players on the other courts had abandoned play to watch our match. I’m sure the older tennis players watching us were thinking, “This is an important match for Bermuda.”

  She was so strong and hit her groundstrokes so hard that I thought, ‘What could she possibly have been like when she was younger?’ I took the first set 14-12; there were no ‘tiebre
aks’ in those days – we’d never heard the phrase ‘tie-break’ in tennis scoring.

  She fought every point of the second set, but by then she was tired. She should have put this match off until Sunday morning, when she would have been fresh. Then she could have pulled out the second set. But we both knew this was it. She was desperate to break my service early in the second set; she hit every ball viciously hard. This was her only chance. If the second set went into extra games, she would fade.

  I was 17; she must have in her early 40s then. She knew I could play all afternoon and until it was dark. She had to break me, get this set behind her, and then the third set – well, she would deal with the third set when she got there. But she didn’t have the chance.

  With the games 6-all on her serve, she drove a backhand long, only by a few centimeters but still long, and made it my advantage in the game. I won the game, breaking her serve. I looked across the net at her; we both knew it was over. She still fought every point; she tried to get the break back; she would never concede. But I kept the break. Finally, I took the second set and the match.

  I had beaten her. Not in competition. Not yet. And not when she was fresh. But I had beaten her.

  When I came to the net to shake hands, she refused my hand.

  Instead, with perhaps 30 people watching us from the sidelines, with the net between us, she put her arms around me, pulled my head to her chest and kissed the top of my head. “You’re wonderful; I’m so proud of you,” she whispered. I felt her tears falling on my forehead.

  SATURDAY, 1 JULY 1961

  MY EIGHTEENTH BIRTHDAY

  LADIES’ SINGLES CHAMPIONSHIP FINAL

  TENNIS STADIUM

  MONTPELIER ROAD

  BERMUDA

  The next year, I met Mrs Martin in the finals of the Bermuda ladies’ singles championship in the old tennis stadium outside Hamilton. She, as the defending champion, was seeded first; I was seeded second. Every seat was filled, and spectators spilled out onto the sides of the court. She served first, and I took her first serve of the match and hit it for a winner back down the line – the ball just barely touched the baseline and then bounced off the back wall and hung in the air for seconds before it finally landed back in the court.