Heavy Topspin

Iga Swiatek and the Updated Tennis 128

My Tennis 128 list was largely finalized before the start of the 2022 season. I made a few adjustments as the year went along, notably bumping up Ashleigh Barty several places after her Australian Open title. Since then, though, there has been little reason to update the list. While many all-time greats are still playing, most of them–with one major exception!–are no longer at the top of the game. The young stars taking their place are still building their résumés.

The method I used to construct the ranking used each player’s peak performance, their top five years, and their overall career, all measured by Elo. It is possible for a youngster to crack the list with an extremely high peak, but because two of the three components of the algorithm rely more on longevity, it’s not easy. The formula was designed to compare entire bodies of work, so placing a mid-career Iga Swiatek or Carlos Alcaraz (or Naomi Osaka or Daniil Medvedev) was not the point. All we can do is see how a player like that would rate if their career ended today.

Swiatek, with her fourth major and her best year-end Elo rating, makes the cut. Despite a career that spans only a few seasons, Iga slots into the list just ahead of Barty, right behind Dorothy Round, at 101st overall.

Thus, the Tennis 128 grows to 129. (I’m not about to say goodbye to the great Beverly Baker Fleitz.) And for now, that’s as much as the list will expand. No other newcomers quite qualify.

On the women’s side, Aryna Sabalenka ranks about 200th, and Coco Gauff stands around #250. Two returning WTAers are also worth keeping an eye on this year. Angelique Kerber comes in around 160th, and Osaka ranks in the neighborhood of #180. It’s unlikely that any of these players will crack the 128 by the end of 2024, but especially if Gauff or Sabalenka turns in a particularly dominant season, it is possible.

The player with the best shot at becoming a 128er next year might surprise you. Alexander Zverev didn’t miss the cut by much when I first made the list, and while he hasn’t improved his position much in the meantime, he continues to inch toward inclusion. He stands at the edge of the top 140, and a single strong season could force me to make room. About 15 places behind him, in the mid-150s, is Medvedev.

The ATP’s prize youngsters, Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner, both remain outside the top 200. Again, this is more a matter of their short careers than any knock on their performance thus far. Alcaraz is around 205th, while Sinner ranks another 20 places down the list. Like Sabalenka and Gauff, they’ll probably need multiple seasons to reach the Tennis 128 threshold.

For some of you, I know, the real action is at the top of the table, not the fringes. A handful of high-profile retirements and injuries meant that 2022/23 turned out to be a great time to make an all-time ranking that would remain valid for several more years. The one fly in the ointment, of course, is Novak Djokovic.

Djokovic ranked fourth (behind Rod Laver, Steffi Graf, and Martina Navratilova), and at this point in his illustrious career, there’s only so much he can do to climb higher. Today’s game is a bit weaker than it was at his peak, and Novak probably is, too: His Elo rating stands at 2,227, compared to 2,435 at the end of the 2015 season. The most substantial difference between him and Laver is peak rating: Rocket rates better than anyone else by a wide margin.

Still, Djokovic’s persistence at the top of the game alters the calculation. When I first built the ranking two years ago, his career–that is, the part of my formula apart from peak rating and best five years–ranked fourth behind Roger Federer, Bill Tilden, and Ken Rosewall. Now he’s up to second place, so close to Fed that a mere top-ten finish in 2024 would move him to the top of this category, too.

What it all adds up to is this: Move over, Martina. Djokovic is the new number three. Another season like this one, and he’ll displace Steffi, as well. The gap in peak ratings makes it unlikely he’ll ever catch Laver, but don’t tell Novak, or else he might figure out how to reach the top of this list, too.

Click here for the full Tennis 128, with links to long-form essays about each player.

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December 11, 1973: Triangulation

Ken Rosewall was the odd man out when Australia triumphed in the 1973 Davis Cup final, but less than two weeks later, he was in the news as a sought-after star. On December 11th, the 39-year-old signed on as the player-coach of the Pittsburgh Triangles. He would team with Evonne Goolagong, Vitas Gerulaitis, and others when the World Team Tennis campaign began in May.

Rosewall’s signing was a much-needed shot in the arm for the upstart league. It had held a player draft in August, making a splash with the early signings of Billie Jean King and John Newcombe. Since then, contract announcements had been sparse, especially among men. The Association of Tennis Professionals, the men’s union, was skeptical of the concept; leading figures Stan Smith and Arthur Ashe were particularly firm against it. Until the ATP made an official decision, men who joined a Team Tennis squad risked suspension from the main tour.

That was just the start. The International Lawn Tennis Federation continued to deny their sanction to the league, seeing the May-to-August schedule of stateside dates as an existential threat to the traditional European summer calendar of the French Open, Italian Open, and so much more. WTT bigwigs had made it clear that it wouldn’t stand in the way of Wimbledon, but given the proposed league schedule, other conflicts were inevitable.

Enough player signings, though, and the governing bodies would be irrelevant. Limited as it was, the men’s roster already included Rosewall, Newcombe, and Jimmy Connors. By the end of the month, Ilie Năstase would also be flirting with the league. Drafted by San Diego, he made news when he demanded a trade to New York, saying it was the only place he would play–if he decided to play at all. WTT had no problem lining up top women: In addition to King and Goolagong, Margaret Court had reached an agreement with the San Francisco Golden Gaters, even if she had yet to put pen to paper.

If organized tennis had learned one thing since the beginning of the Open era in 1968, it was that money would win in the end. The details of Rosewall’s contract weren’t immediately announced, except that the modest Australian would receive most of his compensation in the form of “annuities, life insurance, and a pension.” Rumors swirled that top players could get six-figure deals–enormous sums for a few months of exhibition tennis. Only eight men earned $100,000 for the entire 1973 campaign, and Năstase played 32 weeks–not counting Davis Cup!–for his table-topping $228,750.

Much of the sport’s old guard hoped that Team Tennis would simply go away. Five months away from the first serve of the proposed 1974 season, Rosewall’s signing was a reminder that yet another battle for talent, status, and fan attention laid in wait.

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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.

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December 8, 1973: Reason For Complaint

“Bickering,” wrote Bud Collins, “is the rule of the road in tennis these days.” Players griped at officials, unions battled federations, crowds heckled players, players gestured back, and referees fined the players. Somebody was usually threatening to sue.

This, however, was a new one: Officials fighting amongst themselves. Just before the championship match of the season-ending 1973 Grand Prix Masters between Ilie Năstase and Tom Okker on December 8th, the New England Umpires and Linesmen Association went on strike. They were peeved because the tournament director chose Mike Blanchard–a non-member, though a widely respected one–as the chair umpire instead of Association head Jim Sullivan.

At the eleventh hour, without linesmen, desperate measures were required. “I showed up to watch the tennis, and somebody grabs me,” said former college football star Charlie Ratto. “I wind up in the match, on a sideline.”

True story.

Surrounded by last-minute subs, Năstase and Okker played like replacements themselves. The Dutchman, in particular, was abysmal. He was broken in five of his first six service games, giving his opponent a 6-3, 3-0 head start. The day before, he had advanced when John Newcombe hurt his knee and retired one point away from victory. Okker said he might have saved that match point–but not like this, he wouldn’t have. Nastase wasn’t much better, but he took full advantage. He kept his head throughout the afternoon, save for one ball he fired at the service-line judge when he disagreed with a decision–an automatic $100 fine.

Okker almost found his way back into the match. Serving at 5-6 in the second set, he lost a point on a Năstase volley that the Dutchman was certain he had double-hit. Blanchard was unmoved as Okker pleaded his case. The Romanian secured the break and took a two-sets-to-love advantage.

While the match ultimately took four sets, the result was never again in doubt. Back in October, Năstase had squandered a 5-2, 40-0 lead in Madrid. But on that day, Okker played his best tennis and the Romanian succumbed to distraction. Neither was the case in Boston, and Năstase completed a 6-3, 7-5, 4-6, 6-3 victory.

For all its twists and turns, the Grand Prix Masters was a fitting end to a remarkable season from the erratic 27-year-old. Năstase won more than half of the tournaments he entered and led the Grand Prix points standings by a healthy margin. He piled up prize winnings of $228,750 and won two of his last three meetings with Okker, the one man who had consistently beaten him. Earlier in the week, he had complained that “nobody” considered him to be number one, that they wanted to pick an American or an Australian. Still, the majority of journalists who printed their own subjective rankings put Năstase on top, as well.

After the match, it was back to bickering. Okker admitted he was “PO’d … at the whole situation.” Năstase, $15,000 richer than he was a few hours before, was incapable of leaving good enough alone. “No,” he told the press, “I will not pay any fine.”

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December 7, 1973: Match Point Down

Superstar players competing in December might have wondered if the tennis season was too long. Or maybe the year-end Masters tournament was simply cursed. Whatever the reason, one of the Masters semi-finals ended when a player retired, one point away from victory–two years in a row.

In 1972, the unlucky one was Tom Gorman, who smacked a backhand winner past Stan Smith then, holding match point, told the umpire he couldn’t continue because of a back problem. Neither Gorman nor Smith got through the round-robin stage of the 1973 event, but reporters could dust off their old drafts nonetheless. This time, John Newcombe fell prey to the injury bug, and Tom Okker was the unlikely beneficiary.

Okker was the only undefeated man left in the field, having dispatched Smith, Jimmy Connors, and Manuel Orantes in straight sets. In the semi-final on December 7th, Okker finally dropped a frame to Newcombe, 6-3, but he rebounded to take the second, 7-5. Newk managed to ignore the tightness in his right knee to take a one-break lead in the third, and at deuce in the ninth game, he put away an overhead to earn match point.

And then he felt something pop. Like Gorman a year earlier, Newcombe made his decision quickly. “I might have tried to give it one last shot, to serve an ace on match point,” he said, “but I wouldn’t have been able to play the final, so what was the use?”

Ironically, the situation had once been reversed. At the 1969 Hollywood Pro, Okker hurt his ankle two points away from victory against the Aussie. He softballed two serves, Newcombe netted them both, and Okker advanced. The Dutchman earned a bit more prize money, but he couldn’t recover in time for the next round and defaulted.

Okker held the opinion that he might have beaten Newk this time, too. After all, there was still one point left to play, and Okker had saved the first match point with a strong backhand return. He had already won 91 matches in 1973, and he wasn’t about to concede the possibility of a 92nd.

Whatever would have happened had Newcombe’s knee held out, the Flying Dutchman was into the final, where Ilie Năstase was waiting. Năstase had overcome an early stumble against Gorman to defeat Newcombe and Jan Kodeš in the round robin, then kept his concentration long enough to straight-set Connors in the semi-final.

Năstase had clinched the top spot of the Grand Prix points leaderboard, but as Bud Collins wrote, much was still at stake: a “$15,000 first prize and serious consideration for status as No. 1 in the universe.” The two men had faced off six times since May, with Okker winning four, including their two meetings on indoor carpet. Neither man had taken a direct route to the final, but–cursed or not–the Grand Prix Masters ended up with a championship match worthy of its position as the season-ending showdown on the tennis calendar.

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December 4, 1973: Interest Revived

*Tom Gorman at the 1973 Davis Cup Finals*

Pity poor Tom Gorman. Two days after a five-set loss to Rod Laver in the 1973 Davis Cup finals, the 27-year-old American was blown off the court by John Newcombe in a dead rubber. Two days after that, he opened play at the Grand Prix Masters in Boston, the distant eighth seed in an eight-man field.

Gorman had barely made the cut, securing his place in the draw with a title run in Stockholm a month earlier. As if to underscore his long-shot status, his first assignment in Boston was a round-robin match against Grand Prix leader and defending champion Ilie Năstase, who had beaten him in 16 of 17 previous meetings. In their latest encounter, when Gorman unexpectedly reached the semi-finals of the French Open, Năstase allowed him just eight games in three sets.

One could forgive the Seattle native for admitting that he had “no interest in this even at all.”

Yet on the morning of December 4th, Gorman woke up eager, realizing he had nothing to lose. Pity poor Năstase. Or don’t: It was a typical “mercurial” performance from the Romanian, who unexpectedly found himself battling an opponent in peak form, then came up with an excuse for his lack of a response.

Gorman saved break point for 3-all in the first set, when Năstase claimed that someone in the crowd called him a “bum.” The American didn’t hear anything, but he took advantage of his distracted foe, reeling off ten straight points and grabbing the first set. Năstase, who hurled far worse slurs at officials on a regular basis, later claimed that he “couldn’t play” after being mildly heckled. However flimsy the explanation, it holds up: His serve fell apart in the second set and he stumbled to a 6-4, 6-1 loss.

That, for the American, was the good news. The bad news was that his next assignment was a second match in four days against Newcombe. Newk had arrived in Boston as engaged as Gorman had been detached. While Năstase fumbled, the mustachioed Australian dominated Jan Kodeš, winning 11 of the last 13 games for his own 6-4, 6-1 victory. Newcombe at his best was perhaps the most fearsome force in tennis. Gorman’s path to an unlikely triumph in Boston wasn’t about to get any easier.

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December 1, 1973: Sweep

After twelve months of play around the world, the 1973 Davis Cup came to an end in 66 minutes.

The Australians entered the second day of the final tie, on December 1st, with a two-nothing lead over the United States. American hopes fell to the doubles team of Stan Smith and Erik van Dillen, the country’s best player and its most skillful doubles specialist. Van Dillen was known to be erratic, but at crucial moments–including the 1972 Cup final in Bucharest–he had outshone the much bigger names with whom he shared the court.

The Americans expected to face a pairing of John Newcombe and Ken Rosewall. Instead, the Aussies threw a curveball, sending out Newcombe with Rod Laver, despite the fact that Laver was 35 years old and both men had played more than three hours the previous day. Captain Neale Fraser had been considering using the duo for more than a month; he had suggested the two men team up for the Australian Indoors in November. They did, and they won the title. Newcombe had partnered Tony Roche to ten grand slam titles, and he liked sharing the court with a left-hander.

Rosewall was disappointed to be left out: His professional status had kept him from competing in Davis Cup matches since 1956, and at 39 years old, he knew this might be his last chance. Fraser didn’t take the decision lightly, and by the end of the day, no one was going to second-guess him.

Newcombe served well, and Laver served better. The Americans didn’t earn a single break point, stumbling their way to a 6-1, 6-2, 6-4 defeat. It was the worst doubles loss for the United States in the history of Davis Cup play, and it secured the trophy for the visitors.

“I think it’s the best I’ve played in doubles,” said the usually modest Laver. American captain Dennis Ralston said he’d only seen the Rocket play so well once before–and that was several years earlier in a singles match.

Smith had few answers, and van Dillen had even fewer. Sports Illustrated called the specialist’s play “out-and-out lousy.” Van Dillen didn’t argue, but he didn’t think a better performance would’ve changed the outcome. “I think if I had had eight arms we might not have won,” he said. “You get out there and find it’s tough that your best shots are coming back at you better than they left.”

Aussies exploded in excitement and relief, both in Cleveland and back home. They had waited six years to reclaim the most prestigious trophy in tennis. Laver had sat out the competition for more than a decade. While Davis Cup was no longer the be-all and end-all of the sport–as evidenced by the half-full stadium and non-traditional indoor venue–it had always been particularly treasured Down Under.

Stan Smith was a traditionalist, too, an American who would put his national team ahead of personal interests even when younger countrymen did not. As soon as Laver won his final service game to put the match on ice, Smith headed for the net to congratulate his opponents. “Well,” he told them, “it looks like we go Australia next year.”

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November 30, 1973: Pure Talent

*John Newcombe (left) with Australian Davis Cup captain Neale Fraser*

The home fans seemed to know what was coming. The 1973 Davis Cup final, pitting the United States against Australia, was hosted in Cleveland, Ohio, the site of several recent international competitions, many of them attended by full houses of enthusiastic supporters.

On day one of the tie, which featured four of the best players on the planet, Cleveland’s Public Hall was half-empty. Certainly the Cup meant less to Americans than it did back in Australia: The US squad had held the trophy since 1968, while the Aussies hadn’t fallen short for so many consecutive years since before World War II. The matches were broadcast by satellite Down Under, and untold thousands of fans dragged themselves out of bed at five o’clock in the morning to see the first ball struck.

Stan Smith, the star of the US side, didn’t complain about the lackluster crowd. The previous year, his team had overcome hostile crowds, biased officials, and soggy clay in Bucharest. “The only condition against us here,” he said in Cleveland, “is pure talent.”

On November 30th, Smith kicked off the tie against US Open champion John Newcombe, proving that there was plenty of talent on both benches. The opening rubber could hardly have been any closer. Newcombe built a two-sets-to-one lead and led by a break in the fourth, when Smith chanced into a mis-hit return lob winner that brought him back even. The fifth set was a roller-coaster, with the returner taking a lead in eight of ten games, five of which went to deuce. Two overrules forced crucial points to be replayed, and Newcombe won both. Those near-misses, combined with a net-cord winner that gave the Australian match point, were the extent of the difference. In three hours and one minute, Newk pulled out the decision, 6-1, 3-6, 6-3, 3-6, 6-4.

The second match pitted Rod Laver against 27-year-old Tom Gorman. Gorman had sat out the semi-final against Romania, yielding his place to the veteran Marty Riessen. American captain Dennis Ralston felt that Gorman had the higher peak level of the two. (Ralston had also declined to call upon Arthur Ashe or Cliff Richey, two contract professionals who were technically ineligible for Davis Cup competition, but whom Australia had said they would allow to play.)

Gorman did indeed produce some of his best tennis, outplaying Laver for three sets before Rocket–probably the best come-from-behind player in the history of the game–discovered his own. Gorman took a hard-fought first set, 10-8, conceded the second, 6-8, and regained the lead in the third, 8-6. Only then did Laver fully let loose. By the fifth set, the 35-year-old was in control, breaking at love to open the frame and breaking again in the third game on the way to a 6-1 deciding set.

In seventy-plus years of Davis Cup play, only one team had ever come back from a two-love deficit in the final round, and that was Australia, who had overcome Bobby Riggs and the United States in 1939. Newcombe was in top form–Smith said he had never seen his opponent play better–Laver was revitalized, and no less of an alternate than Ken Rosewall was ready on the bench. The crowd in Cleveland was subdued, and it was easy to see why.

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Review: LIV and Let Die, by Alan Shipnuck

Many tennis fans are worried about the arrival of money from Saudi Arabia in the game. This week marks a watershed, as the ATP NextGen Finals take place in Jeddah. It’s the first time an official tour event has been played in the Kingdom, though several star players have taken part in the Diriyah Cup exhibition, first held in 2019.

It could have been even more dramatic. For months, rumors swirled that the WTA Finals would go to Riyadh. The women’s tour has struggled to find a stable, well-funded home for its signature event, and the Saudis could solve the financial side in a single stroke. But it was too much, too soon: Enough players bristled at the idea of going to the kingdom that the proposed deal was shelved.

Apart from the fact that Saudi Arabia lacks history with the sport and has no professionals of note, the problem is the kingdom itself. Its leaders were tied to the 9/11 attacks and, more recently, ordered the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman heads an authoritarian, repressive government that is particularly backwards in its treatment of women. No single one of these offenses would be enough to keep the tennis tours away–after all, the WTA recently crawled back to China, and the ATP never left. Still, the way the Saudis and other Gulf nations have used their immense oil wealth to muscle onto the world’s biggest sporting stages and attempt to “sportswash” their public images should give pause to everyone in tennis.

The loudest warning signal is the cautionary tale of the LIV golf tour. (The name is pronounced as in “live free” and represents the roman numeral for 54, the number of holes in the tour’s three-day events.) The Saudis took an existing idea for a new golf tour, then offered eye-watering signing bonuses and record prize money to the game’s stars. The resulting division left the PGA in dire financial straits, drowning in legal bills and struggling to retain sponsors. LIV launched in June 2022, and twelve months later, the rival tours reached a tentative agreement to merge, leaving the 108-year-old PGA as a junior partner.

This is the story of Alan Shipnuck’s new book, LIV and Let Die: The Inside Story of the War Between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. A long-time golf writer, Shipnuck gives us the background on every aspect of the saga, including past disputes between the PGA and its players, the motivations of the stars who jumped (and those who didn’t), and the paths taken by various principals, from Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the golf-loving head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, to PGA commissioner Jay Monahan, to former star and LIV CEO Greg Norman.

The personalities matter: The story could have turned out very differently. Al-Rumayyan is a golf fanatic, which meant that he had a personal stake in Saudi involvement in the game. Monahan, stung by the perceived threat of an earlier upstart, the Premier Golf League, saw LIV as an existential threat and refused to even speak to anyone from the Saudi-backed league, let alone seek a compromise. Norman, despite his status as one of the game’s all-time greats, has always been an outsider. Decades earlier, he had put together a proposal for a rival tour, only to be shot down by the old guard.

I approached this book with a specific question in mind: Could something like LIV happen to our sport as well? It likely could, and it probably wouldn’t even cost the interlopers quite as much money. (LIV spent well over half a billion dollars on signing bonuses alone.) At the same time, it probably won’t. As far as I can tell, the Saudis mainly want to be involved in international sport; it was only the confluence of personalities that led to their takeover of professional golf. So long as the ATP and WTA figure out a way to accept money from the kingdom–and probably host an event or three on Saudi soil–a rival tour would serve no purpose.

The Saudis seem to have two goals as they make one splash after another in the international sporting scene. Neither is new: Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and many others have paved this path before. First, they want to clean up their image so that the international public views them as something other than a backwards, pariah nation. This is about more than just likeability: The less odious their reputation, the more likely that they can pursue international opportunities, whether that means investing in a major company or throwing a party at a famous venue.

Second, the Crown Prince realizes that oil wealth is not eternal and aims to diversify the economy. One prong of that strategy is to transform the kingdom into a major tourist destination. Sportswashing plays a role in this, but there’s more to it than just tidying an image. The nation needs destinations and events. Diriyah Cup was one, and years before LIV, there was a Saudi stop on golf’s European Tour.

Sport serves both goals. That said, a certain kind of sporting event is better than others. The key is star power. It’s one thing to become part of a major international tour, but I doubt many people have changed their view of Kazakhstan due to the ATP 250 in Astana. Much more useful is to be associated with a superstar. LIV would have been dead in the water without a few marquee names like Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson. The last Diriyah Cup featured Daniil Medvedev, Andrey Rublev, and Stefanos Tsitsipas. A Saudi football club offered more than $1 billion for Paris Saint-Germain star Kylian Mbappé.

Thus, the Saudis have focused on certain types of events and leagues. One of LIV’s innovations (lifted wholesale from the plans of the Premier Golf League, which never got off the ground) was to limit the number of tournaments so that the best players would face off, week after week. The PGA–like, to some extent, the tennis tours–didn’t do that, at least until LIV forced them to reconsider their calendar and rewards structure. For a promoter who wants a star-studded field, an exhibition is one solution–but it’s just an exhibition. Appearance fees are another approach: There’s a reason why ATP and WTA tournaments in Doha and Dubai tend to be stronger than the typical non-mandatory turnout.

The most straightforward solution is to host an event where the top players are required–or at least heavily incentivized–to participate. The WTA Finals fit that profile, as would an ATP Masters 1000 tournament. The LIV tour was a very expensive way of accomplishing that, as the 2023 campaign included 14 loaded fields, only one of which took place in Saudi Arabia.

If we were talking about some other oil-rich country–say, Nigeria or Norway–the solution would be simple. Local investors would buy an existing tournament license, or the calendar would be tweaked, so that a significant event would take place on home soil. That’s how Saudi Arabia got started in golf, hosting the 2019 Saudi International in King Abdullah Economic City. A women’s tournament was added in 2020, and in 2023, the prize money was raised fivefold to match the men’s purse. Saudi involvement in the Ladies European Tour is a useful template. By 2023, there was another event in Riyadh, as well as an Aramco-sponsored “Team Series” spanning five tournaments in other countries.

The question, then, is whether the negatives of Saudi involvement–primarily its human rights record–will stand in the way of tennis taking a similar path. The number of men who have flown in for the Diriyah Cup suggests that there isn’t much resistance on the ATP side. Winning over the WTA could be more complicated, but on the other hand, few leagues stand in greater need of a capital infusion.

Shipnuck, almost in passing, points out another risk of Saudi investment, and it is one that tennis should take seriously. The kingdom has enormous resources, and it is not afraid to deploy them. But its leaders are also fickle. They understand the concept of sunk costs; they are not afraid to abandon a billion-dollar project when circumstances change. This week, ATP executives will see first-hand the example of the Jeddah Tower, planned to be the world’s tallest building. Construction work was abandoned in 2018, and it resumed only two months ago.

For now, the intangible benefits and theoretical future cash flows of LIV golf outweigh the staggering costs. But it’s conceivable that at some point, the Saudis could simply walk away, leaving a fractured, diminished golf landscape in its wake like an unfinished skyscraper. Should tennis accept the kingdom’s financiers as partners, the risk might be even greater: There is presumably no tennis equivalent of golf-crazed Yasir Al-Rumayyan to keep the money flowing when logic dictates otherwise.

Fortunately, we have an advantage in that we’ve seen what Saudi money can do. By detailing how the golf world sailed off course in such a short period of time, LIV and Let Die is an essential playbook for decision-makers in tennis who would prefer to avoid the same fate.

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November 26, 1973: A Mile In My Shoes

For Arthur Ashe, South Africa didn’t hold any big surprises. At the end of his trip in November of 1973, he told reporters that everything he had read about the country was “accurate enough.” Now, he could only reflect on a whirlwind week in which he accumulated as much first-hand experience of the apartheid nation as he could.

Alas, the tennis went more or less as expected, too. In front of large and adoring crowds at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park, Arthur blasted through the draw, winning four straight matches in straight sets to reach the final round. Particularly satisfying must have been his quarterfinal defeat of Bob Hewitt, who had told him that in South Africa, the blacks were “happy.”

The fans wanted to see Ashe go all the way. It certainly would have made for a better story. But Jimmy Connors, the brash, hard-hitting left-hander, had other ideas. The two men had met for the title at the U.S. Pro in Boston back in July, when Connors pulled out a victory in five sets. The 21-year-old had picked up two titles since the US Open and had already locked up a spot at the year-end Masters; Ashe needed the title here to overtake Tom Gorman for the last place in the eight-man field.

On November 26th, Connors was simply untouchable. His kick serves seemed to defy gravity, his groundstrokes skimmed the baseline, and his passing shots left Ashe helpless at the net. One reporter described it as “the peak of his game.” Arthur, still processing his visit to Soweto the previous day, didn’t stand a chance. It was another straight-set decision, only this one in favor of Connors, 6-4, 7-6, 6-3.

Ashe had some consolation: He and Tom Okker advanced to the doubles final with a five-set win over Hewitt and Frew McMillan. The next day, Ashe and Okker would pick up the title by beating Lew Hoad and Bob Maud.

Having missed his last chance to crack the Masters field, Ashe called it quits on his season. He planned to spend much of his time preparing a report on his historic trip, which he didn’t expect others to readily understand. “You would have to walk a mile in my shoes here,” he said, “to be able to know how I feel about it.”

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November 25, 1973: Play On

Tennis never had an official offseason. The global nature of the sport ensured there was always some place to play: Australia in December and January, the French Riviera or the Caribbean (or indoors!) in February and March, then Europe and North America straight through to September or October. Individual athletes could take time off, and many did. But there was never a true break.

The schedule became even more crowded in the early 1970s as promoters seized the opportunities of the Open era and the ensuing tennis boom. Circuits in the United States hit the gas in January and didn’t ease up until May. New destinations such as Japan to Iran plugged gaps in the fall. If a marquee name somehow ended up with a free date, an exhibition could be arranged anywhere from Hawaii to Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin.

On November 25th, 1973, Arthur Ashe had a day off in Johannesburg ahead of his final against Jimmy Connors. He gave a clinic in the township of Soweto, earning legions of new fans and expanding his horizons still further on his historic trip.

Ashe and Connors, it seemed, were the only stars not in action on this day, eleven months after they kicked off their 1973 campaigns. Elsewhere on the 25th:

Rosie Casals beat Billie Jean King for the title at the Lady Baltimore tournament, a charity benefit for, among other beneficiaries, the Medical Eye Bank of Maryland. Both women showed signs of rust, but Rosie’s intensity was hardly dimmed. Angered by a pair of bad calls in the third set, she loudly asked if the linesman had recently donated to the eye bank.
In Buenos Aires, home favorite Guillermo Vilas outlasted Björn Borg for the title at the Argentine Open. The duel had the makings of a classic as it headed to a fourth-set tiebreak with Vilas leading two sets to one. But Borg injured his hand and called it a day. It was the first meeting between the pair, who would face off more than 20 times before the end of the decade, including twice for the French Open title.
Remarkably, that wasn’t the only victory Vilas tallied that day without winning a match point. He and countryman Ricardo Cano had split sets with Ion Țiriac and Jean-Baptiste Chanfreau, the score standing 4-6, 7-5, 3-2 in favor of the latter, when the umpire changed a call that had initially gone against the Argentinians. Țiriac stormed off, handing the semi-final to Vilas and Cano by default.
Jiří Hřebec proved that his Davis Cup heroics were no fluke by winning the South Australian Championships in Adelaide. It was his second title in a month–and his second ever. The 23-year-old Czechoslovakian continued to get help from his teammates: His opponent in the final, Bob Giltinan, was exhausted after a five-setter the previous day against Jan Kodeš. Hřebec won in four.
Even with the 1973 Davis Cup still in play, the 1974 competition was gaining steam. On the 25th, Mexico wrapped up a preliminary-round defeat of Canada, while Colombia edged out Venezuela. Canada was already contesting its second tie for the ’74 Cup; they had beaten the Caribbean/West Indies team in October. Mexico and Colombia would play in December, with the winner advancing to challenge the United States in January.
At the Port Washington Tennis Academy in New York–the training facility run by legendary Australian coach Harry Hopman–several national indoor champions were minted in the 14-and-under and 12-and-under categories. The match of the day decided the 12s title, which Californian Kelly Henry lost in three sets to an astonishing ten-year-old backboard named Tracy Austin.

The stars who weren’t in Johannesburg (or Adelaide, or Baltimore, or Buenos Aires, or Mexico City) were practicing hard. The Davis Cup final was only a few days away, with the Grand Prix Masters to follow. After that, maybe a week or two at home, and the whole cycle would begin again.

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