The 1973 Virginia Slims tour got some criticism for being so top-heavy. Margaret Court won nearly everything. When Billie Jean King was healthy, it could be a two-woman show. Rosie Casals was perhaps third in line, but even she was a tier below the headliners. In eleven events before the Family Circle Cup, she had reached the semi-final at each one. She went 2-9 in those semis. She was 0-2 in finals–against, of course, Court and King.
Rosie was a shotmaker without compare, a skill that made her and Billie Jean the best doubles team in the world. What held her back–and she readily agreed with this–was the mental side of things. (It didn’t help that she was 5-feet, 2-inches tall, either.) But with a record-setting prize at the $100,000 tournament in Hilton Head, she was able to focus. “You’ll go a long way for $30,000,” she said of the first-place check, “even to the point of concentrating.”
The first sign of the improvement came in the semi-finals, against King. Rosie had lost to her long-time pal 14 times in a row, apart form the famous double default at the 1971 Pacific Southwest. Five of their last seven meetings had come in semi-finals, in which Casals had failed to win a set. This time, however, Rosie kept her concentration and took advantage of a subpar Billie Jean. King acknowledged that she had never really gotten going in 1973.
That set up a final with Nancy (Richey) Gunter, who upset an ailing Court in the quarter-finals. The crowd couldn’t have asked for a better contrast. Gunter was a slugging baseliner; Casals was the creative netrusher. The New York Times called it “a marvelous final that dispelled notions over the inability of women to generate excitement on slow clay courts.”
(That’s what passed for a compliment in the early days of professional women’s tennis.)
It was a high-quality match from start to finish. The fifth game of the first set ran to 14 points, 8 of which were ended by winners. Gunter seized the opener, 6-3, before Rosie’s drop shots took their toll. Casals ultimately hit 30 of them, dragging her opponent into unfamiliar territory at the net–and taking advantage of Nancy’s fatigue from the rapid-fire, four-day event. Gunter spent most of the second set guessing wrong, losing 6-1 as Rosie unleashed droppers off of both her forehand and backhand wings.
Still, Gunter nearly claimed the $30,000. She came within two points of victory at 5-4, 30-15 in the decider. Casals evened the game with a chalk-spitting drop shot, then took the advantage with a passing shot winner when a befuddled Gunter came forward of her own accord. Rosie held for 6-5, then triumphed in a remarkable 43-stroke rally at 30-all in the 12th game. Gunter missed a forehand to give Casals the set and the match, 7-5.
“I didn’t want a tiebreaker,” said the champion. “I don’t think I could have made it.”
Rosie more than doubled her prize money on the year to a total of $58,500. Only Court had won as much in 1973. Only a handful of women had ever done so well from a single year of tennis, and it was still May.
With the match behind her, Casals could finally relax. The wisecracking Californian was as good an interview as ever. Asked who she would like to thank, she had a list ready: “Nancy, Margaret, Billie Jean–and everyone else who lost.”
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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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